Ontological Security Research Articles

Unsettled Ground, Unsettled Lives: The Ontological (In)securities of Syrian Refugees in the Shadow of Turkey’s 2023 Earthquake

Executive Summary This paper examines the ontological insecurities faced by Syrian refugees in Turkey following the 2023 earthquakes. Ontological security refers to the security of being, encompassing a sense of confidence in the apparent stability of the world (p. 746). This concept is intimately linked to managing existential uncertainties and maintaining routines to ensure a sense of security. Previous literature indicates that uncertain situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters, including earthquakes and floods, exacerbate ontological insecurities. Additionally, these challenging situations often intensify anti-refugee attitudes. Historically, the impact of earthquakes on individuals has been considered predominantly within the realm of physical security, a perspective critiqued by critical security scholars. In alignment with this critique, our study adopts an ontological security perspective to analyze the situations of Syrian refugees in Turkey post-earthquake, addressing a gap in the literature which has previously focused on the physical security aspects of Syrian refugees. While numerous studies documented the relationship between security and migration, fewer explored the nexus between ontological (in)security and migration in the context of natural hazards. This study addresses this gap by investigating how the recent earthquake heightened existing insecurities among Syrian refugees. Drawing on ontological security studies, narrative analysis, and data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the study finds that the vulnerabilities of Syrian refugees were intensified by the earthquake. Their perceptions of home, society, and future shifted significantly, decreasing their ontological security and exacerbating existing inequalities. Our findings suggest that the February 2023 earthquake posed threats to refugees beyond physical inadequacies, exacerbating the ontological insecurities of Syrian refugees in Turkey. This compounded their displacement-related existential anxieties and undermined their sense of stability and belonging by altering their perceptions of home, trust in public authorities, and their future. The earthquake significantly disrupted Syrian refugees’ understanding of “home” by compounding their sense of loss and insecurity, thereby challenging their ability to establish a stable, predictable environment essential for ontological security in Turkey. Furthermore, the earthquake altered Syrian refugees’ trust in public authorities. The government’s handling of the post-earthquake process significantly impacted refugees’ access to essential resources, with discriminatory practices and mobility restrictions amplifying their vulnerability and precariousness. The state’s crisis management capabilities and emphasis on border security, aimed at ensuring control, inadvertently increased refugees’ precariousness regarding their identity and future, leading to a loss of trust in public authorities. In addition to these challenges, the earthquake also changed Syrian refugees’ perception of their future in Turkey, causing them to question their safety and sense of belonging in the host society. Existing challenges faced by refugees were exacerbated by the earthquake and compounded by societal exclusion, further shattering their sense of stability and predictability. Post-earthquake, language barriers and stereotypes intensified, leading to increased discrimination and a reliance on informal survival networks, further diminishing their trust in the future. This heightened ontological insecurity, compounded by economic and social barriers, deepened divisions and made the refugees feel perpetually out of place, undermining their trust in Turkish institutions and society. Our suggestions and policy recommendations underscore the need for comprehensive policies that address both the physical and psychological dimensions of refugee well-being with reference to concrete policy designs in a post-disaster process. • To build trust in the post-disaster process for refugees, the government should ensure that central and local authorities distribute survival resources equally and transparently. • Clear communication channels must be implemented to keep affected communities informed about aid processes. • To address societal exclusion and improve refugees’ future outlook, the government should offer language training and translation services to help refugees navigate post-disaster process. • Providing critical information in multiple languages will ensure all community members are informed and can access aid. • Fostering community integration initiatives and supporting NGOs working specifically with refugees will promote interaction between refugees and host communities, building social cohesion. • Recognizing the importance of informal networks and incorporating them into formal aid structures, as well as supporting community-based organizations (particularly NGOs) that provide aid and support to refugees, is also essential.

