Right of Entry: The Struggle over Recognition in the World of Intelligence

What is it about?

This article aims to question the birth, and subsequent search for recognition, of a new type of intelligence agency, which appeared in the early 1990s and is now institutionalised in the vast majority of states across the world: ‘financial intelligence units’. It sheds light for the first time on the modalities of access of one of these agencies to the field of security. Following Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, it raises the question of the “right of entry” of a new actor to a specific social universe, e.g. “the conditions and modalities for access to a particular ‘field’ at a given time in its history”. And understanding how such intelligence agencies take shape, function and interact with the potential recipients of their intelligence is crucial for at least two reasons. Firstly, the international governance of illicit capital - and the associated crimes, from white collar crime to terrorism - is partly performed through the relations between financial intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies (police, administrative authorities etc.) and the national security services. What is, then, the impact of these ‘new’ agencies on the actions of their state security partners, and on the general direction of the fight against illicit financial flows and policing considered as a whole? Secondly, asking this question invites a broader examination of the issues surrounding the use of intelligence in contemporary strategies of social control.

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