Failed Securitisation Moves during the 2015 ‘Migration Crisis’

The EU has tried to distinguish itself as respecting human rights in its migration policies. In 2015, mass drownings at sea of refugees from war‐torn and despotic countries like Syria and Eritrea started to rise with the end of Mare Nostrum, the Italian navy's search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean. One EU response was to declare a war on “criminal gangs” of smugglers and traffickers, reportedly responsible for the surge in refugee deaths. Equating smugglers’ activities with a “new slave trade”, this “securitization move” failed to gain legitimacy from EU publics and media. Military solutions to refugee flight continued to be proposed, and a second securitization move continued to target smugglers and traffickers, but this time the “referent object” became the West itself, and the EU.     

Language and (in)securitization: Observations from educational research and practice in conflict‐affected contexts

Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic‐speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro‐processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro‐practices of schooling—issues that are possible to “see” when language policy is the site of inquiry. In centring everyday communicative practice, sociolinguistics provides a distinctive entry point for examining the lived experience of this (in)securitization, by illuminating pervasive and mundane micro‐processes within the “extraordinary” and routinized social interactions of everyday schooling.     

Securing the Market,Pacifying Civil Society,Empowering Women: The Middle East Partnership Initiative1

The “Middle East Partnership Initiative” (MEPI) is now the main framework for U.S. soft interventions in the Middle East. Established by the Republican administration in 2003, this program follows a rationale of political and economic reforms as a means to uproot terrorism and spread democracy. This article offers a content analysis of this program by questioning the assumptions behind the MEPI’s focus on “civil society” and “women’s empowerment” and by showing their significance to neoliberal regimes of pacification and securitization.     

Accounting for surveillance

This contribution discusses the ways people hold themselves and others accountable for everyday practices of surveillance. It analyses three examples: (1) the “breeching experiments” of the video artist “Surveillance Camera Man,” (2) a “stop and frisk” incident involving a 17‐year‐old boy in Harlem, and (3) the pop‐up windows on websites that ask for users’ consent to use “cookies.” Understanding the relationship between language and securitization, it is argued, requires that we pay attention to the interactional basis of surveillance and the ways rights and responsibilities are negotiated, ratified, challenged, or ignored in the moment‐by‐moment unfolding of communication.     

Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Abstract

The author responds to Hill et al.'s “Gender Identity Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence: A Critical Inquiry” and Moser and Kleinplatz's “DSM-IV-TRand the Paraphilias: An Argument for Removal.” The author sees the paper as raising the issue of whether there are any cases for which sexual and gender identity diagnoses are appropriate. The author believes a central issue is how does one decide that something is just unusual (normal variation) or something is disordered (pathological). The author believes the concept of “medical disorder” can be applied to human behavior and gives examples to support that view. The author supports an essentialist view that some “things” (like being human and modes of sexual expression) have properties or qualities that are invariable and represent the true essence of the “thing.” From this perspective, the author finds the arguments for eliminating the categories of GID and paraphilias from the DSM as weak at best.     

Excluded by crisis management? Legislative hyperactivity in post-2015 Germany

This article examines the legislative measures taken by Germany since 2014 to manage the “refugee crisis” and analyses the potential effects on the rights and the well-being of asylum seekers and persons with protection needs at large. By taking a closer look at the reasoning given in the respective legislative documents we will show the link between the recent changes in the national asylum and migration law and the underlying migration management framework. The article concludes that Germany has seen a shift from a management to a securitization approach, the latter entailing a special emphasis on deportation (“return turn”) rather than focusing on accommodation and integration of those seeking protection. Acting in a mere “crisis mode”, the German legislator has implemented an exclusion paradigm that incrementally substituted the prior inclusive policies over time.     

