Interrogating epistemology and knowledge production is key-- their appeals to a more 'limited' or 'neutral' ground for disagreement cohere a racialized status quo.

The argument presented here is not a personal indictment of any particular author. Contrary to commonsense notions that reduce racism to interpersonal prejudices of openly bigoted individuals, racism and white supremacy are systems of power (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Epistemic racism is intrinsic to Western knowledge structures, and not merely a failure of individual scholarship (Bhambra, 2013; Grosfoguel, 2003). Just as the ongoing racialized distribution of life chances across liberal societies is not simply the effect of intentionally racist individuals, racialized knowledge production is not simply the result of bad or flawed individual theorists. Colonial and racist assumptions about racial and civilizational difference animate the core political categories and theoretical frameworks of Western social and political thought. As we demonstrate, this is also true of classic securitization theory.

We begin by acknowledging that discussions of racism or colonialism are not entirely absent in classic securitization theory. Security: A New Framework for Analysis briefly discusses the racial politics of US domestic societal security (Buzan et al., 1998: 130). In one of securitization theory’s original formulations, Wæver discusses neo-Nazi attacks on asylum-seekers and racist justifications for the securitization of migration (Wæver, 1995; 70; see also Buzan et al., 1998; 42, 44–45). Colonialism is sometimes referenced (see Buzan et al., 1998: 61, 63, 98, 129; Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 14–18, 221), and white supremacism is mentioned as a potential ‘macrosecuritization’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2009: 263). Our argument is not that race is absent in securitization theory, but that racist political thought is integral to it, even when classic securitization theory texts discuss race or colonialism.

The article proceeds in four sections. The first section reviews the securitization theory framework and notable criticisms of it. The second focuses on the conceptual apparatus of securitization theory, showing how its conceptualization of ‘politics’ and ‘security’ is founded in civilizationist thought. The third section focuses on securitization theory’s methodology, highlighting its methodological whiteness. The fourth section illustrates how antiblackness is a crucial building-block in securitization theory’s conceptual division between security and politics. Securitization theory finds ‘primal anarchy’ especially in ‘Africa’, which it casts as irrationally oversecuritized, making it a foil to ‘civilized politics’.

Throughout, we focus on classic articulations of securitization theory associated with the Copenhagen School. Classic securitization theory is very much an ongoing intellectual project that continues to be assertively defended by its founders (Buzan and Wæver, 1997; Wæver, 2011, 2015), and its basic precepts are in need of questioning in new ways. However, we are not unaware of divergences in ‘second-generation’ and other iterations of securitization theory. We therefore conclude with some thoughts about whether other versions of securitization theory emulate or dispense with the racism of classic securitization theory, and a discussion of whether the theory, or even just the word ‘securitization’, can be salvaged.

Securitization theory and its critics

Securitization theory was forged in the post–Cold War period as a compromise between traditional (neo)realist military security analysis and Aberystwyth School scholarship that advocated widening the definition of security. Securitization theory aims to recuperate realism’s definition of security: survival in the face of an existential threat (Buzan et al., 1998: 1), while agreeing with the Aberystwyth School that security analysis should not focus solely on military state security.

Drawing on J. L. Austin’s speech act theory, securitization theory proposes a social constructivist methodology. Securitization is defined as occurring not only when ‘security’ is uttered but during any invocation of existential threat to a referent object (including, but not only, states). The securitizing actor must have some authority, but their audience must also accept, through consent or coercion (Buzan et al., 1998: 25), their claim. Securitization theory thus views securitizations as illocutionary and intersubjective.

Securitization theory centrally distinguishes between politics and security, or politicization and securitization. Through securitization, an issue is intersubjectively deemed an existential threat. This justifies breaking ‘normal’ political rules (Buzan et al., 1998: 5), a potentially dangerous slip from the norm to the exception. Wæver further draws attention to the (presumptively desirable) possibility of desecuritization: de-escalation back to ‘normal politics’ (Wæver, 1995; see also Aradau, 2004). This is securitization theory’s great strength: it provides a methodology for questioning how security threats are constructed, and how this might be reversed.