The Anxious State: Impossibility of Closure and State’s Ontological (In-)security in Postcolonial and Postrevolutionary Vietnam

This article develops an account of ontological security of the state as constituted by endless pursuits of discursive totality. Grounded in discussions on state’s ontology, Lacanian and postcolonial insights, the article advances an account of state’s ontological security as predicated upon a totalising but perpetually contingent discourse that reifies itself through ideational order and foreclosure of alternatives. Discursive totality obtains for the state its ontological security by layering social reality to bury its original lack and fixing signifiers in particular, exclusive ways, which must be continually maintained due to the discourse’ very contingency. The case of Vietnam’s ‘syncretic socialism’ and its continual rearticulations in response to different political ruptures embody this ‘anxious state’ always on the move to (re)enclose social terrain within its discourse. The maintenance of discursive totality rests upon syncretic socialism’s capacity to extend itself by rearranging or incorporating signifiers and keep contingency at bay by foreclosing alternatives.

Not anxious enough: The discursive articulation of ontological security in the European Parliament

Abstract This paper makes the case for a discursive understanding of ontological security and demonstrates the utility of such an approach in an analysis of European Parliament (EP) debates between 1990 and 2020. We argue that articulations of ontological (in)security operate through the (re)inscription of a set of metanarratives in what we call ‘discursive nodal points’. Building on an extensive analysis of EP debates over 30 years, we demonstrate that in contrast to the prevailing view of the European Union (EU) as an ‘anxious community’, at least on the political level, EU actors remain surprisingly confident in the European project. While they do invoke challenges to the EU, they see these as incentives to strengthen the integration project and often consider operating in crisis mode as an essential EU characteristic. In doing so, they draw on modernist metanarratives of progress, control, and power to construct an ontologically secure EU. We argue that the future ontological security of the EU will partly depend on allowing for more ambiguity in this modernist narrative without accepting a nationalist counter-narrative that undermines the idea of European integration.

Reconciling British Values with Professional Identity: The Pursuit of Ontological Security Among Muslim Teachers in England

This article aims to investigate how the legal requirement to promote fundamental British values (FBVs) impacts Muslim teachers’ professional identity formation, utilising Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with self-identified Muslim teachers, including both male and female individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds, employed in secondary schools across England. This study seeks to interpret Muslim teachers’ experiences through Anthony Giddens’ ontological security theory. Firstly, Muslim teachers expressed pride in being British and their successful integration into society. Secondly, the meaning of Britishness was elucidated by the participants through references to the values described in the current government guidelines on promoting FBVs. Finally, the impact of the obligation to promote FBVs on the professional identity formation of Muslim teachers points to a degree of ambivalence rooted in seeking ontological security. Certain teachers adopted an uncritical stance towards FBV policy, prioritising ‘values’ within the debate and thereby normalising the discourse surrounding FBVs. In contrast, others engaged in a critical analysis of FBV rhetoric, highlighting its adverse impact on academic discussions and their professional identities. From the perspective of ontological security theory, Muslim teachers are situated in a fragile position; while the majority grapple with ontological insecurity, others exist in a realm between ontological security and insecurity.

Türkiye’s Relations with/within NATO: The Ontological Security Dilemmas of Türkiye’s Transatlantic Identity

Since 1952, Türkiye’s Transatlantic identity has been largely shaped by its NATO membership and interactions with the Allies. During the Cold War, Türkiye aligned its national interests and security concerns with NATO, making its membership a central element of its identity. However, starting in the 2000s, Türkiye shifted toward a more independent foreign policy, influenced by its new activism and regional ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. This shift has caused tensions with NATO, especially considering Türkiye’s military interventions in Syria, its purchase of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia, and its reactions to the latest enlargement of NATO. This paper examines Türkiye’s evolving Transatlantic identity through the lens of ontological security, according to which states act in order to provide continuity in their identities (Türkiye’s Transatlantic identity) and to prevent any instabilities to feel ontologically secure, which then might create security dilemmas between the protective security cocoons (Türkiye’s NATO membership) and the crises with other actors (Türkiye’s clashes with/within NATO). In other words, this paper aims to understand how Türkiye’s Transatlantic identity is still valued, desired, and reconstructed, despite the security dilemmas of Türkiye’s contentions with/within the NATO Alliance, from the ontological security perspective.

