Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There is no doubt that examinations of state security have been around for decades, even centuries. However, these security studies have often been narrow in focus, exploring various military strategies and foreign policies that best protect a state (or states?i.e. collective security) and its people/interests. These types of security studies have been dominant in the field of international politics, and though important and useful, only offer us a few lenses to view state security and security issues. Moreover, these ?traditional? security studies often do not critically examine the ways in which and for what purposes certain concerns are articulated as security issues. But, in the past ten years or so, there have been calls by many scholars (particularly those who situate themselves in the English School, the Copenhagen School, and/or loosely in the postmodern tradition) to expand the methods by which we study security as well as its subjects/issues. This has been undertaken primarily by scholars residing in Europe (Buzan and Waever) who often use the European Union as empirical and discursive examples for alternative approaches to security studies in order to question and problematize historical and current ?security? ?threats?. In light of the current state of security studies and the ?interventions? of alternative perspectives on security and foreign policy, new spaces are opening for interpreting ?security? issues. This piece (which is part of a bigger project on the securitization of immigration in the United States), enters these new spaces by examining the rules that govern the ways in which immigration becomes part of the U.S. national discourse on security. That is, I seek to locate the concepts, figures, narratives and codes within the U.S. national/security discourse that limit (and potentially open up) the ways in which political actors talk about immigration since September 11th, 2001. I argue that immigration (broadly defined) has been limited to a security issue?immigration articulated as a military, economic and/or societal security ?threat??in the national discourse because the immigration-security nexus resonates with the American people and the current national vision of the state post 9-11. Identifying these codes and limits enables us to better understand how and why policymakers are constrained in what they can/cannot say regarding immigration. Given this examination, I suggest that these discursive limits enter the realm of national security/foreign policy as they place well-structured constraints on the immigration policies in the United States. In other words, I argue these discursive limits aid in constructing interests and are then transformed into ?immigration as security? policies. In short, it is through these analyses that I offer an account of some current immigration policies (and how they have come to be) and propose a range of possible immigration-as-security policies that may emerge in the United States in coming years.