Faced with the dramatic increase in air piracy and attacks against international airports and airplanes in the late 1960s, states and actors of the international civil aviation attempted to implement new security measures, in order to prevent similar events from happening again. Law, habits, norms and discurses were adjusted in order to cope with these threats. All these transformations of the security “dispositive” – in line Michel Foucault’s concept – represent the core of this thesis, based on the study of three cases: the airports of Paris (Roissy and Orly), Frankfurt/Main and Berlin-Schönefeld. My aim is to describe how international, regional and national decisions – in France, in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the German Democratic Republic – were concretely implemented in airports by the actors in charge of security. These different scales shed light on the differences and similarities between the studied cases through the analysis of these systems in Western and Eastern Europe.

This study is mostly based on police archives. I use documents produced by the French Police de l’Air et des Frontières – stored at the National archives of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine –, by the West German Ministry of the Interior – stored at the Federal Archives of Koblenz –, by the Ministry of Transport of the GDR – stored at the Federal Archives of Berlin-Lichterfelde and by the Ministry of State’s Security of the GDR – stored at the BStU in Berlin. I also read newspapers and used audiovisual media provided by the French Institut national de l’audiovisuel in order to study the communication and discourses of the security services at airports.