Order and justice in ontological security studies

Order is a seemingly key concept in ontological security (OS). Yet work on “order” found in International Relations (IR) is often only treated tangentially (via anxiety, insecurity, and other more central referents) in ontological security studies (OSS). This article seeks to move the literature within OSS forward by taking on the challenge of acknowledging and speaking to its politics, and its ethics by centralizing the importance of order as a value. The article confronts criticisms against, and challenges of, OS by revisiting the pluralist versus solidarist debates in the “English School” of IR regarding order and justice. It then reads through recent work in OSS with these insights, examining the order versus justice tensions within several domains and topics in OSS. The article concludes that an ethics of OSS can confront and challenge inequalities and violence that follow from certain forms of order, and ordering, without concluding that one must resist all forms of order.

Unravelling military aggression: Ontological insecurity, great power narcissism, and Japan’s international relations, 1868–1971

Abstract This article examines the extent to which or how self-identified great powers resort to military aggression following events that challenge their sense of greatness. It problematises the prevalent notion that great powers and events exist and have effects independently of the narratives that constitute them. The article does this by engaging with Ontological Security Studies, Great Power Narcissism, and the psychology of vulnerable and grandiose narcissism, as well as by analysing Japanese identity narratives in two periods seemingly marked by equally challenging events – the Meiji era (1868–1912) and the post-war period (1950–71). It finds that Japan’s military aggression against China in 1894–5 was enabled by vulnerable narratives of shame and insult, while the decision to wage war with Russia a decade later was facilitated more by grandiose narratives. Despite Japan’s overwhelming defeat in the Second World War and the persistent desire among conservative elites for great power status and identity, however, overall post-war narratives did not feature similarly negative emotions and calls for revenge. Japanese great power aspirations were arguably curtailed in this period through intense narrative contestation, notably progressive counter-narratives featuring more self-reflective expressions of guilt and remorse, and even the self-reflexive desire for a non-great power identity.

Trust in artificial intelligence: Producing ontological security through governmental visions

With developments in artificial intelligence (AI) widely framed as security concern in both military and civilian realms, governments have turned their attention to regulating and governing AI. In a study of United States (US), Chinese, and European Union (EU) AI documents, we go beyond instrumental understandings of AI as a technological capability, which serves states’ self-interests and the maintenance of their (supra)national security. Our specific interest lies in how AI policies tap into both problem-solving approaches and affective registers to achieve both physical and ontological securities. We find that in governmental visions, AI is perceived as a capability that enhances societal and geopolitical interests while its risks are framed as manageable. This echoes strands within human–computer interaction that draw on human-centered perceptions of technology and assumptions about human–AI relationships of trust. Despite different cultural and institutional settings, the visions of future AI development are shaped by this (shared) understanding of human–AI interaction, offering common ground in the navigation of innovation policies.

Why young adults consume media content about serial killers: Evidence from Russia

This article explores Russian young adults’s motives for consuming media content related to serial killers. Based on a sociological perspective of consumption, the research integrates concepts such as consumerism and “new hedonism” postulated by Campbell with Giddens’s structuration theory and Goffman’s stigma theory. We argue that consumerists’ motivations and images of serial killers are products of modernity. A total of 26 semi-structured online interviews were conducted with young adults aged 18–35 years from 14 cities in Russia. We then performed a thematic qualitative analysis using the AtlasTI software. Our findings show that consumers of media content about serial killers have two main categories of motives: cognitive and emotional. Cognitive motives could be viewed through the lens of the need for ontological security, an attempt to study a potential threat. Emotional motives were associated with satisfying the consumerist need for constant emotional stimulation and pleasure. Future studies may focus on classifying audiences based on their motives for consuming serial-killer media content and examining correlations with consumption practices as well as the supply-side motives of producing this type of content.