Several decades after its formulation, securitization theory has many variants (see Balzacq, 2011). These are too numerous to do justice to here. Instead, we focus on four key critiques of classic securitization theory and demonstrate that they sometimes replicate, and at other times do not sufficiently challenge, the racist political thought fundamental to securitization theory’s concepts and methodology.

First, feminist scholars of securitization theory have questioned whether the theory can account for gender relations (Hansen, 2000; Heck and Schlag, 2013; Hoogensen and Rottem, 2004; H. Hudson, 2005; N. F. Hudson, 2009; Kearns, 2017). Much of this research is inspired by Hansen’s (2000) widely cited article that argues that classic securitization theory’s limitations regarding gender are methodological: speech act theory cannot account for the gendered power dynamics that underpin situations when speech is not possible. Hansen illustrates these methodological shortcomings through the fable of the Little Mermaid, wittily locating the analysis in Copenhagen, then abruptly travels to Pakistan and Bosnia for empirical evidence. There, Hansen (2000: 299) finds ‘honour killings’ and ‘raped Muslim women’ who are deemed to be silent. This Orientalist imaginary constructs a racial opposition: white Western women, who have achieved legitimacy as vocal political actors, versus ‘silent’ subaltern women (Abu-Lughod, 2002; on securitization theory, see Bertrand, 2018). This elides gendered insecurity in places like Denmark, where ‘gender equality’ is often figured in white supremacist discourses as a mark of civilization threatened, for instance, by Muslimified (Richter-Montpetit, 2014: 45) immigrants. So, in core feminist securitization theory texts, we find that Eurocentric and racist thought is reaffirmed rather than challenged.

Second, securitization theory’s Eurocentrism has been challenged by scholarship that asks whether applying securitization theory to the non-West upends or modifies the theory (Bilgin, 2010, 2011; Wilkinson, 2007), a question echoed by some of securitization theory’s original proponents (see Greenwood and Wæver, 2013). However, securitization theory has never ignored the ‘non-West’. As we will show, it draws heavily on racist accounts of spaces outside Europe that reify a stark division between ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ without examining colonial relationalities. Critics of securitization theory’s Eurocentrism assert that we cannot assume a (functioning, democratic) European state in non-West spaces, but ignore the (settler-)colonial underpinnings of the state system and border cartographies. Seeing the issue solely as the analytical exclusion of the ‘non-West’, they decry ‘Eurocentrism’ while retaining racist political thought. We adopt a more robust analysis (see Sabaratnam, 2013) that views Eurocentrism as involving the ideas that: (1) ‘Europe’ or ‘the West’ is ontologically distinctive; (2) European development was endogenous; and (3) European cultural and political achievements were subsequently diffused across the world. Additionally, we deploy concepts beyond Eurocentrism (civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism) to grapple with the role of racist political thought in securitization theory.

Third, an emerging body of scholarship has moved significantly beyond a thin interpretation of Eurocentrism to inquire into how securitization theory can better account for colonialism (Bertrand, 2018) and racism (Amin-Khan, 2012; Ibrahim, 2005; Mofette and Vadasaria, 2016). This work has highlighted how ‘securitizations’ are animated by racialized threat imaginaries (Ibrahim, 2005; Mofette and Vadasaria, 2016). At times, work in this field acknowledges that securitization theory relies on a norm/exception binary that risks minimizing the racial violence of normal (liberal) politics. However, the retention of securitization theory’s methodology means the focus remains on speech acts. This risks limiting our understanding of racism and colonialism to a matter merely of (racist) language. For example, in examining migration, the literature on race and securitization focuses primarily on politicians or other authoritative speakers framing migrants as security threats. What then tends to fall out of view is how the control of the movement of racialized people has been and continues to be constitutive of the ‘normal’ liberal order (Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 2018). Even when a historical approach is taken, the focus is on historical instances of speech acts or the ‘securitization’ of migration, instead of, for example, the impacts of colonial drawing of borders or ongoing settler-colonial occupation. Merely ‘adding’ race to securitization theory is insufficient to account for the raciality and coloniality of global politics. By instead excavating the fundamental racism of securitization theory’s concepts and methods, and its reliance on an eclectic canon of racist political thought, we can more fully explore the operations of racialization in security theory and practice.

