This special issue illustrates that the securitisation of migration is not a linear process but a spiralling phenomenon, which involves different actors, and their policies, practices and narratives, ...in a spiralling progression that both self-fulfils and reinforces migration-security nexus' dynamics. By proposing a cognitive ontology to understand the social construction of migration as a security threat, the introduction to this special issue proposes a categorisation of cognitions, mandates, constituencies and interests of state and non-state actors. Through a dichotomisation of these categories, it is possible to clarify how and why they either socially construct or deconstruct migration as a threat. In particular, the special issue identifies in prejudicial cognitions one of the main reasons for which a variety of actors enact practices and produce narratives that contribute to both securitising migration and reinforcing its nexus with crime, and the consequent social construction of 'migration crises'. The different contributions to this special issue prove the arguments here exposed with a different analysis of how migration has been dealt with at either governmental or non-governmental levels.
This article considers how a major influx of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East during 2015 led to an EU-initiated collective securitisation of the Schengen space. The events of 2015 ...represented an internal crisis for the EU. This was not simply because migration stretched host country facilities and created political division within and between the member states. The uncoordinated reintroduction of border controls by some member states threatened the unravelling of the Schengen Agreement itself. The consequent security discourse which then gained currency in EU documents strongly underlined the need 'to go back to normality' and 'to go back to Schengen', not only to manage increasingly tense relations among member states but also to preserve what was seen as a core achievement of the EU. Contrary to the expectations of mainstream literature on securitisation, the policies enacted in response to the securitisation of Schengen have violated neither 'normal politics' of the EU nor existing or planned policies on migration and asylum despite the wide contestation of current EU migration and asylum practices. The article concludes that the normative dimension behind this collective securitisation should not be underestimated or too easily discounted.
Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa entailed a proliferation of policy tools for EU external migration governance. After the signature of Mobility Partnerships, the EU launched ...Migration Compacts, whose inner logic is to 'avoid the risk that concrete delivery is held up by technical negotiations for a fully-fledged formal agreement'. This paper examines the development of the EU's external migration governance and frames it into a formalization/informalization dichotomy. We argue that the EU-led securitisation of migration has contributed to the increasing informalization of EU-third countries agreements. The case of Jordan is relevant in understanding the EU's approach, as a strategy to muddle through in a region in turmoil.
This article contributes to an understanding of how expert technological knowledge impacts the security-migration management nexus at the EU borders. It argues that recent migration flows augmented ...pre-existing dynamics of growing reliance upon technology in EU border management. These dynamics are assessed through a study of the way emerging technologies, in particular Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV, commonly known as drones), and specific information and surveillance technologies installed on them, have become increasingly understood as crucial for the management of migration into the EU. The article synthesises securitisation theory with Science and Technology Studies to show, first, how the values reflected in border technologies often encapsulate a securitised understanding of the migrant, and second, how the migrants arriving in Europe have been characterised as both potential security threats and as individuals in need of rescue and protection. These frames trigger securitisation dynamics that portray the migration issue as amenable to state-of-the-art technology. In this logic, security 'problems' and security 'solutions' are co-produced within a complex multi-layered network of public and private actors.
Infrastructure has played an agential role in the securitisation of everyday life in the Karakoram high mountains of north Pakistan. Geopolitics bear heavily on this region where Pakistan shares ...borders with China, with whom it has aligned its foreign and security policy, and with India, with whom Pakistan remains embroiled in a long‐standing territorial dispute. Consequently, in the Karakoram, geopolitical anxieties have reflected inwards onto local populations through both security infrastructure and securitised infrastructure. In this postcolony frontier space, statecraft also frequently bypasses normative legal and administrative structures; such exceptions to normative law and administration have antecedents in colonial statecraft on the territorial margins of empire. This paper also argues that long cycles of military rule have allowed the military to acquire and project technocratic expertise, become custodians of state‐led development, and recently, to assume guardianship of, and to enter into joint financing with China on, construction projects.