Srebrenica as a Marker of Memory in Bilateral Relations Between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Light of Ontological Security

Abstract This article aims to analyze the impact of memory on security/foreign policy using the example of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s bilateral relations. The basis for these considerations is the concept of ontological security. It indicates the construction of the identity of the state and is implemented through political decisions and social practices (for example remembering important historical events). Here, memory is treated as a social construct. In addition, the article focuses on memory leading to the formation of state identity, also seen in the international sphere. Historical memory has a considerable impact on bilateral relations between countries that used to be in conflict, like Serbia and BiH. In the example analyzed, leaders use historical memory to create separate identities, commemorate chosen and appropriate victims/heroes or important dates, historical sites, monuments events and develop selective narratives. The most significant elements in the analysis of the historical memory of Serbia and BiH relations are (1) the goals of foreign and security policy of Serbia and BiH (2) the contemporary narrative of the Srebrenica genocide and its perception by governments of Serbia, BiH, and by Bosnian Serbs and Bosniaks, and (3) an official Srebrenica commemoration (memorials, Srebrenica Memorial Day).

Queering ontological (in)security: a psychoanalysis of political homophobia

ABSTRACT Recent advancements in ontological security (OS) derived from Lacan’s psychoanalysis rethink the concept in terms of the subject’s desire for completeness through attempting stabilised and fixed identities. This approach can offer a novel way to examine the rise of political homophobia where power works pervasively. However, the current conceptualisations of ontological (in)security are not theoretically equipped to unpack and examine such violent politics. This is mainly because ontological (in)security has yet to grapple with the concept of power. This article will address this gap and rethink Lacanian ontological (in)security as a framework for critical power analysis. It equips it with two theoretical moves: Queer studies, which advances the understanding of ‘the other’ and ‘othering’, and emotions research, which demonstrates how emotions work in othering, in International Relations. These two theoretical moves enable the framework to examine how emotions do political work to (re)produce binaries such as subject and object, ‘self’ and ‘other’, and ‘normal’ and ‘perverse’ in the subject production process in heteronormative ‘regimes of normal’. Consequently, Lacanian ontological (in)security can help us understand how and why a gendered and sexualised politics is normalised. The argument will be illustrated through analysis of emotional representations of LGBTQI+ communities in the state-level political discourse in Turkey.

Secure in Diversity? Transborder Ethnicity, Transnational Minority Activism, and Ontological (In)Security in the European Union

Abstract The liberal vision of the early 1990s envisaged the eastward extension of the Western European security community formed during the Cold War, based on intergovernmental cooperation and integration around the shared norms embodied by the European Union (EU), Council of Europe, and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Yet, transborder ethnic ties have remained a security concern within the “New Europe.” As well as the external challenges posed by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, growing transborder nationalism exhibited by Hungary and other states has also become a focus of tensions within the EU. These intra-EU concerns, I argue, should be understood primarily as an issue of ontological security and as part of a multilevel security dilemma implicating states, EU institutions, and national minorities as security-seeking non-state actors. The article focuses on the Federal Union of European Nationalities—a transnational umbrella NGO that in 2013–2021 led an unsuccessful European Citizens’ Initiative named “Minority SafePack” (MSPI) calling upon the European Commission to legislate on firmer guarantees of minority rights within EU member states. Applying the ontological security lens to the study of MSPI, I illustrate how it reflects specific claims voiced by transborder kin-minority activists consistently over the past century, before analyzing the counter-securitizing arguments deployed against it by states. Although MSPI was approved with a large majority within the European Parliament, the Commission ultimately rejected it. I consider why this was the case, as well as the implications of the rejection for the in varietate concordia concept that supposedly undergirds the European project.

A Security Conundrum: Kin-State Engagement, Identity Recognition, and the 2012 Dispute between Romania and Serbia

Abstract This article examines the relationship between national identity and foreign policy in the context of kin-state engagement in Europe. While the engagement of many European states with their ethnic kin abroad has been long defended as a form of minority protection in so far as it protects and promotes their particular identity and culture, de facto considerations of state security that define its scope have received little attention in the international relations (IR) scholarship. I show here that already in 2012 the dispute between Romania and Serbia over the identity and accommodation of the Vlach minority in Serbia is a conspicuous case in which considerations of (kin-)state security rather than minority protection have overtly justified the engagement of the kin-state. In fact, I argue that this case study calls attention to the multiplying significance of national identity for a kin-state: as a source of obligations, as well as one of (kin-)state ontological security. Yet, in this article, the contextual exploration highlights a tension between the two that originates in a lack of congruity between kin-state identity politics and home-state multiculturalism. While it appears to be unappeasable, in agreement with some constructivist IR scholarship, I contend that it could be reconciled. To this end, this article examines the scope of kin-state engagement at the intersection between justice and security and endorses the necessity to reconceptualize a state’s ontological security as a capability to adapt to a changing normative environment in Europe.

