Topic
Internal security
About: Internal security is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1181 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15019 citations.
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Papers
TL;DR: Migration is increasingly interpreted as a security problem as mentioned in this paper, which is not an expression of traditional responses to a rise of insecurity, crime, terrorism, and the negative effects of globalization; it is the result of the creation of a continuum of threats and general unease in which many different actors exchange their fears and beliefs in the process of making a risky and dangerous society.
Abstract: Migration is increasingly interpreted as a security problem. The prism of security analysis is especially important for politicians, for national and local police organizations, the military police, customs officers, border patrols, secret services, armies, judges, some social services (health care, hospitals, schools), private corporations (bank analysts, providers of technology surveillance, private policing), many journalists (especially from television and the more sensationalist newspapers), and a significant fraction of general public opinion, especially but not only among those attracted to "law and order." The popularity of this security prism is not an expression of traditional responses to a rise of insecurity, crime, terrorism, and the negative effects of globalization; it is the result of the creation of a continuum of threats and general unease in which many different actors exchange their fears and beliefs in the process of making a risky and dangerous society. The professionals in charge of the management of risk and fear especially transfer the legitimacy they gain from struggles against terrorists, criminals, spies, and counterfeiters toward other targets, most notably transnational political activists, people crossing borders, or people born in the country but with foreign parents. This expansion of what security is taken to include effectively results in a convergence between the meaning of international and internal security. The convergence is particularly important in relation to the issue of migration, and specifically in relation to questions about who gets to be defined as an immigrant. The security professionals themselves, along with some academics, tend to claim that they are only responding to new threats requiring exceptional measures beyond the normal demands of everyday politics. In practice, however, the transformation of security and the consequent focus on immigrants is directly related to their own immediate interests (competition for budgets and missions) and to the transformation of technologies they use (computerized databanks, profiling and morphing, electronic phone tapping). The Europeanization and the Westernization of the logics of control and surveillance of people beyond national polices is driven by the creation of a transnational field of professionals in the management of unease. This field is larger than that of police organizations in that it includes, on one hand private corporations and organizations dealing with the control of access to the welfare state, and, on the other hand, intelligence services and some military people seeking a new role after the end of the Cold War. These professionals in the management of unease, however, are only a node connecting many competing networks responding to many groups of people who are identified as risk or just as a source of unease. (1) This process of securitization is now well known, but despite the many critical discourses that have drawn attention to the securitization of migration over the past ten years, the articulation of migration as a security problem continues. Why? What are the reasons of the persistent framing of migration in relation to terrorism, crime, unemployment and religious zealotry, on the one hand, and to integration, interest of the migrant for the national economy development, on the other, rather than in relation to new opportunities for European societies, for freedom of travel over the world, for cosmopolitanism, or for some new understanding of citizenship? (2) This is the question I want to address in this essay. Some "critical" discourses generated by NGOs and academics assume that if people, politicians, governments, bureaucracies, and journalists were more aware, they would change their minds about migration and begin to resist securitizing it. The primary problem, therefore, is ideological or discursive in that the securitization of migrants derives from the language itself and from the different capacities of various actors to engage in speech acts. …
1,945 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors deal with the question of how migration has developed into a security issue in western Europe and how the European integration process is implicated in it and how migration can be viewed as a threat to public order.
Abstract: This article deals with the question of how migration has developed into a security issue in western Europe and how the European integration process is implicated in it. Since the 1980s, the political construction of migration increasingly referred to the destabilizing effects of migration on domestic integration and to the dangers for public order it implied. The spillover of the internal market into a European internal security question mirrors these domestic developments at the European level. The Third Pillar on Justice and Home Affairs, the Schengen Agreements, and the Dublin Convention most visibly indicate that the European integration process is implicated in the development of a restrictive migration policy and the social construction of migration into a security question. However, the political process of connecting migration to criminal and terrorist abuses of the internal market does not take place in isolation. It is related to a wider politicization in which immigrants and asylum-seekers are portrayed as a challenge to the protection of national identity and welfare provisions. Moreover, supporting the political construction of migration as a security issue impinges on and is embedded in the politics of belonging in western Europe. It is an integral part of the wider technocratic and political process in which professional agencies ‐ such as the police and customs ‐ and political agents ‐ such as social
1,438 citations
13 May 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, a distinction between war, defence, international order and strategy, and another universe of crime, internal security, public order and police investigations is made, and a discussion of the relations between defence and internal security should be aligned in the new context of global (in)security.
