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Fall/Winter 1998: Security And Migration
Security and immigration: towards a governementality through anxiety (PDF, 27 pages, 80.9 KB) , by Didier Bigo
In many speeches by politicians, policemen or journalsists an obvious link appears between crime, unemployement, terrorism and immigration. Thus, the immigration theme is increasingly the subject of a securisation in the discourse. Nevertheless, the actors of this securisation seem aware of the many limits the arguments standing for a link between security and immigration have. Considering this, a reasoned argument would have no effect on them. Didier Bigo explains this form of denial by the fact that in a context of fear for the loss of control of the political world, the securisation has become a governementality modality. Securisation indeed allows some actors to obtain a position of symbolic power in a context of anxiety muting into a mode of political management. The English version of this contribution has been published in Alternatives Vol. 27, Supplement, February 2002 Available at http://www.rienner.com/altrec.htm
Analysing Security: Dillon, Weaver, Williams and the Other (PDF, 24 pages, 71 KB) , by Ayse Ceyan
Ayse Ceyhan suggests a critical reading of recent works on the notion of security, and more specifically that of societal security. She shows both the specific problematic to each author and the way the debate constituted, while detailing the positions of Barry Buzan, Michael Dillon, Ole Weaver and the contributors to Keith Krause and Michal William's book: Critical theory Studies. She clearly enlightens the stakes of each contribution: security and "being-there" for Dillon, securitisation and societal identity for Weaver, the production of securitisation and its stakes for Krause and M.Williams. She insists on the reflexive and constructivist approach characterising them. Security is no opposite of insecurity and danger. Nor is it, or is it reduced to liberation from an objective danger for all. Security is built. In this sense there is no use in trying to objectivise it once and for all. Incertitude affects the definition of security and the objects to which it is related. As a consequence, this generates the need to securitise the notion of security itself. Nevertheless, Ayse Ceyhan shows together with Jef Huysmans, that the epistemological positions behind the "constructivist" label are very different. The realist constructivist theories using a classical terminology (Buzan, Waever) witness the emergence of a new linguistic constructivism focusing on the wordings and the intertextuality around the definition of security (M. Dillon, Campbell, and Dalby). In addition can one witness a sociological constructivism that insists on discursive interaction, the positions of authority held by the enunciators, the logic of fields structuring the speakable from the unspeakable, and the security agencies' methods making security what professionals want it to be, to paraphrase Alexander Wendt (D. Bigo, J. Huysmans, M.Williams). Reflection on domination, whether symbolic or not, remains central in this latter trend.
Judicial Cooperation in a "Space of Liberty, Security, and Justice (PDF, 37 pages, 107.6 KB) , by John Torpey
John Torpey describes in this article how, on the long run, States have taken away the people's freedom to move within some specific areas, and how they assigned them an identity one cannot undo and that is submitted to technical control procedures. While furthering Gerard Noirel he insists on the fact that the national community is codified within documents (passports, identity cards…) and not only imagined (B. Anderson). He invites the reader to rethink what he calls the modern State's nature at a moment when the latter seems to lose control of its frontiers, thinking of the contingent quality of Brubaker's "statehood". He questions the role of our societies' bureaucratic rationalisation and shows how identity papers insert us in a state and inter-state game far from smoothening itself. Immigration and political asylum – even with its Human Rights dimension – often only take their sense in the political discourse under the scope of a transgression of papers (illegal immigrants, visa falsifications, prohibition to stay…). This dimension haunts Schengen technical procedures and national laws.
Crime and Immigration in the European Union (PDF, 24 pages, 70.6 KB) , by Monica Den Boer
Monica Den Boer analyses the political rhetoric regarding immigration through three angles: the prism of the European discussion, sovereignty polemics, and the influence of criminologist discourses on the political representation of the link between crime and immigration. She questions, through the example of the Netherlands, the "reality" of facts regarding the implication of the "Turkish minorities" in drug trafficking, as well as the relations between police statistics, social realities and the work of criminal inquiry. She synthesises her research on the linguistic dimension of the political and police rhetoric, the institutional dimensions of national and European policies, and her critical approach of the presuppositions of those willing to establish criminology as an utilitarist science. This articulation of the different facets of her work show with strength the impossibility to admit the correlation made between crime and immigration as a series of facts or data coming from a neutral science that would be descriptive, predictive and usable by politicians. This correlation is dependent on the categorical presuppositions of autochthonous/foreigner, internal/external, public order/international crime, majority/so called ethnical minority … The relation between crime and immigration is therefore a construction of the social reality according to Searle. This construction is all the more effective that it is produced in the discursive interaction and the collusive transactions in terms of interests. It therefore does not result from a single enunciator's conscious strategy.
The Debré Law : the Making of the Immigrant (PDF, 43 pages, 121.5 KB)), by Charlotte Lessana
Charlotte Lessana explores a certain dimension of relations between crime and immigration through this article on the French Debré law. The text shows the diversity of juridical procedures concerning the foreigners' entry and stay, the code of work, the penal codes of procedure…and analyses what "crosses" these dispositions. Examining the political speeches on immigration at that precise moment shows how a metaphorical network of signification surrounds clandestinity and how an image of the immigrant is constituted blur enough to make practical dispositions converge to it, though they are made for very different populations. The semantic network analysis is once more linked to the position of the person enunciating it. The author shows how the strong lines taken on immigration structure themselves according to the gaps between political parties and their relation to the Front National.
Saying and writing security: the Normative Dilemma of Security Studies (PDF, 25 pages, 75.6 KB) , by Jef Huysmans
Is there a partitioning between academics and politicians? This article deals with the position of those who have a critical writing on immigration securitisation and their impact on politicians and on society. Does their production allow a critical questioning on the dominant rhetoric, or does it legitimise the way the question is asked, if not the answer itself? The author discusses the positions of Ole Weaver, Peter Katzenstein, Monica Den Boer, Didier Bigo, David Campbell, and Michael Williams by questioning them on what he calls the normative dilemma, by which one is critical on 'security' while developing security studies and contributing to their enlargement. His text is challenging and shows the difficulty to escape from State thinking. He suggests a research program as well as an epistemology that would deepen the question through a reflexive approach. He describes the procedures that enable to think the domination mechanisms and the possible convergence of research. The text ends by a reflection on the security field.
The English version of this contribution has been published in Alternatives Vol. 27, Supplement, February 2002 Available at http://www.rienner.com/altrec.htm