Putting Relational Power in the Implementation of Migration Policy : the Discretionary decisions of Railway Workers at the French-Italian Border

This paper will critically engage with the rich Scholarship on discretionary power of street level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1980, Dubois 2010, Evan & Harris 2004), in particular, within the field of Migration policies’ Implementation studies (Gilboy 1991, Weber 2003, Alpes & Spire 2014, Infantino & Sredanovic 2020), by highlighting the role of an understudied group of professionals which is directly involved in border-control activities, without representing the State or having an official mandate in Migration issues: the Railway Workers (RW). By focusing on the discretion-in-practice of non-State actors (Darling 2022, Infantino 2017) and on their Relational Power (Mesle 2016) within and outside their own professional organisation (the French railway company/SNCF), I argue that discretionary decision of RW on who and at what conditions can cross the French-Italian border by train plays a key role in shaping the concrete effects of the Border Regime (De Genova 2010). Since 2015 and more intensely from 2016 to present, identity checks have been reintroduced in a vaste borderzone going from Ventimiglia (IT) to Nice (FRA), via Menton-Garavan railway station. As a consequence, police officers performs identity checks & push-backs on a daily basis also within the railroaders’ traditional workspaces, i.e. the train and the station. RW are asked to « facilitate the work of police agents », as a consequence of an informal agreement between the SNCF and the French Maritime Alps’ Prefecture. The main research questions that have guided the qualitative fieldwork in Ventimiglia, Menton and Nice (2020-2022, 38 semi-structured interviews with train drivers, ticket inspectors, ticket sellers and union delegates, in-situ observations) were: what are the social profiles of RW who used their discretionary power to help migrants, publicly or discreetly, cross this border? Why and at what conditions do they disobey to internal soft rules? In the name of what moral principles? The results suggest to seriously consider the social and organizational position of these workers, or, to say it like Josiah Heyman (1995), to put power into the analysis of their discretionary decisions: more specifically, I argue that their relational power, i.e. the dominant-dominated position in relation to other groups they are socialized with (colleagues, line management, police officers, family members, & unionists) has a strong influence on how they deal with moral dilemmas they face as railway professionals, exposed to sensitive encounters with exiles trying to cross by hiding on the train (electrified roof, electric cubicle & lavatories, wagon coupling) & with policemen. By considering the ongoing organizational reform of the SNCF, and by comparing three different set of practices of these RW and the justifications they put forward, I will show that their discretionary decision-making about border-crossings is a relational one, as it results from the combination of different power-related issues: their perception of the norm/superior principle and their relationship with line management ; their perception of the sanction and their employment (in)stability ; their personal and professional supports (family members, staff representatives) ; the experiences of sensitive encounters with exiles and police officers.