Vigilant Citizens: Voluntary Border Patrols as Political Participation on the Kent Coast

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The proposed project concerns emerging vigilante practices among self-organised border patrolgroups in Kent, England. Through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, I willassess how these groups understand their role relative to the politics of statecraft and border-making, and how this links with mainstream efforts to shape national belonging. Situated in theimmediate post-Brexit era, the project will analyse patrols in the context of historical 'anti-invasion'coastal defence in England, studying how imagery and narratives of the past inform contemporarymotivations.The project considers questions of national identity in a febrile period of political transition. Throughfieldwork and interviews with patrol members, policy makers, patrol officials, and other unaffiliatedindividuals, it will contribute to an understanding of a contentious emergent phenomenon. Theproject contributes to academic and policy discussion on migration and debates on extralegalactivity targeting migrants against a backdrop of perceived deficits in policing by a modern nationstate.