Abstract
The ‘securitisation’ of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat to key values, principally identity. Yet, the socially constructed nature of ‘identity’ implies the potential for dual usage: support and contestation of the security frame. Using the UK as an illustrative case, this overlooked dynamic is explored through mixed-methods, incorporating elite political and religious discourse (2005–2015) and original public attitudinal survey evidence. The discourse analysis reveals that the preservation of an imperilled British identity (‘tolerance’) is a frame invoked, in different ways and by different actors, to either support or contest the securitisation of migration. Similarly, British citizens who deeply value the preservation of ‘Britishness’ have diverse, positive and negative views on migration, challenging the notion that identity as a referent object is deterministically linked to anti-immigration attitudes. The innovative concept of ‘counter-securitisation’ is utilised and developed, unpicking these nuances and their implications.
Highlights
From border walls and fences, to the growth of far-Right politics and populism across Europe and beyond, a consensus has emerged that host countries, predominantly, view migration through the lens of security and threat.[1]
Results show that people that value British customs and traditions have a plurality of views on migration: they see it as either undermining or enriching culture, as being either good or bad for the economy, and as either linked or not to criminality and terrorism
This indicates that British identity, as the referent object, is not inherently or exclusively linked to ‘securitising’ frames and, potentially, to ‘counter-securitising’ ones.[73]
Summary
From border walls and fences, to the growth of far-Right politics and populism across Europe and beyond, a consensus has emerged that host countries, predominantly, view migration through the lens of security and threat.[1]. There are two questionable assumptions underpinning the perspective that identity is inherently linked to negative immigration attitudes It sees it as defined by adversarial ‘us’ and ‘them’ characteristics, as established in social identity and self-categorisation theories,[4] which substantiates the realist view in security studies that threats to society and the state are external in origin.[5] discourses of danger that emphasise the differences between members of the community and those on the outside do imply that the construction of the ‘Other’ is inseparable from how the ‘Self’ is understood. The existence of differences does not inevitably indicate vulnerability or produce inter-group conflict but, as Browning and Joenniemi highlight in the Nordic case, may be celebrated and, over-time, transmuted to fertilise a dynamic process that is ‘central in holding security communities together.’[7]
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