The Queen’s speech : desecuritizing the past, present and future of Anglo-Irish relations

This article adopts the Copenhagen School’s concept of desecuritization to analyse the gestures of reconciliation undertaken during the 2011 state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland, including her willingness to speak in Gaeilge at Dublin Castle. In the process, it opens new pathways to explore if, when and how desecuritizing moves can become possible. To respond to these questions, this article advances the concept of bilingual speech acts as a nuanced yet fruitful way to tease out the complexities of security speech and (de)securitization processes. It is also suggested that the concept of bilingual speech acts provides a way to respond to calls to include translation in critical security and securitization studies. However, while acknowledging the importance of these calls, it is shown that paying attention to bilingual speech acts demonstrates what can also be lost in translation. Empirically this article provides an in-depth analysis of the 2011 state visit to unpack the different kinds of desecuritizing moves that were undertaken in this context as well as the different modalities of security speech that were in play. To conclude, the merit of bilingual speech acts for understanding how to speak security in different ways and vocabularies are discussed.PostprintPeer reviewe

Diagnosing the Securitisation of Immigration at the EU Level: A New Method for Stronger Empirical Claims

ArticleHas immigration been securitised at the EU level? The question has been hotly discussed, but no consensus has been reached. This article claims that two shortcomings – one methodological, one theoretical – in the empirical conduct of securitisation theory (ST) have provoked this lack of consensus. Taking this situation as an opportunity, a quantitative method is introduced that addresses these two shortcomings, thereby helping to reach a stronger claim on the securitisation of immigration at the EU level. By measuring the intensity of the security framing in EU legislation on immigration, the method helps avoid simplistic binary statements of (non-)securitisation and encourages the scholar to acknowledge the complex, multifaceted reality of vast political fields. The results contribute to accrediting the thesis according to which immigration has been securitised at the EU level, but nuances it by demonstrating a significant variation between the various subfields of the policy (e.g. asylum, legal immigration)

Performing Security Absent the State: Encounters with a Failed Asylum Seeker in the UK

Drawing on feminist research methodologies and theory, this article re-centers critical security studies to focus on a migrant seeking an alternative form of security after his application for asylum was denied by the state. The two main objectives of this article are; first, to resituate a failed asylum seeker, Qasim, as an agent of international security as understood through his practice of seeking and obtaining security; and, second, to demonstrate a revised performative conceptualization of security through understanding the failed asylum seeker as practicing an embodied theorization of security. The encounter with Qasim shows alternative means of seeking security, which illustrates agency on the part of the migrant that exists actively outside of the state. This contests the positioning of migrants as passive victims and recognizes a way of being in the world that by necessity cannot rely on a state-based identity. Ethnographic methods, including participant observation and a narrative interview with Qasim, elucidate his practice of security and allow for the development of a theoretical conceptualization of security that remains true to a failed asylum seeker’s practice in the UK