Based on rare, in-depth fieldwork among an undercover police investigative team working in a southern EU maritime state, Gregory Feldman examines how "taking action" requires the team to enter "the gray zone," a space where legal and policy prescriptions do not hold. Feldman investigates what transpires among a seven-member immigration police team when they take action against these networks in the gray zone, where they can suspend legal protections for those whom they investigate. He asks readers to consider what the engagement between these two entities reveals about how the global state-capitalist system is both upheld and undermined. Feldman explores the team members' lived experiences in order to crack open the wider range of political, legal, and economic matters surrounding their investigations. Specializing in human smuggling and trafficking rings, the team's actions are uniquely situated at the intersection of the EU security apparatus and the networks it identifies as threats. The Gray Zone outlines a theoretical understanding of action in a world conditioned, but not determined by, security apparatuses, examining action and ethics in spaces unconditioned by the technocracies of mass society.
The Gray Zone : Sovereignty, Human Smuggling, and Undercover Police Investigation in Europe