Emancipatory Pathways or Postcolonial Pitfalls? Navigating Policing Mobilities Through the Atlantic Archipelago of Cape Verde

By navigating global policing mobilities through the Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde, this chapter sheds new light on how colonial legacies intersect with contemporary policing of global insecurities. It articulates evolving subaltern roles within transnational policing to illuminate a more diverse cast of global cops than previously acknowledged. It charts how Cape Verdean policing actors are increasingly more than mere passive beneficiaries for foreign security expertise that flows unidirectionally from North to South but, rather, manifest increasing agency and ambition within regional and transnational policing arrangements. In so doing, Cape Verdean policing disrupts dominant Western-centric assumptions about the unilateral nature and direction of policing and security mobilities. Indeed, whilst ostensibly peripheral to the global policing web—and much neglected within policing scholarship—this chapter spotlights how policing in this West African archipelago is, in fact, highly integrated within transnational networks. It also brings into sharp focus both the postcolonial pitfalls, and the emancipatory pathways, that are furnished through subaltern engagement with the transnational policing community.