Reconfiguring Desecuritization: Contesting Expert Knowledge in the Securitization of Migration

Scheel, Stephan

doi:10.1080/14650045.2020.1774749

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Among the numerous ways to approach the law, agency and security nexus, this article was inspired by D. Cole (2004), A. W. Neal (2012), E. Guild (2014) and S. Scheel (2020), with particular reference to Neal in terms of the concept of executive deterrence and the limited role of the judiciary in the context of the laws adopted in the face of security threats. First, due to the specificity of time, their adoption is expected by the public to be fast, while 'unmaking' by the courts due to, inter alia, unconstitutionality, violating the higher laws in the hierarchy, occurs slowly (Neal, 2012).…”

Section: Kateryna Krakhmalovamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cole emphasises an understanding of the importance of judicial review of the actions of the executive branch in times of crisis and in relation to the limitations of individuals' rights, which usually apply to the most vulnerable (Cole, 2004). Finally, Scheel points out the difficulty of challenging security knowledge from the 'outside' (Scheel, 2020), potentially indicating the unlikelihood of IDPs being able to mount a successful challenge to the unfavourable legal provisions in the courts. Nevertheless, he also shows the potential for change and desecuritisation in his study, in which the visa applicants subjected to security practices resorted to coping strategies, and security professionals employed the 'trickster narrative' in relation to them, but the resulting 'culture of suspicion' was uncomfortable for both sides (Scheel, 2020: 14-22).…”

Section: Kateryna Krakhmalovamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Security, Social Policy, Agency and Work of the Courts in Relation to Ukrainian Internally Displaced Persons

Krakhmalova¹

2022

Social Policy and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The following article is dedicated to the empirical case study from Ukraine and focuses on the work of Ukrainian courts resolving the cases of internally displaced persons in the realm of social policy. Based on interviews and secondary sources in terms of data, it explains the problem area of the legal regulations and administrative practices applicable to internally displaced Ukrainians in the sphere of social rights, and it analyses selected decisions of the courts in the cases brought by them, including the courts’ approaches, motivations and limitations, all while doing so from the combined perspective of security, law and internal migrants’ agency.

show abstract

Section: Kateryna Krakhmalovamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Kateryna Krakhmalovamentioning

confidence: 99%

Security, Social Policy, Agency and Work of the Courts in Relation to Ukrainian Internally Displaced Persons

Krakhmalova¹

2022

Social Policy and Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In order establish 'truthfulness' of individual accounts, data sources such as social media or the smartphones of migrants are supposed to reveal details about their countries of origin, their journeys, social relations, and activities (Latonero and Kift 2018;Noori 2020). The credibility of data thus becomes valued higher than the one attributed to human story-telling, particularly in contexts of "institutionalized distrust" (Griffiths 2012;Scheel 2020) that tends to prevail in asylum and migration procedures. Similar conceptions of credibility have also been shown in other contexts, for example when a hit in a biometric database such as the Visa Information System (VIS) is considered as more truthful than the identity claims of the person concerned (Glouftsios and Scheel 2021).…”

Section: How Data Come To Mattermentioning

confidence: 99%

Data Matters: The Politics and Practices of Digital Border and Migration Management

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Data matter more than ever in the regulation of borders and migration. An apt illustration of how movement is enabled or restricted by data collection and analytics was recently reported by Eyal Weizman, founding director of the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture that specialises in the production and analysis of evidence about human rights violations by state and corporate actors. Prior to a business trip to Miami where he was supposed to open Forensic Architecture's first major exhibition in the US that, among other things, displayed investigations into a CIA drone strike in Pakistan and police killings of black US citizens, Weizmann was notified that his visa waiver request had been denied and that he would not be allowed to enter the United States.Upon further inquiry at the US embassy in London, he was informed that he had been flagged as a 'security threat' by an algorithm looking for suspicious patterns in applicants' data. While officials at the embassy could not tell Weizman what exactly had triggered the unfavourable judgement by the algorithm, they suggested that "it could be something [he] was involved in, people [he] was in contact with, places to which [he] had travelled (had [he] recently been in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia or met their nationals?), hotels at which [he] stayed, or a certain pattern of relations among these things" (Weizman 2020, n.p.). Weizman was subsequently encouraged to provide the US Department of Homeland Security with details on individuals or connections that could point in the direction of terrorism or organised crime in order to purify himself and eventually be able to travel again. Since the digital records that had prompted the algorithm to flag Weizman as a security risk concerned personal and professional networks and connections that informed investigative work into human rights violations -including those committed by US institutions and their allies -Weizman declined to provide this information.Weizman's case forcefully illustrates how the "datafication of mobility and migration management" (Broeders and Dijstelbloem 2016) reconfigures what

show abstract

“…Under a logic of service, new boundaries on what qualifies as practices of security are being determined. In this article, I will show that the securitisation/desecuritisation dualism, which saturates the scholarly literature (see Scheel, 2022), cannot comprehend fully the role of an Agency like eu-LISA or the role of the professionals who staff it. New actors are developing new claims on they understand their role in processes of (in)securitisation, opening up a continuum of positions from which they participate in the field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Huymans (1998, p. 570) describes desecuritisation as a critical strategy for the unmaking of a securitisation. Scheel (2022Scheel ( , p. 1051 argues that the impetus behind desecuritisation is to destabilise the credibility and authority of security professionals' expert knowledge and related regimes of truth, depriving security of its epistemic foundation. In this article, I propose that neither the concept of securitisation nor desecuritisation is adequate for understanding how actors in the guild of IT service management relate to the field (in)security.…”

Section: Delimiting Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

In Service to Security: Constructing the Authority to Manage European Border Data Infrastructures

Murphy¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Large-scale IT systems play a central role in the management of European borders. These systems not only support the management of mobility but also require management in and of themselves. Based on fieldwork carried out at the headquarters of the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA) this thesis identifies a logic of service as central to the management of European border data infrastructures. Developed across three articles the thesis contributes to critical research on security. The first article contributes to research on the roles and relationships of new actors to the field of European (in)security. It theorises the role of eu-LISA as a guild of IT service management. This service role enables actors to take up a relationship to the field which is distinct from, yet in support of the work of professionals of (in)security, which I describe as delimiting security. The second article contributes to research on the (de)politicisation of security practices. I argue where issues of expertise are often characterised as depoliticising under a logic of security, under a logic of service they are routinely contested and debated, providing a space to engage with the politics of this work. The third article contributes to research on evolving competitions and stakes in the field of European (in)security. It identifies efforts to define the support needed to define threats and risks as an increasingly important stake in the field, which I describe as service capital. I define service capital in terms of the power that accrues from providing this support to others. Exploring service capital requires considering how actors make their work visible to one another, thus this article also contributes to research on the relationship between visibility, governance, and power. In summation, the thesis offers an in-depth empirical account of the working practices of a key agency in the management of European borders, contributes to key debates in the critical security literature, and most significantly identifies service as a central line along which matters of (in)security are increasingly being constructed, contested, debated and defined.

show abstract

Reconfiguring Desecuritization: Contesting Expert Knowledge in the Securitization of Migration

Cited by 14 publications

References 46 publications

Security, Social Policy, Agency and Work of the Courts in Relation to Ukrainian Internally Displaced Persons

Security, Social Policy, Agency and Work of the Courts in Relation to Ukrainian Internally Displaced Persons

Data Matters: The Politics and Practices of Digital Border and Migration Management

In Service to Security: Constructing the Authority to Manage European Border Data Infrastructures

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About