Performing security absent the state: Encounters with a failed asylum seeker in the UK

Innes, Alexandria J. (2014) Performing security absent the state: Encounters with a failed asylum seeker in the UK. Security Dialogue, 45 (6). pp. 565-581. ISSN 1460-3640

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Abstract

Drawing on feminist research methodologies and theory, this article re-centers critical security studies to focus on a migrant seeking an alternative form of security after his application for asylum was denied by the state. The two main objectives of this article are; first, to resituate a failed asylum seeker, Qasim, as an agent of international security as understood through his practice of seeking and obtaining security; and, second, to demonstrate a revised performative conceptualization of security through understanding the failed asylum seeker as practicing an embodied theorization of security. The encounter with Qasim shows alternative means of seeking security, which illustrates agency on the part of the migrant that exists actively outside of the state. This contests the positioning of migrants as passive victims and recognizes a way of being in the world that by necessity cannot rely on a state-based identity. Ethnographic methods, including participant observation and a narrative interview with Qasim, elucidate his practice of security and allow for the development of a theoretical conceptualization of security that remains true to a failed asylum seeker’s practice in the UK.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Cultural Politics, Communications & Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Critical Global Politics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Migration Research Network Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	09 Oct 2014 16:28
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2023 09:37
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/50340
DOI:	10.1177/0967010614540026

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