Fourth, Foucauldian security studies has offered convincing criticism of securitization theory’s reliance on a norm/exception distinction derived from the German philosopher – and ‘Crown Jurist of the Third Reich’ (Frye, 1966: 818) – Carl Schmitt (Huysmans, 2008; Neal, 2006, 2009). For securitization theory, ‘normal politics’ is the norm and security/securitizations are the exception. Securitization theory thus rests on a conceptual separation of ‘security and the process of securitization from that which is merely political’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 5). Foucauldian security studies scholars criticize this formulation for eliding the everyday bureaucratic construction of security (Bigo, 2002; McDonald, 2008), limiting securitization to a singular threat-defense logic (Neal, 2009), and only considering forms of politics found in the nation-state, despite claiming to challenge state-centrism (Huysmans, 2006; Neal, 2006).

In the next section, we build on these critiques but open a new line of inquiry, arguing that securitization theory’s norm/exception distinction harnesses a racist, specifically civilizationist, political imaginary, in which normal politics is the achievement of civilization and ‘securitization’ threatens a potential backslide into barbarous ‘primal anarchy’. As a result, securitization theory’s binary of normal politics versus exceptional security obscures the racial violence of ‘normal’ liberal politics.

Civilizationism in securitization theory’s conceptual apparatus

In this section, we describe how civilizationist thought underpins securitization theory’s concepts of politics and security. Civilizationism is a term used to describe racist (theoretical) perspectives that contain three assumptions: (1) Civilizations can, and ought to, advance, and some (Western) civilizations are more ‘advanced’; (2) civilizational progress is not only technological and material, but political and moral; and (3) the ‘underdevelopment’ of certain civilizations represents a problem for, or threat to, developed ones. Drawing on a broad canon of civilizationist political philosophy, canonical securitization theory texts develop a narrative of world-historical progress in which civilizational advancement beyond the violence of ‘primal anarchy’ involves curtailing securitization through the instantiation of civilized ‘normal politics’.

Classic securitization theory frequently and favorably cites Samuel Huntington’s racist (Said, 2001) ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis (Buzan et al., 1998: 36, 53, 112, 125) and Robert Kaplan (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 221, 252; Buzan et al., 1998: 47, 54, 69–70, 112, 127), infamous for his theory of ‘the coming anarchy’, his warnings of the danger of ‘tribalism’, his neo-Malthusian arguments about ‘overpopulation’ in the global South (Kaplan, 1994, 2000), and his defense of ‘tempered imperialism’ (Kaplan, 2014). Social theorists such as Durkheim, who built his theory of society on racist anthropological distinctions between civilized men and savages (Elias and Feagin, 2016), also feature (Wæver, 1995: 67).

Perhaps more fundamentally, securitization theory draws on social contract thinkers such as Hobbes (see Buzan et al., 1998: 69, 209; Wæver, 1995: 54) for their ‘state of nature’ concept (Sbisà in Wæver, 2015: 121). Mills (1997) has convincingly argued that racism is integral, not incidental, to social contract theory,1 which typically casts the social contract as an achievement of Western civilization and locates the contrasting ‘state of nature’ in African ‘tribes’ or indigenous ‘savages’ (Mills, 1997: 13). Securitization theory extends social contract theory to cast ‘normal politics’ (and the curbing of securitization) as an achievement of civilization. ‘Primal anarchy’ and the ‘state of nature’ act as the foils to this ‘normal politics’ in a teleological hierarchy of civilizational advancement from securitization towards politicization (Buzan et al., 1998: 53, 69).

Following Hobbes, securitization theory locates this supposed progress in the West, particularly Europe:

It perhaps begins with the construction of the Hobbesian state in the eighteenth century. The creation of the Leviathan was aimed at opening a sphere of public economic and political life, and this could not be done without pushing the use of force back into a contained space controlled by the state. Under the Leviathan, citizens could not draw swords over economic grievances or political disagreements, which were to be handled by the rule of law and the market. The logic of existential threat and the right to use force … were reserved to the state and thus were largely desecuritized among the citizens. (Buzan et al., 1998: 209, emphasis added)

The social contract, for securitization theory, is an (18th-century, white, European, liberal) feat of desecuritization, both within nation-states and among them (Buzan et al., 1998: 51).2 Securitization theory, then, does not merely replicate social contract theory and civilizationist thought: it develops it. By introducing a constructivist methodology, securitization theory places politicization (the instantiation of ‘normal politics’ or social contracts) and minimizing securitization as integral to civilizational progress.

