Securing Prosperity or Making Securitization Prosper?

Abstract

Increasing continental integration since n September 2001 raises questions about the emergence of a link between governmentality security and economic practices in American. Of particular concern is the security and prosperity partnership of America (SPP) between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Whether the result of US security pressures, a willingness to please American leaders and business communities, or for the purpose of ensuring Canada's prosperity in a post- September 11 world, the SPP creates a form of rule founded on certain political rationalities and technologies in a new regionalized geopolitical space. The SPP was spearheaded by a coalition of Canadian businessmen, government officials, and think tanks who were actively seeking to perform a American community through continental economie integration, cloaked in the rhetoric of security. In this context, the SPP can be seen as corresponding to what Janine Brodie has described as the performance of a North American security cornmunity, the idea that the community only exists insofar as it is constantly being reproduced through language and practices.'What may result from the SPP initiative is a strong attempt to create a form of rule based on certain political rationalities and technologies, with a new regionalized geopolitical space as their target. Indeed, the SPP is more than an empty statement of principle. We contend, in line with similar work done by political geographers, that insofar as the SPP is marketed as neither a treaty nor an international agreement but rather, [as] an ongoing dialogue among Canada, the US and Mexico to address common challenges across America, it is all the more interesting and relevant to examine the SPP through the lens of governmentality.2 Governmentality represents how governments manage and regulate populations and the practices they use to do so. By examining mentalities and practices with regard to borders, mobility, and migration, we aim to analyze the governmentality practices that flow from the SPP.Our article seeks to understand governmentality practices that are designed to ensure both the health and safety of the population and the economic success of the American community. The article is divided into two broad sections. The first lays out the theoretical foundations of our argument, which are informed by international political sociology. The second addresses the performance of the American community in relation to border security, as well as the management of mobility and migration, to reveal how American biopolitical governance governance ofthe health and welfare of populations - is enacted through the SPP.GLOBAL GOVERNMENTALITY AND CRITICAL SECURITY STUDIES AFTER II SEPTEMBER 2001International poliucal sociology as theoryThe events of 11 September 2001 created a space for critical security studies to take their rightful place in academia and helped to lay the groundwork for a more in-depth analysis of the sociological and political practices of (in) security. One of most important developments in the field of security studies was the creation ofthe international political sociology section within the International Studies Association in 2002. This section has produced research and policy recommendations on issues such as civil liberty, rights, and the intensification ofthe security discourse in everyday life. The most important contribution of this scholarship is an improved understanding of the political dimension ofthe process of securitization and its sociological component. The focal point of these analyses are the social networks of police and security agencies who, in working with both the state and the private sector, are involved in the production, management, and governing of security.This approach provides a novel perspective to policymaking, one that not only broadens its ambit to include a host of other actors and networks, but that provides an understanding of how it is a performative creation of these networks and ofthe populations that are the objects ofthe policies they create. …