Technology is changing how we live our lives – of this there is no doubt. But how technology affects political deliberation, through which pathways, and how such processes compare to other forms of ...social mechanisms at play are less clear. Critical security studies have yet to reflect much on this. While the Copenhagen School outlined the workings of the securitisation mechanism and inspired further research into its dynamic together with analytical enquiries into other grammars, logics and security mechanisms operating in different sectors, the role of ‘the technical’ in the broader political processes remains under-researched. The article conceptualises the social mechanism of technification, outlines three possible forms to be found in practice and illustrates them using the example of the development of the nuclear energy program in Poland.
Technification et sécurisation : « Techniciser » les politiques énergétiques nucléaires en Pologne
The long arm of the Arab state Tsourapas, Gerasimos
Ethnic and racial studies,
01/2020, Letnik:
43, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Under what conditions do authoritarian states exercise control over populations abroad? The securitization of cross-border mobility has been a common theme in examining immigration policies in the ...Global North. The securitization of emigration and diasporas in non-democratic contexts remains neglected; this is particularly true with regard to Arab states' extraterritorial authoritarian practices. This article argues that authoritarian states develop a range of migration policies that are driven by the contradictory pressures of economic and political imperatives or, put differently, an illiberal paradox: if a state does not expect economic gains from cross-border mobility, it is more likely to securitize its emigration policy; otherwise, it is more likely to securitize its diaspora policy. The article illustrates this trade-off via a most-similar comparison of Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. Drawing on Arabic and non-Arabic primary and secondary sources, it sketches a novel area of research on migration and security.
Climate change is a firmly established and prominent issue of concern for the European Union. The EU became a collective agent of securitisation over time, increasingly engaging in speech acts ...defining climate change as a threat. These speech acts have driven forward agreed European policy measures and have informed EU positions in international climate negotiations. This piece examines how climate change became securitised and traces the historical development of the EU as an agent of collective securitisation in this domain. It argues that the EU has become a more unified, collective actor over time, that it has engaged in recursive interaction with multiple (internal and external) audiences to drive the securitisation of climate change, and that a new securitised status quo had been achieved by the mid-to-late 2000s. This new status quo positions climate change as central to the EU's security agenda.
This article examines the intersections between migrants' trajectories and digital technologies by analysing the role of mobile digital devices in the everyday lives of migrants in transit. We ...introduce the novel concept of techno-borderscapes to rethink transit zones as sites of embodied and virtual encounters among various state and non-state actors and to unravel the intersections between digital securitisation, humanitarianism and activism. Based on narrative, participatory and ethnographic research with migrants in transit at the France-UK border and ongoing transnational collaborations with a sub-group of former camp residents, our research shows that digital devices shape migrants' experiences of transit, their migratory trajectories and their transnational encounters. Confronted with increased border securitisation, migrants use mobile technologies to bypass borders, create new forms of migrant-to-migrant protection and assistance, and articulate their political voice. Moving away from the general representation of transit spaces as singular points in a unidirectional migratory trajectory, our findings show that these spaces are sites of confluence of multi-directional mobilities. Transit zones are not just 'in-between' spaces but rather transformative and transforming spaces in which mobile digital technologies play a significant role.
The ‘securitisation’ of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat to key values, principally identity. Yet, the socially constructed nature of ‘identity’ implies the ...potential for dual usage: support and contestation of the security frame. Using the UK as an illustrative case, this overlooked dynamic is explored through mixed-methods, incorporating elite political and religious discourse (2005–2015) and original public attitudinal survey evidence. The discourse analysis reveals that the preservation of an imperilled British identity (‘tolerance’) is a frame invoked, in different ways and by different actors, to either support or contest the securitisation of migration. Similarly, British citizens who deeply value the preservation of ‘Britishness’ have diverse, positive and negative views on migration, challenging the notion that identity as a referent object is deterministically linked to anti-immigration attitudes. The innovative concept of ‘counter-securitisation’ is utilised and developed, unpicking these nuances and their implications.
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