Admittedly, securitization theory is an eclectic theory. In addition to thinkers easily identified as civilizationist, it also draws on apparently more critical theorists, notably Arendt. Responding to Foucauldian critiques that describe securitization theory’s conceptualization of security as the exception to politics as Schmittian, Wæver (2011: 470) argues that these critics have misunderstood: ‘it is wrong to claim … that securitization theory involves a “Schmittian” concept of politics – the theory has a Schmittian concept of security and an Arendtian concept of politics’, further clarifying that:

The concept of security is Schmittian, because it defines security in terms of exception, emergency, and a decision (although not by a singular will, but among people in a political situation). This does not in itself make securitization theory’s concept of politics Schmittian, because the place of security in the theory is as an anti-politics or the politically constituted limit to politics. This general politics is inspired by Hannah Arendt. (Wæver, 2011: 478)

Elsewhere, Wæver (2015: 122) summarizes Arendt’s concept of politics: ‘politics takes place among people, in-between us, because power only emerges when people act together, it basically consists of action directed to and dependent on the reaction of others, not doing things directly’. Here, he adverts to Arendt’s distinction between power (Macht) and violence (Gewalt), which securitization theory mirrors by dividing politicization from securitization.

Arendt drew on racist German anthropology that distinguished between (uncivilized) ‘nature people’ (Naturvölker) and (civilized) ‘cultured people’ (Kulturvölker) (Klausen, 2010; Owens, 2017) to divide the world into communities with history, language, and political institutions, and those without (Klausen, 2010: 396). She cast the former as (morally and politically) superior and warned that the latter’s ‘primitivism’ posed a threat to political freedom and democracy. When securitization theory adopts Arendt’s concept of politics, it does not dispense with her civilizationism but replicates and develops it, conceptualizing ‘normal politics’ as the achievement of civilized people capable of resisting violence (securitization) through reasoned dialogue (politicization).

Securitization theory also replicates Arendt’s evacuation of violence from politics. Arendt built her idea of power (Macht) on an idealized vision of the Athenian polis, ignoring the ‘raw materials’ of ancient Athenian democracy – slave labor and women’s unpaid reproductive labor (James, 2003: 249f). She similarly idealized the American republic (Gines, 2014; James, 2003; Johnson, 2009; Owens, 2017). Although in her famous ‘boomerang thesis’ Arendt (1979) located the origins of Nazism in European racism and colonialism, she asserted that the USA had never been guilty of imperialism or indigenous genocide (see James, 2003; Johnson, 2009). Though she spoke out against Nazi white supremacy in Europe, she insisted US racism was merely a social phenomenon, not a political structure (James, 2003: 253; Johnson, 2009), even though Nazi policies were explicitly inspired by US settler-colonial genocide, the reservation system, and Jim Crow segregation (Cesaire, 1950; Fanon, 1967; James, 2003; Whitman, 2017). In praising ancient Athens and contemporary America, Arendt actively minimized the imperial, racialized, and gendered violence structuring these ‘civilized’ democracies (Allen, 2001; Gines, 2009, 2014; James, 2003; Johnson, 2009; Norton, 1995).

