Security Dialogue 2014, Vol. 45(3) 195–208 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0967010614533243 sdi.sagepub.com Border security as practice: An agenda for research Karine Côté-Boucher School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, Canada Federica Infantino Social Sciences, FNRS/Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium & Political Sciences, Sciences Po Paris, France Mark B. Salter School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada Abstract The ambition of this special issue is to contribute to contemporary scholarly analyses of border security by bringing more focus onto a specific field of inquiry: the practices of the plurality of power-brokers involved in the securing of borders. Border security is addressed from the angle of the everyday practices of those who are appointed to carry it out; considering border security as practice is essential for shedding light on contemporary problematizations of security. Underscoring the methodological specificity of fieldwork research, we call for a better grounding of scholarship within the specific agencies intervening in bordering spaces in order to provide detailed analyses of the contextualized practices of security actors. Keywords border security, ethnography, the everyday, practice, street-level bureaucrats, Introduction The aim of this special issue is to contribute to contemporary scholarly analyses of border security by bringing more focus to a specific field of inquiry: the everyday practices of the plurality of power-brokers involved in the securing of borders. The competing discourses and rationalities of border control, theorized by critical border and security scholars alike, intersect in complex ways with the everyday professional routines and administrative procedures of those involved in the governance 1 of border security at different scales (local, regional, national or supranational). This special issue invites us to apprehend border security also as an outcome of these brokers’ practices, Corresponding author: Karine Côté-Boucher. Email: karine.cote-boucher@umontreal.ca 533243SDI 0 0 10.1177/0967010614533243Security DialogueCote-Boucher: Border security as practice research-article 2014 Special issue on Border security as practice