‘We are, by nature, a tolerant people’: Securitisation and counter-securitisation in UK migration politics
| Author | Ian Paterson,Georgios Karyotis |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820967049 |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820967049
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(1) 104 –126
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0047117820967049
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
‘We are, by nature, a tolerant
people’: Securitisation and
counter-securitisation in UK
migration politics
Ian Paterson and Georgios Karyotis
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
The ‘securitisation’ of migration is argued to rest on a process of framing migrants as a threat to
key values, principally identity. Yet, the socially constructed nature of ‘identity’ implies the potential
for dual usage: support and contestation of the security frame. Using the UK as an illustrative
case, this overlooked dynamic is explored through mixed-methods, incorporating elite political
and religious discourse (2005–2015) and original public attitudinal survey evidence. The discourse
analysis reveals that the preservation of an imperilled British identity (‘tolerance’) is a frame
invoked, in different ways and by different actors, to either support or contest the securitisation
of migration. Similarly, British citizens who deeply value the preservation of ‘Britishness’ have
diverse, positive and negative views on migration, challenging the notion that identity as a referent
object is deterministically linked to anti-immigration attitudes. The innovative concept of ‘counter-
securitisation’ is utilised and developed, unpicking these nuances and their implications.
Keywords
counter-securitisation, identity, migration, securitisation, United Kingdom
Introduction
From border walls and fences, to the growth of far-Right politics and populism across
Europe and beyond, a consensus has emerged that host countries, predominantly, view
migration through the lens of security and threat.1 Yet, multiple studies have also shown
that this so-called ‘securitisation’ of migration is not inevitable but is the outcome of a
Corresponding author:
Ian Paterson, University of Glasgow, Room 605, Adam Smith Building, 28 Bute Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RS,
UK.
Email: Ian.Paterson@glasgow.ac.uk.
967049IRE0010.1177/0047117820967049International RelationsPaterson and Karyotis
research-article2020
Article
Paterson and Karyotis 105
top-down process of social construction, whereby migrants are framed by elite actors as
an existential threat to a key value, most notably identity.2 Identity invocations, the story
goes, automatically activate defensive reflexes in response to the presence of ‘others’,
who threaten ‘our’ way of life by undeservingly accessing our finite resources and
undermining the cohesion, prosperity and public order of the host society.3 Whilst intui-
tive, this dominant perspective offers a limiting and, arguably, distorted understanding of
the function of identity as a core value that needs to be protected, with implications for
how we understand securitisation dynamics in the migration field.
There are two questionable assumptions underpinning the perspective that identity is
inherently linked to negative immigration attitudes. Firstly, it sees it as defined by adver-
sarial ‘us’ and ‘them’ characteristics, as established in social identity and self-categorisa-
tion theories,4 which substantiates the realist view in security studies that threats to
society and the state are external in origin.5 Indeed, discourses of danger that emphasise
the differences between members of the community and those on the outside do imply
that the construction of the ‘Other’ is inseparable from how the ‘Self’ is understood.
However, although this typically benefits the representation and sorting of migrants as
inferior and/or dangerous, spearheading the securitisation process,6 it does not necessar-
ily have to be so. The existence of differences does not inevitably indicate vulnerability
or produce inter-group conflict but, as Browning and Joenniemi highlight in the Nordic
case, may equally be celebrated and, over-time, transmuted to fertilise a dynamic process
that is ‘central in holding security communities together.’7
Secondly, uncritically associating identity with anti-immigration attitudes obscures
the fundamental nature of the concept itself. Identity is neither monolithic nor fixed, and
neither societies nor individuals have a single, unitary identity.8 After all, Benedict
Anderson notes that nations are ‘imagined communities’ with finite, sovereign but elastic
boundaries, which are socially constructed through historical processes ‘as a deep, hori-
zontal comradeship’ between people perceiving themselves to be part of that group.9
Since identity is a fluid, multi-faceted and dynamic concept, it follows that the securitisa-
tion of migration is largely driven by how host societies articulate, negotiate and delimi-
tate their self-identification and relationship with out-groups, within a specific temporal
and spatial context. The process of constructing migration as a threat, therefore, begins
with a top-down attempt to suppress multiple identities in favour of a hierarchically
superior national identity, that is built on a set of behavioural customs, a language and a
conception of ethnic purity, against external and perceived nefarious forces that seek to
undermine them.10 In other words, the ‘successful securitization of an identity involves
precisely the capacity to decide on the limits of a given identity, to oppose it to what it is
not, to cast this as a relationship of threat or even enmity, and to have this decision and
declaration accepted by the relevant group.’11
Taken together, these insights indicate that to understand the process of (de)secu-
ritising migration, and the normative dilemmas it entails, a potent strategy would be to
redirect attention from a focus on whether identity is, or is not, under threat by migrants,
to the more nuanced, empirically driven and open-ended question as to whose version
of societal identity comes to be established as the ‘legitimate’ one. In turn, this implies
that invocations of particular aspects or notions of identity could potentially challenge
the securitising frame, and, in doing so, actively promote the ‘desecuritisation’ of
To continue reading
Request your trial