Articulating Change and Responsibility: Identity, Memory, and the Use of Historical Narratives in German Parliamentary Debates on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT Conceptually contributing to the literature on culture/identity, ontological security, and narrative, this article explores Germany's articulation of historical memory in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We argue that this is done through (re)interpretation and contestation, combining biographical continuity and narrative adjustment. Based on an analysis of 107 speeches in the German parliament, we claim that German foreign policy discourse is marked by a tension between different principles which are rooted in a normative dispute among Germans seeking to draw the ‘right lessons’ from the country's history. This dispute is exemplified by ongoing German attempts to contextualise and situate their own past within the present through political narratives.

The Self and the Other: Individual Emotions and Ontological Security in Turkish Foreign Policy

Emotions and ontological security open up one of the latest avenues in International Relations (IR). An increasing number of interdisciplinary approaches have been engaging in emotions and ontological security, for example, foreign policy analysis. However, academic research is scarce concerning the triangulation of emotions, foreign policy, and individual ontological security. Driven by the gap in the literature, the study analyzes how Turkey’s foreign policy decisions influence individual existentialism in terms of ontological security during the AKP era. A subsidiary question addresses how Turkey’s foreign policy decisions adjust/affect individual emotions towards its most engaged and interacted countries. Based on Ontological Security Theory (OST), the study has conducted 20 interviews. The questions cover Turkey’s foreign policy milestones: the start of the EU accession negotiations, the “one minute incident,” the Mavi Marmara incident, and the Arab Uprisings and the Syrian Civil War. The questions aim to reveal people’s emotional reactions to and descriptions of such events. The interview transcripts are analyzed in a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) context. Through CDA, the individuals’ perceptions of risk, threat, and danger are analyzed to seek the determinants of growing existential uncertainty in tandem with significant foreign policy decisions of the AKP government. This study finds that foreign policy decisions in Turkey impact individuals’ emotions based on key events. Through the case of Turkey, the study contributes to the emerging literature on emotions and ontological security by studying the dimensions between foreign policy and individual insecurities and emotions.

Taking Putin’s jokes seriously: what does gender-based humor tell us about Russia’s ontological insecurity, masculinity, and construction of gendered hierarchies?

ABSTRACT The article analyzes President Vladimir Putin’s gender-based humor as a way of exploring Russia’s ontological insecurity. Our research explores how Russia’s masculine ontological insecurities are trapped in the realities of patriarchy challenged in a contemporary globalized world. We integrate a constructivist ontology with poststructuralist attention to language to understand the role of gender-based humor in the (re)production of gendered hierarchies, and therefore in sustaining Russia’s ontological security. To achieve our goal, we examined 29 videos of Putin’s speeches broadcast between 2012 and 2022 through the lenses of “feminization” and “masculinization.” The study concludes that it is necessary to take political humor seriously. Its deployment helps Putin to maintain a consistent narrative of Russian self-identity based on associations with masculinity and the feminization of the Russian nation and its foes in the eyes of a conservative segment of the Russian populous. Ultimately, such humor aims to alleviate feelings of insecurity and anxiety, maintaining a heteronormative gendered order in Russian foreign affairs.