Securitization theory similarly occludes the racial violence of normal (liberal) politics. This is not just a conceptual problem: it results in major empirical oversights. For example, though it contains the word ‘security’, securitization theory places social security outside of its frame of analysis, as part of ‘normal politics’: ‘Although it shares some qualities with “social security,” or security as applied to various civilian guard or police functions, international security has its own distinctive, more extreme meaning. Unlike social security, which has strong links to matters of entitlement and social justice, international security is more firmly rooted in the traditions of power politics’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 21). Securitization theory overlooks the power politics of social security and cannot see how Western welfare state social security systems support white (settler) heteropatriarchal forms of life, such as the nuclear family (Arvin et al., 2013; Cohen, 1997; Duggan, 2003; Kandaswamy, 2008), and disproportionately target racialized, indigenous, and poor communities for direct and violent interventions such as the removal of children from families through enslavement, the residential schools that formed part of the genocide of indigenous people, child welfare systems, migrant detention and removal, and so on. Closer to Copenhagen: Denmark now uses socialized daycare as a means for removing and assimilating Muslim children (Salem, 2018). Social and national security are imbricated. For example, current Islamophobic counter-terrorism programs often use social and health services to identify suspected ‘terrorists’ (Kundnani, 2014; Qurashi, 2018; Qureshi, 2015). Social security only entails ‘entitlement and social justice’ for those privileged by whiteness, heterosexuality, citizenship, and/or class status. Securitization theory’s civilizationist idealization of ‘normal politics’ occludes these dynamics.

More strikingly still, Copenhagen School theorists view policing as a positive force: ‘In the West, the police are normally an institutionalized part of society that ensures continuous functioning’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 54). They praise the pacification role of the modern state (Greenwood and Wæver, 2013: 489) and ignore the longstanding use of police in defending class and racial inequality and (hetero)sexual mores (Amar, 2013; Browne, 2015; Davis, 2003; James, 2000; Kelley, 2000; Sexton, 2007; Singh, 2016), and violently occupying indigenous land (Bell and Schreiner, 2018; Byrd, 2011; Dhillon, 2015; Fanon, 1963; Nettelbeck and Smandych, 2010; Razack 2015). Securitization theory also repeatedly refers to the US War on Drugs as a ‘niche securitization’ (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 327–331, 2009: 265). This minimizes the transnational history of antiblack violence perpetrated by the US state leading into the mass incarceration of black and Latinx people (Davis, 2003; James, 2000; Rodriguez, 2006) and ignores American covert and counterinsurgency action globally, especially in Latin America. Policing ensures ‘good’ order for those privileged by whiteness, property ownership, gender norms, and/or settler status. The constitutive role of policing and law in the racial, (settler-)colonial, sexual, and class violence of ‘normal politics’ is occluded as a direct result of securitization theory’s reliance on civilizationist oppositions between politics versus security and politicization versus securitization.

Classic securitization theory is civilizationist in that it believes that there are more or less politically and morally developed civilizations. It identifies ‘normal politics’ with (European) civilization and ‘securitization’ with a return to (racialized) primal anarchy. As a result, it depicts ‘underdeveloped’ civilizations as threats to supposedly more advanced ones. This becomes especially clear when examining securitization theory’s ideas about ‘state failure’. Securitization theory claims that in ‘developed’ states (Buzan et al., 1998: 28) a civilized political sphere generally fends off securitization, except when ‘securitization is unavoidable, as when states are faced with an implacable or barbarian aggressor’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 29). By contrast, in ‘failed’ or ‘weak’ states securitization runs amok:

‘In well-developed states, armed forces and intelligence services are carefully separated from normal political life, and their use is subject to elaborate procedures of authorization. Where such separation is not in place, as in many weak states … much of normal politics is pushed into the security realm’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 28).

This excessive securitization, in turn, leads to primal (or ‘Hobbesian’ or ‘Kaplanesque’) anarchy, wherein the state

‘fails to take root or spirals into disintegration. This situation can lead to prolonged periods of primal anarchy, as is currently the case in Afghanistan and various parts of Africa, in which the state is only a shadow and reality is one of rival warlords and gangs’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 50, emphasis added; for analysis of the colonial preoccupation with Afghan ‘tribes’, see Manchanda, 2018).

Discourses of state failure are ‘irredeemably rooted in an imperial and racialized imagination’ (Gruffydd Jones, 2015: 65; see also Grovogui, 2001; Shilliam, 2013; Wai, 2012a, 2012b). While they may avoid overt reference to race, they operate within a lineage of racial discourse that emerged to justify colonialism and continuing trusteeship. This racial hierarchy is fully represented in securitization theory’s list of weak and failing states: Nigeria under Abacha, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Liberia, and ‘various parts of Africa’, the USSR under Stalin, Bosnia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and so on (see Buzan et al., 1998: 28, 50, 69, 146). This is a racial discourse: ‘primal anarchy’ is primarily located in ‘brown’ (‘Afghanistan’) and ‘black’ (‘parts of Africa’) regions.

