Constructing Ontological Insecurity: The Insecuritization of Britain's Muslims

Abstract

The development of ontological security studies, for example by Mitzen, Steele, and Berenskoetter and Giegerich, has been an important innovation in the field. However, by focusing on the level of the state rather than that of the individual, this new tradition is somewhat different from the intellectual origins of ontological security in sociology and psychology. Drawing on those disciplines, I argue that the key focus should be on the understandings of individuals about their own security, intersubjectively constructed. Ontological security can be understood in terms of the need to construct biographical continuity, to construct a web of trust relations, to act in accordance with self-integrity, and to struggle against ontological insecurity, or dread, in Kierkegaard's sense. I then take and apply this framework to understand the process by which British Muslims have become insecuritized (understood as a term through which dominant power can decide who should be protected and who should be designated as those to be controlled, objectified, and feared) in the period since 9/11.

Fit for purpose? Fitting ontological security studies ‘into’ the discipline of International Relations: Towards a vernacular turn

“…As (Croft, 2012a) has argued elsewhere, the key elements of an ontological security framework are a biographical continuity, a cocoon of trust relations, self-integrity and dread, all of which apply at the level of the individual, and all of which are constructed intersubjectively. There has to be, firstly, a biographical continuity, a storyline for each individual that is both easily grasped reflexively by the individual regardless of levels of education, and also one that is easily communicable to those around.…”

Introduction to 2018 special issue of European Security: “ontological (in)security in the European Union”

“…Kinnvall 2004a, Croft 2012a, 2012b, Chernobrov 2016, as well as of the entire research field on statecraft, security issues, and diplomacy questioning realist, liberal and even constructivist theories of state agency and security (e.g. Mitzen 2006a, 2006b, Steele 2008, Rumelili 2015a, 2015b, Flockhart 2016, others have maintained that claims of ontological security foreclose important spaces of resistance, alterity, and ethical deliberations (Rossdale 2015, Browning 2016 or that research on ontological security conceptualises identity as singular and largely consistent patterns of behaviour (Lebow 2016).…”

Social Changes and Levels of Ontological Insecurity or Senses of Risks

“…Moreover, they caused lack of trust and sense of risk in individual level. According to Giddens, ontological security is brought about when humans are able to trust that they can bracket off all sorts of possibilities; that they can, therefore, rely on a social normality, a predictability, which then structures their practical everyday interactions as natural, healthy, and imbued with common sense (Croft, 2012). Ontological Security points to "the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action" (Giddens, 1991, pp.…”