Abstract: The discourses that the United States and its closest allies2 have put forth
asserting the necessity to globalize security have taken on an unprecedented intensity and reach. They justify themselves by propagating the idea
of a global ‘(in)security’, attributed to the development of threats of mass
destruction, thought to derive from terrorist or other criminal organizations and the governments that support them. This globalization is supposed to make national borders effectively obsolete, and to oblige other
actors in the international arena to collaborate. At the same time, it makes
obsolete the conventional distinction between the universe of war, defence,
international order and strategy, and another universe of crime, internal
security, public order and police investigations. Exacerbating this tendency
yet further is the fact that, since 11 September 2001, there has been
ongoing frenzied speculation throughout the Western political world and
among its security ‘experts’ on how the relations between defence
and internal security should be aligned in the new context of global
(in)security.
463 citations
TL;DR: The authors identified types of international movements produced by desires for state security and stability (forced and induced migration) circumstances when international migration and the ways states respond to migration are seen as a threat.
Abstract: At high national levels the issues of international migration and refugees capture the attention of state department heads cabinets and ministries of defense and affect internal security and external relations. Migration flows are affected by economic migration for better employment opportunities and by pushes due to domestic violence and persecution. Examples abound: the recent exodus of east Germans to the west; soviet Jewish settlement of the West Bank; repatriation of refugees from Hong Kong; placement of Western migrants at strategic locations as prevention against air strikes; anxieties about Eastern European migration to Western Europe; Uganda refugees in Rwanda; and the defeat of the Kabul regime in Afghanistan. The breakup of empires and countries has created uncertainty among minorities. International migration is also subject to people fleeing from environmental degradation droughts floods famines and civil conflicts. Access to communication and transportation brings greater opportunities for migration. More people want to leave than there is room for them in other countries. The media have inadequately represented the direction of flows. Only a small part of the 17 million migrants have flowed to Western Europe or to the US. The largest flows are among developing countries particularly among Africa South Asia Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. There is a need for a security/stability framework in contrast to an international political economy framework for the study of international migration. State policies are being shaped by concerns over internal security and international security. The literature on international migration tends to focus on global economic conditions as a determinant of population movement. Neglected is the role of governments in encouraging or discouraging migration which is not due to economic conditions and neglects the noneconomic considerations of governments in encouraging or discouraging economic migrants. The article focuses on identifying types of international movements produced by desires for state security and stability (forced and induced migration) circumstances when international migration and the ways states respond to migration are seen as a threat.
454 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement, and argues that understanding this blur, and the associated organizing concepts militarization and militarism, are essential for accurately analyzing the changing nature of security and the activity of policing in the late-modern era of the 21st century.
Abstract: This work examines the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement. In this article, the author asserts that understanding this blur, and the associated organizing concepts militarization and militarism, are essential for accurately analyzing the changing nature of security, and the activity of policing, in the late-modern era of the 21st century. Simplicity is comforting. Modernity's basic dichotomies such as fact/value, private/public, and national/international simplify our think- ing and lull us into intellectual complacency. Police academics in the United States, with only a few exceptions, have been quite com- fortable with the military/police dichotomy. The US military handles external security through the threat and practice of war. The civilian police handle internal security through the enforcement of federal and local laws. Most assume that studying the police and military is a mutually exclusive undertaking. Taking this dichotomy for granted is understandable given that the clear demarcation between the police and military has been considered a pre- eminent feature of the modern nation-state (Giddens, 1985). The failure of a government
425 citations
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Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2026 | 1 |
| 2025 | 8 |
| 2024 | 18 |
| 2023 | 44 |
| 2022 | 44 |
| 2021 | 25 |