Making Sense of Neoliberal Securitization in Urban Policing and Surveillance

Grâce à une analyse historique des fonctions de surveillance de police civile, cet article examine comment la titrisation civile se déroule en traitant disciplinaire‐surveillance et de sécurité‐surveillance des pratiques distinctes et des appareils qui fonctionnent respectivement à des moyens “centripètes” et “centrifuge” et en reconfigurant triangulation de Foucault de la gouvernance d'une matrice à deux par deux: la souveraineté‐gouvernement et de la discipline‐sécurité. Cet article montre comment la titrisation de police civile s'aligne avec la transformation actuelle du gouvernement à partir d'un centripète (Keynésienne) d'une centrifuge (néolibéral) la rationalité politique. Cela revêt une importance plus large de recherche: où la rationalité politique favorise l’équilibre n'avons‐nous pas trouver une prépondérance de la discipline‐surveillance? Où déséquilibre est promu n'avons‐nous pas trouver une prépondérance de la sécurité‐surveillance? Through a historic analysis of the surveillance functions of civil policing, this article considers how securitization is taking place by treating disciplinary surveillance and security surveillance as distinct practices and apparatuses that, respectively, function in “centripetal” and “centrifugal” ways and by reconfiguring Foucault's triangulation of governance to a two‐by‐two matrix: sovereignty government and discipline security. This article shows how the securitization of civil policing aligns with the current governmental transformation from a centripetal (Keynesian) to a centrifugal (neoliberal) governmentality. This has broader research significance: where governmentality promotes equilibrium do we not find a preponderance of disciplinary surveillance? Where disequilibrium is promoted do we not find a preponderance of security surveillance?     

Change the Change Management! Die Kunst der kontinuierlichen Selbsterneuerung von Unternehmen

Given the increasing dynamics in the markets, the possibility to adapt quickly to the changing environmental requirements is regarded as the key competence of corporations. Following the latest empirical findings of strategic and organizational research, those corporations will be successful in the long run that have the ability to continually reinvent themselves. We call this type of change “continuous self-renewal”. Continuous self-renewal is a profound change that proceeds with foresight and is not triggered by an external acute pressure to act. This approach is opposed to the established concepts of Change Management which state that processes of profound change can only be successful if exactly this pressure to act exists. Hence, the question arises whether “continuous self-renewal” is merely a theoretical concept? Based on a case study, the author comes to the conclusion that “continuous self-renewal” is an empirically verifiable type of change. The research results show furthermore that this type of change operates on completely different principles than previously known processes of change. Continuous self-renewal challenges therefore our established thinking about organizational change in a fundamental way, so the central conclusion of the author.     

The Securitization of Migration: A Racial Discourse1

As we enter the informational economy, freedom of human mobility has nearly disappeared. Instead, powerful words are travelling the globe unhindered: risk and security. They are being strung together with the present “migration phenomena”, leaving migrants bound by the chain of the new security discourse: the securitization of migration. This discourse is racism's most modern form. Discursive practices, as seen through the press portrayal of 599 migrants reaching Canada's western coast, have transformed migrants into agents which threaten “human security” How discourse informs government policy is illustrated through an examination of Canada's new immigration legislation.     

Single Mothers “Do” Family

This paper explores how single mothers both incorporate others into family life (e.g., when they ask others to care for their children) and simultaneously “do families” in a manner that holds out a vision of a “traditional” family structure. Drawing on research with White, rural single mothers, the author explores the manner in which these women both endorse their children’s attachment to other caregivers and maintain boundaries around issues of discipline and attachment vis‐à‐vis these others. The author demonstrates that single mothers are willing to share this protected realm of family life with a new man (a fiancé or cohabiting boyfriend) as they pursue the goal of what has been called the “Standard North American Family.”     

A Reaction to Mark Pope's (2000) “A Brief History of Career Counseling in the United States”

The author acknowledges the significance of the 6 steps presented by M. Pope (2000) in his article “A Brief History of Career Counseling in the United States.” It is proposed that the historical stages for each kind of career counselor are most appropriately organized around federal legislation that affects it. Alternative “stages,” which the author believes are appropriate in tracing the history of the school counselor movement, are presented as an example of this approach.     

Dostoevsky and Freud: Autonomy and Addiction in Gambling

In this paper the modern ideal of “autonomous” or “pure” gambling is put forward in an analysis of Dostoevsky's gambling behavior, his novel The Gambler (1866) and Freud's psychoanalysis of Dostoevsky. The significance of The Gambler lies in the way conceptions of gambling are related to the social conditions of gamblers. Furthermore, the author demonstrates that Dostoevsky and Freud express contradictory views on gambling addiction. While Dostoevsky primarily appreciated roulette as a means of making money, Freud mistakenly interpreted this as a “pathological passion”. In different ways, however, both approaches toward excessive gambling presuppose and reinforce “gambling‐for‐its‐own‐sake” – Le jeu pour le jeu.     

