Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the moralities through which neighbourhood patrols enacting forms of informal policing renegotiate the rules of belonging to and traversing particular urban or national spaces and the ambiguities of the ‘legality’ that they purport to defend while often bordering on the illegal.

Paper long abstract:

Informal policing is on the rise in Europe. Over the last decade, neighbourhood crime prevention patrols, civilian defense groups, border patrols have mobilized under various forms in several European countries. While not constituting a unified social movement, such groups tend to place themselves on the right side of the political spectrum; some of them harbour (neo-)fascist ideologies of moral righteousness and sacrifice for the country, and many of them subscribe to the imaginary of the ‘crimmigrant Other' that needs to be expelled or exterminated. Often operating in a grey legal area, such formations attempt to renegotiate the rules around who is entitled to be in a given urban or national space, and who is not. Rightful residents are separated from those perceived to be foreign, barbaric, immoral, dangerous, or outright criminal. In the process, the rules of belonging to and traversing particular spaces are negotiated according to moral criteria. While criticizing the law for being too lenient towards undeserving foreigners, they claim to defend 'legality'. Drawing upon research carried out between 2014 and 2017 in Italy, as well as within my current project on the German and Dutch cases of informal policing in the urban space, I will reflect on the ambiguities of discourses purporting to defend ‘legality’ through means which often border on the illegal. This reflection affords a glimpse into the transformations of the idea of a state increasingly perceived as unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens.