This article adopts the Copenhagen School's concept of desecuritization to analyse the gestures of reconciliation undertaken during the 2011 state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland, including her willingness to speak in Gaeilge 1 at Dublin Castle. In the process, it opens new pathways to explore if, when and how desecuritizing moves can become possible. To respond to these questions, this article advances the concept of bilingual speech acts as a nuanced yet fruitful way to tease out the complexities of security speech and (de)securitization processes. It is also suggested that the concept of bilingual speech acts provides a way to respond to calls to include translation in critical security and securitization studies. However, while acknowledging the importance of these calls, it is shown that paying attention to bilingual speech acts demonstrates what can also be lost in translation. Empirically this article provides an in-depth analysis of the 2011 state visit to unpack the different kinds of desecuritizing moves that were undertaken in this context as well as the different modalities of security speech that were in play. To conclude, the merit of bilingual speech acts for understanding how to speak security in different ways and vocabularies are discussed.

This article makes a case for incorporating the concept of ‘Critical Security History’ (CSH) into security studies. While history plays a powerful role in a cornucopia of security stories, we contend that it often goes unnoticed in scholarly research and teaching. Against this backdrop, we present a detailed guide to study how history is told and enacted in non-linear ways. To do this, the article outlines how CSH can contribute to securitisation and ontological security studies. As shown, this lens casts a new light on the legacies of (de)securitisation processes and how they are commemorated. It also illustrates that ontological security studies have only begun to call into question the concept of historicity. Working through these observations, the article marshals insights from Halvard Leira's notion of ‘engaged historical amateurism’ to entice scholars interested in ‘doing’ CSH. While acknowledging that this research agenda is hard to achieve, our study of the 2012 Sarajevo Red Line project helps to illustrate the added value of trying to ‘do’ CSH in theory and in practice. We end with some reflections for future research and continued conversations.

A guiding concern of this article is to examine how the protection of migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) is being spoken about and framed. Today it is evident that the dominant responses of sovereign States to each of these groups is heavily reliant on the language of security and (de)securitization. Indeed, this article openly conceptualizes ongoing attempts to protect migrants, refugees and IDPs as a series of overlapping (de)the language games of (de)securitization are not identical when it comes to protecting different groups. Third, using securitization as the theoretical point of departure provides a timely reminder that the three discursive labels under consideration are not guaranteed to apply. .Quite the reverse. As will be seen below, the adoption of each linguistic label -migrant, refugee, IDP -is subject to and dependent upon audience acceptance. Remembering the latter dimension is imperative to fully comprehend ongoing contestations over how to respond to people moving in search of security.The remainder of this article is divided into six sections. The first section is devoted to exploring how agents are speaking security to frame migrants, refugees and IDPs. To get to the crux of these narratives, however, it may be necessary to move beyond discussions of 'security unbound' and catastrophic crises. 9 Section two outlines the securitization framework created When readers see (de)securitization in the text they should take it is an indication that the author means both securitization and desecuritization. 8 The concept of a 'game' has multiple meanings in securitization studies. This article draws directly on Ludwig Wittgenstein's language game approach when it employs this term. 9 Within International Relations and critical security studies there is singular consensus on what 'speaking security' means. Given than security is a contested term, there is no single way to speak security. As I show in Section 1, some scholar suggest that speaking security pertains to an unbound set of practices whilst others think that it pertains to catastrophic crises. In this article, my focus on 'speaking security' stems in part from the emphasis that the Copenhagen School and their securitization framework place on the role of speech acts in the social construction of security. I also adopt this grammar to explore how agents speak security during ongoing and entangled language games, as well as in wider contexts. The latter point echoes claims made by second generation 4 by the Copenhagen School and amended by 'second generation' scholars to demonstrate the power of security speech, moves and practices. The next three sections are dedicated to exploring how migrants, refugees and IDPs are (de)securitized. The third section questions the promise of using securitization as an analytical lens for mapping varied patterns of migration.Using this discussion as a springboard, section four scrutinizes whether the securitization of migration informs how refugees are labelled, treated and p...

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For now, this Special Issue is one of a kind. Each piece grows directly out of the crossinstitutional network between the University of St Andrews (STA), the University of Glasgow (G), and the University of Edinburgh (E)'s Security studies (S) programmes. Together, we have created the acronym STAGES to capture these ongoing collaborations. In August 2018, we, as a small group of colleagues working at each contributing university started to discuss how our master students can learn more about security beyond the confines of their separate classrooms. As Jorge M. Lasma writes, 'In many cases, classrooms have slowly come to be seen as the only domains for learning. Other forms and channels of learning and knowledge are viewed with suspicion and sometimes even discouraged for fear of higher costs ' (2013, p. 369). Challenging this idea, we set out to create a collective project to allow different students, with their own unique opinions and viewpoints on security, to meet one another to share their ideas in open, honest and lived ways.