Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security—a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities.

当前的欧洲创新和安全政策越来越多地用于应对威胁欧洲社会的假定挑战。其中一个特别突出的领域是数字化欧盟边境管理。在这里，负责任的研究和创新 (RRI) 框架最近被用来指出政治行为者对新兴安全技术的偶然维度的所谓敏感性。总的来说，RRI 关注社会需求以及各种利益相关者群体在研究和创新过程中的参与和包容，旨在预测新兴技术的不良后果并确定社会可接受的替代方案。然而，RRI 也被批评为由行业驱动的为新技术获得社会合法性的尝试。在本文中，我们认为，虽然 RRI 唤起了不同参与者进入共同创造对话的空间，但它揭示了以对社会负责的方式管理安全创新的具体挑战。从经验上讲，我们借鉴了 BODEGA 的案例研究，这是第一个欧盟资助的将 RRI 框架应用于边境安全领域的研究项目。我们展示了参与项目的利益相关者如何代表他们与 RRI 相关的工作以及他们面临的收益和挑战。该论文认为，将该框架应用于（边境）安全领域暴露了其局限性，即 RRI 本身体现了一个政治议程，隐藏了安全所针对的那些人的替代经验，其开放性和透明度的关键主张是由于保密协议，在实践中几乎没有遇到。