Copenhagen School theorists sometimes seem to be aware of how this division falls. This does not lead them to question it. On the contrary, they warn against Western-centrism, but only in order to emphasize that it is in the West that ‘normal’ civilized politics exists: ‘if domestic and international were fixed, there would be a risk of generating a cozy Western view of politics: Domestic politics is normal and without security, whereas the extreme is relegated to the international space. In other parts of the world, domestic is not cozy’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 47n7). For securitization theory, primal anarchy exists, not only in the international realm, but also in non-Western ‘other parts of the world’, where a failure of normal politics leads to ‘“tribalist” forms of association’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 69).

Securitization theory refuses to seriously consider the role of modern colonialism and ongoing imperial warfare in ‘failed states’. Such consideration might reveal the significance of Western colonial divide-and-rule policies, extraction of resources and labor, imposition of state borders, and military and covert intervention. Instead, securitization theory frames ‘failed states’ as evidence of a primal state of nature.

Civilizationism is not just a collateral, detachable, part of securitization theory’s imaginary, or a sadly unattended-to implication of its Kaplanesque view of anarchy or its Arendtian model of politics. The idea that there has been (white) civilizational progress away from (racialized) primal anarchy is omnipresent in securitization theory because it is fundamental to securitization theory’s opposition between politicization and securitization. Ungrounded in the racist and civilizationist narrative that ‘normal politics’ emerged from ‘primal anarchy’, this opposition would look as arbitrary as it in fact is.

Methodological and normative whiteness in securitization theory

We have established that securitization theory is founded in a civilizationist conceptualization of politics and security that occludes racial and colonial violence. We now demonstrate that, on the basis of these assumptions, securitization theory develops a methodologically and normatively white theory.

As postcolonial, critical race, and feminist scholarship argues, methodology involves making choices about whose perspectives or histories we (de)value. Bhambra (2017) defines methodological whiteness as

a way of reflecting on the world that fails to acknowledge the role played by race in the very structuring of that world, and of the ways in which knowledge is constructed and legitimated within it. It fails to recognize the dominance of ‘Whiteness’ as anything other than the standard state of affairs and treats a limited perspective – that deriving from White experience – as a universal perspective.

Operating in supposedly neutral and universal terms, methodological whiteness naturalizes the racial status quo, eliding the crucial role of racism in political systems or intellectual traditions. Bertrand (2018) has critiqued securitization theory’s methodology for setting up a colonial relation wherein subalterns cannot speak and securitization theorists speak for them. Our critique is somewhat different: we argue that since securitization theory aspires to describe not just ‘what is’ but ‘what should be’, its methodological whiteness also becomes normative whiteness. To illustrate this argument, we evaluate securitization theory’s incorporation of speech act theory and ask how it interfaces with its civilizationist conceptualizations of politics and security.

Securitization theory bases its methodology in J. L. Austin’s notion of illocutionary speech acts: forms of speech having some element of force, such as making a promise or giving a warning. Combining this with an Arendtian concept of politics seems intuitive: Arendt defined politics as action through communication, and Austin provides a method for analyzing communication as action. Notably, this methodology enacts a normative stance, being designed to ‘protect’ Arendtian normal politics:

Securitization theory was built from the start on speech act theory, because it is an operational method that can be designed to protect politics in Arendt’s sense. Put in short form, the political conception of securitization theory is inspired by Arendt, implemented through speech act theory. (Wæver, 2015: 122, emphasis in original)

As we have seen, by defining violence as outside politics, Arendt failed to acknowledge that, by virtue of gender and racialization, some people are produced as the ‘raw materials’ of others’ political freedom. When securitization theory claims that the purpose of its method is to protect Arendtian ‘normal politics’, it implicitly undertakes to defend the status quo of a violent international racial order.

To begin, we can observe that securitization theory does not challenge the ways in which structures of speech acts (like law, civil hierarchy, or international treaties) are and have been central to enforcing a colonial system of global inequality. On the contrary, securitization theory is structured, through its apparent neutrality, to supplement and reinforce those structures.