Legal Trust and Social Development: Chosen Aspects of the Relationship

Abstract The deliberations will be aimed at the basic meanings of legal trust, its social role in the development of society and the relationship between law and social evolution. The considerations carried out is to confirm the assumption made of the complex nature of trust and its role in social development. First of all, formal and legal entrustment arises when the formal requirements of the legal system are guaranteed – coherence, non-contradiction, differentiation, hierarchy. Secondly, trust in the law arises in the situation of the existence of institutional guarantees of the rule of law and the systemic principle of trust, which is expressed not in retroactivity, correctness of legislation, protection of acquired rights, protection of the so-called interests in progress. Taken together, the fulfilment of these requirements determines the stability of the state of law, the predictability of its application, legality, durability, and, consequently, the ontological security of individuals and social development.

AUKUS as ontological security – Australian foreign policy in an age of uncertainty

ABSTRACT On 15 September 2021, Australia signed onto a new security agreement with the US and UK known as AUKUS. Under AUKUS, Australia will acquire nuclear capabilities in the form of nuclear-powered submarines. Despite being the most significant security agreement since ANZUS with an estimated cost of over $368 billion it has been highly controversial. Concerns have been raised around its viability, practicality, the associated risks given the revival of isolationist foreign policy ideas in the US, and the financial costs and fit with existing domestic capabilities. What explains Australia’s decision to join AUKUS given the presence of such substantial risks and unknowns? I work to show that traditional security frameworks struggle to account for the significant risks associated with the decision. Instead, using an ontological security approach, I argue that Australia’s decision to enter AUKUS represents an effort to maintain ‘Self’ identity narratives through the stabilisation of relations with ‘great and powerful friends’ that had come into question under the Trump presidency.

The subaltern strikes back, or how Ukraine is claiming agency from Russia and the European Union

ABSTRACT Using the concept of liminality in combination with ontological security through an overarching postcolonial lens, this article shows how Ukraine as a liminar on the East–West spatial-ideological axis has successfully claimed agency from the European Union (EU) and Russia in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion. We argue that the latter has acted as a critical juncture for Ukraine, to the point that agency has emerged from a state of ontological anxiety. Provoking the need to fight for the survival of the Self, Russia’s invasion has strongly accelerated the transformation of Ukraine’s liminal identity, uniting the country around a new asserted Self. Russia’s aggression has pushed Ukraine to definitively reject the narrative of a common identity promoted by Russia and claim its rightful belonging to Europe, thereby unleashing unprecedented agency vis-à-vis its significant Others, i.e. Russia and the EU. From the EU’s side, Ukraine has finally been embraced within the European family by receiving candidate status. From Russia’s side, Ukraine’s successful application for EU candidate status has consolidated Ukraine’s departure from Russia’s perceived sphere of influence. Along with Ukraine’s nationwide resistance against the invasion, this destabilises Russia’s projected identity discourse around the Slavic brotherhood and the “Russian world”.

Towards a safe haven: Students from post‐Soviet countries pursuing education in Sweden during the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractThis article delves into the motivations and aspirations of students from post‐Soviet countries who opted for education in Sweden amid the COVID‐19 pandemic. In stark contrast to most nations which enforced stringent lockdown measures to curb the transmission of the coronavirus, Sweden adopted a relatively laissez‐faire approach, keeping significant sectors of society operational. While Sweden's strategy garnered considerable global scrutiny and critique, the students in this study exhibited a notable lack of apprehension regarding the global health crisis or Sweden's controversial approach to the pandemic. For these students, the COVID‐19 pandemic primarily manifested as a practical impediment to their forthcoming academic endeavours. Conversely, they perceived various enduring societal challenges in their countries of origin–such as unemployment, anxiety and distrust towards governmental authorities, and even armed conflict–as possessing a more entrenched and formidable nature, posing a greater threat to their overall well‐being. Against this backdrop, Sweden emerged as a perceived sanctuary capable of reinstating a state of ontological security, especially for the students identifying as members of the LGBTQ+ community and with political convictions frowned upon by the government of their home country. By focusing on the narratives of these individuals and adopting a conceptual framework that views ‘crisis’ as a relational construct, this study sheds light on the divergent experiences and perceptions of the COVID‐19 pandemic among international student cohorts. This approach underscores the nuanced and context‐dependent nature of their responses to the pandemic, emphasising the imperative of empirically accounting for these variations.