Securitization Outside The West

This book analyses securitization processes outside of the West, with a focus on Africa. The aim of the volume is to develop an original analytical framework to explain the securitization-neo-patrimonialism dynamics in West Africa, drawing upon insights from securitization theory, sociology and psychology. Among critical voices, securitization has become the gold standard for analysing emerging challenges, such as migration, terrorism, and human security. Yet, despite its broadening agenda, the framework has also been accused of bias, with a Western political context and democratic governance structure at its heart. This book aims to re-conceptualise the framework in a way that suits non-Western contexts better, notably by re-conceptualising the securitization-neopatrimonialism nexus in Africa, which gives us significant new insights into non-Western political contexts. It analyses the securitization processes among the political elites under neo-patrimonial statehood, and further stretches the conceptualisation of securitization into African statehood, which is characterised by a blurred line between the leader and the state. The volume explores the processes of securitizing threats in Liberia, Sierra Leone and wider West Africa, as well as the neo-patrimonial regimes of these states. In doing so, it explores the influence these states’ neo-patrimonial regimes have on the processes of threat securitization. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, African politics and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The concept of securitisation has gained increasing prominence in the past decade. Initially developed in Copenhagen, the term has been used to describe the broadening of the security agenda and the framing of particular issues as existential threats across the world. In spite of this prominence, very little work has been undertaken that questions the extent to which the concept can be applied beyond the Western world. This volume engages with these questions, providing a theoretical overview of issues with using the concept beyond the West, along with empirical papers looking at its use in a number of different contexts. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Religious Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond examines the challenges created by both religious radicalism and the state's and society's response to it.

This volume aims to provide a new framework for the analysis of securitization processes, increasing our understanding of how security issues emerge, evolve and dissolve. Securitisation theory has become one of the key components of security studies and IR courses in recent years, and this book represents the first attempt to provide an integrated and rigorous overview of securitization practices within a coherent framework. To do so, it organizes securitization around three core assumptions which make the theory applicable to empirical studies: the centrality of audience, the co-dependency of agency and context and the structuring force of the dispositif. These assumptions are then investigated through discourse analysis, process-tracing, ethnographic research, and content analysis and discussed in relation to extensive case studies. This innovative new book will be of much interest to students of securitisation and critical security studies, as well as IR theory and sociology. Thierry Balzacq is holder of the Tocqueville Chair on Security Policies and Professor at the University of Namur. He is Research Director at the University of Louvain and Associate Researcher at the Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po Paris.

Securitization and Desecuritization of FARC in Colombia introduces a new dual framework for securitization, called “dual securitization,” which regards securitization as a whole process that ends after the desecuritization of the given issue. Başar Baysal examines this process in three phases: (1) definition, (2) construction, and (3) (in)securitization-in-action. Additionally, the dual securitization framework takes both bottom-up and top-down characteristics of the process of securitization into consideration and examines both macro-level decision-making processes and discursive efforts and micro-level security practices. This book looks at the Colombian Conflict, and the empirical part of the study examines the contextual factors that facilitated the dual securitization of FARC and the Colombian State; definition, construction and insecuritization-in-action phases of the dual securitization process; and the ongoing process of desecuritization in Colombia.

Immigrants and minorities in Europe and America have responded in diverse ways to security legislation introduced since 9/11 that targets them, labeling them as threats. This book identifies how different groups have responded and explains why, synthesizing findings in the fields of securitization, migrant integration, and migrant mobilization.

Offers an innovate approach to ethics and security, combining securitization theory and the just war tradition.

Der Band stellt erstmalig die 'Machtfrage' in der gegenwärtigen konstruktivistischen Sicherheitsforschung. Wie lassen sich Machtverhältnisse, die Probleme der Sicherheit und Unsicherheit betreffen, aus transdisziplinärer und historischer Sicht analysieren? Der Band führt Beiträge aus der Geschichtswissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte, Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie, Kulturanthropologie und Rechtswissenschaft zusammen, um die bislang eher implizit gestellte Frage nach der konzeptuellen Bedeutung von Macht in Prozessen der Versicherheitlichung zu eruieren. Durch konzeptuell-theoretische Aufsätze und durch historische Fallstudien, die vom 16. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert reichen, werden die dominanten Paradigmen der Critical Security Studies, die zumeist aus den Internationalen Beziehungen stammen und oftmals den Staat ins Zentrum der Analyse rücken, in ein neues Licht gerückt.