We Are Family: I Got All My Sisters with Me!

SUMMARY

This article introduces the reader to an unusual family of choice: a 10-year-old Internet listserv for a “family” of lesbian nuns. The purpose of this listserv, and reasons for belonging to it, are described, including as context the unique psychosocial situation of lesbian nuns. The author includes such “family dynamics” as personality differences, the presence of a famous family member, inclusion/exclusion, stability/change, and dealing with differences. Issues of privacy, danger from outside the “family,” and being stigmatized are acknowledged. The author comments on the unique qualities of a “cyber-family” and compares the listserv with other kinds of families.     

Three scenarios for the future of work

After presenting a historical overview of the concept of work and the different meanings that it has acquired over the centuries, the author analyses the value it holds for Europeans, and the impact on work and employment of the popular rhetoric about a technological revolution and its “inevitable” consequences. She then considers the future of work in the light of three scenarios: a “dismantling of labour law”, a “technological revolution” (where automation brings an end to employment), and an “environmental transition”. She argues that the latter is compatible with the imperative to take action on climate change and the expectations placed in work and employment.     

What do we call post-apartheid?

In this paper, the author examines the different uses and meanings of the usual expression “post-apartheid.” It has been used extensively in the social sciences, political discourse and the media since the mid-1980s. But what does it refer to, and has it always meant the same thing over the last 20 years? To answer that question, the author reviews the different ways she has used the notion in her research into workers’ forms of thinking and political subjectivities in South Africa since 1996. She distinguishes between its use as a chronological marker, an academic concept open to various problematics and epistemological decisions and a notion used by interviewees under various acceptations. She concentrates more specifically on the sequential implications of the adverb “post” in her work and argues that there have been political sequences in what she (with others) has named “post-apartheid.” She concludes that she intends to stop using this term in order to concentrate on identifying the current political sequence in South Africa.     

Chuprov and Neyman: Priority in Science and the Uneven Diffusion of Scientific Results

Priority in “discovery,” which sometimes leads to eponymy, is a highly prized form of reward in the scientific community. Recognition of priority is a norm whose violation will bring opprobrium (e.g. suspicion of plagiarism) upon the offender. But in order for an idea to receive an attribution of novelty, and its author to be acknowledged, it must first be noticed. This essay is a case study of an innovation (formulas related to stratified sampling) in the field of mathematical statistics that was “overlooked” for many years by many. Unknowingly, Jerzy Neyman (1894-1981) “refound” these formulas a decade later (1933). When a statistician in 1950 uncovered the original idea and its author (A.A. Chuprov, 1874-1926), he contacted Neyman who promptly published a “Recognition of priority” (1952). The study examines the perplexing situation in which some results become known to and recognized by the statistical community, while others, originating from the very same paper, were “overlooked” by sampling statisticians (among others) who, unlike Neyman, had access to the paper and thus had ample opportunity to identify Chuprov's formulas as relevant to their work. Chuprov was well-known in the statistics world, and the publication in which he published his ideas (1923) was a respected statistical journal (Metron). How is it that it took nearly 20 years for someone in the statistics community to notice that Chuprov had anticipated Neyman in deriving the formulas in question?     

The discourse of security in development policies: A genealogical approach to “Security Sector Reform”

Security is one of the objectives that has become associated with development policies. This article offers a genealogical perspective on this shift, focusing on the introduction of “Security Sector Reform” (SSR) into development policy as an apparatus with a two‐fold normative process. The first point of note is the securitization of development policy. This pertains both to the discourse elements of the apparatus—here, the effects of the use of security semantics—and to its political technologies, with an SSR apparatus which can function as a new label for military co‐operation. This has led to new approaches in societies where this has taken place, with threat a key focus. There has also been a process of depoliticization in the wake of technical, standardized approaches. This has sidelined debate on the norms and political choices involved, albeit implicitly. Secondly, one can observe structural ambivalences in the field, chiefly on the issue of the state and the normative contradictions of a policy to strengthen “fragile states” that relies on external intervention in national politics. The case study of Lebanon complements this analysis, highlighting the structural tensions between the various aims of SSR, and how this affects local ownership: both the perception and reception of SSR are marked by power relationships which translate into hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic labelling.