The football laboratory: policing football supporters in the Netherlands

An advanced security assemblage is now at the permanent disposal of authorities in their quest to pre-empt and manage risk at football matches. This chapter proposes the ‘football stadia-as-laboratories’ metaphor as an analytical lens through which to examine the security and risk management technologies that are being used to conduct the behaviour of football supporters in the Netherlands. It is argued that pre-emptive risk management in the policing of football supporters involves a dispersed and fragmented set of state and non-state actors that engage in the process of identifying, categorizing, monitoring and punishing supporters who are seen to pose a threat to public order. The chapter also analyzes the modes of resistance used by football supporters to countervail, weaken or subvert disciplinary matrices, showing the diversity in supporters’ responses to the techniques of pre-emptive risk management.