Securitization and the construction of security

Those interested in the construction of security in contemporary international politics have increasingly turned to the conceptual framework of `securitization'. This article argues that while an important and innovative contribution, the securitization framework is problematically narrow in three senses. First, the form of act constructing security is defined narrowly, with the focus on the speech of dominant actors. Second, the context of the act is defined narrowly, with the focus only on the moment of intervention. Finally, the framework of securitization is narrow in the sense that the nature of the act is defined solely in terms of the designation of threats. In outlining this critique, the article points to possibilities for developing the framework further as well as for the need for those applying it to recognize both limits of their claims and the normative implications of their analysis. I conclude by pointing to how the framework might fit within a research agenda concerned with the broader construction of security

‘Wandering and settled tribes’: biopolitics, citizenship, and the racialized migrant

This paper argues that purportedly outdated racial categories continue to resonate in contemporary forms of racialization. I examine the use of metaphors of rootedness and shadows by a contemporary UK migrant advocacy organization and its allies to justify migrant regularization and manage illicit circulation. I argue that the distinction between rooted and rootless peoples draws on the colonial and racial distinctions between wandering and settled peoples. Contemporary notions of citizenship continue to draw upon and activate racial forms of differentiation. Citizenship is thus part of a form of racial governance that operates not only along biological but also social and cultural lines, infusing race into the structures, practices, and techniques of governance

Bare life in an immigration jail: technologies of surveillance in U.S. pre-deportation detention

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 29/08/2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1796266 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Migration policies globally are characterised by a growth in the use of detention. These dynamics have also been noted in the United States of America, where, increasingly, the private immigration detention infrastructure is the most developed in the world. Like other total institutions, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities depend on controlling human bodies. This article, which explains how nation-state sovereignty is created by means of surveillance technologies, draws upon the narratives of 26 Mexicans, deported under the administrations of Presidents Bush and Obama and interviewed in four waves of research between 2012 and 2019 in their hometown. The article describes the lived experience of biopolitical interventions on detainees’ bodies and explains the disciplining role of restricting or limiting access to ICTs. The article uses Agamben’s notion of bare life. It describes how biopolitical interventions and disciplines dehumanise precarious migrants and contribute to their governmentality long after their deportation when they abstain from re-entering the United States. The article complicates the notion of bare life by demonstrating that the use of biometrics (fingerprints) not only dehumanises people but also identifies their bodies and thus rehumanise them.Published onlin

Storytelling in den Vereinten Nationen: Mahbub ul Haq und menschliche Entwicklung

Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass Mitarbeiter der Vereinten Nationen eine wichtige Rolle in Prozessen des ideellen Wandels auf internationaler Ebene spielen können, beschäftigt sich dieser Beitrag mit einer bestimmten Form individuellem Einflusses – dem storytelling. Mein Verständnis von storytelling als Einflusstaktik kombiniert dabei kollektive Elemente der soziologischen Praxistheorie mit den reflexiven, akteursbezogenen Überlegungen von Michel de Certeau. Ich analysiere storytelling anhand von drei analytischen Elementen: einem (chronologischen) Plot, einer Reihe von Charakteren und einem interpretativen Thema – die jeweils ihre Wirkung im Zusammenspiel mit der Subjektivität ihres storytellers entfalten. Ich illustriere diese theoretischen Überlegungen mit dem Fall von Mahbub ul Haq, dem es als Sonderberater des United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-Administrators zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre gelungen ist, die Idee der menschlichen Entwicklung im System der Vereinten Nationen und der internationalen Entwicklungspolitik zu etablieren

Culture and collective action: Japan, Germany and the United States after 11 September 2001

In order to put a lens on the issue of international security cooperation after 11 September 2001, this article examines the question of how collective action in International Relations becomes possible. The author maintains that a fair amount of inter-state collective action can be understood, even explained, by analysing the culture of the international system. Using discourse analysis as a tool, the analysis addresses the underlying ideas, norms and identities that constitute the relationship between the United States and Japan, on the one hand, and Germany and the United States, on the other, as it has evolved since September 2001. The method exposes how some ideas are privileged over others, how norms are maintained, reformulated and abandoned, how identity is constructed and how power is legitimized in the 'war on terror'