The public-private divide revisited: questioning the middle ground of hybridity in policing

Abstract

The increasing pluralisation of policing and the changing patterns of security have in the past decades called into question the sharp dividing lines between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’. For instance, Marc Schuilenburg ([2015. The securitization of society: crime, risk, and social order. New York University Press]) outlines the notion of the middle ground – where everything is becoming hybrid – which fundamentally changes the relationships and practices of policing agencies, making the conceptual pairs of public-private obsolete. However, by examining policing collaboration in the airport and maritime port environment in Norway, the empirical findings in this article reveal that the public-private divide is still salient to the various policing agencies. The findings are at odds with the conceptual and empirical assumptions about the middle ground of hybridity in policing. The article demonstrates that both public and private policing agencies strongly rely on the traditional dividing lines of public and private to navigate and make sense of their practices and relations, as well as their own sense of identity in a complex policing environment. The article discusses the implications of these findings.