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

拟议的项目涉及英格兰肯特自行组织的边境巡逻队中出现的私刑行为。通过民族志田野调查、访谈和档案研究，我将评估这些群体如何理解他们在治国和边界决策政治中的作用，以及这与塑造民族归属感的主流努力之间的联系。该项目位于英国退欧后的时代，将分析英国历史上“反入侵”海岸防御背景下的巡逻，研究过去的图像和叙述如何影响当代的动机。该项目考虑了政治转型狂热时期的国家认同问题。通过实地考察和对巡逻队员、决策者、巡逻官员和其他无关人员的采访，它将有助于理解一个有争议的紧急现象。该项目有助于对移民的学术和政策讨论，以及在现代民族国家警务不足的背景下，针对移民的不平等活动的辩论。

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.