Workshop : The political impact of security policies

The WP8 unit of Challenge Project has organised a three-days workshop held on in Genoa, on June 14th, 15th, and 16th 2007, whose general aim has been to analyse and debate the main impacts of the so-called «securitarian turn» involving the global political scenario. The general framework of the workshop directly reflects the Genoa unit’s field of research within the Challenge project (namely, the social and political effects of security policies), starting from the theoretical assumption that security devices and practices directly produce a domain of fear, and thus a politics of insecurity, by investing the overall social and political relations and imposing themselves as a legitimated technique of global governance.

As a matter of fact, the current, «securitarian» dynamics can be summarised in a double tautological process, according to which the relentless production of insecurity, through the colonisation of social life by security measures and practices (highly improved in the post 9.11 scenario), makes in turn proliferate the industry of security. From this point of view, even an undetermined notion such as the one of terrorism has to be seen less as a specific thread than a necessary place-holder in order to legitimise the adoption of security apparatuses and devices.

Accordingly, a central attention of the different contributions and papers presented during the workshop has been devoted to the role of the so-called professional of (in)security (media, politicians, judges and prosecutors, opinion leaders/makers, and, above all, all those directly engaged in security policies), in the legitimisation of both security policies and of the global insecurity domain.

The workshop developed the issue through a series of steps, each one focusing on the multilevel impacts of security policies, among which, just to mention the most relevant: the crisis of international order as well as of the national state conceived in Hobbesian terms of the guarantor of internal security for citizens; the consequential redefinition of state sovereignty according to the new security policies; the relentless production of social alarms and insecurity which in turn legitimises the securitarian claims.

The papers presented thus regarded the following specific issues:

 the growing militarization of international relations;

 the production of insecurity as a necessary precondition for a permanent mobilisation;

 the construction of enmity and terrorist thread;

 the securitarian framing of migrations and borders policies;

 the «culturalist» definition of political conflicts;

 the debate on the definition of «terrorism»;

 the changes in global controls policies;

 the erosion of political agency and the decline of the public sphere

The first session of the workshop synthetically outlined what can be described as the «global frame of fear». After the introduction of Alessandro Dal Lago (University of Genova), focused on the global redefinition of the political notion of the enemy, Alain Joxe (EHSS) stressed the main changes in strategic though determined by security politics, describing its consequences in terms of a radical redefinition of sovereignty. Particularly, he emphasised the shift from a souveraineté protectriceto ainsécuritaire gouvernance, that is the transition from a dimension of security centred upon the role of state sovereignty towards a global governance funded upon insecurity. While Roberto Escobar (University of Milano Statle) emphasised the uses and abuses of Jeremy Bentham’s notion of Panopticon in contemporary security debates, Marcello Maneri (University of Milano - Bicocca) has presented a research concerning the media coverage on terrorist alarm, comparing the US and the European case. Maurizio Guerri (University of Milano Statale) has proposed an analysis of the global war within the conceptual frame of the Junger’s notion of total mobilization, and Roberto Ciccarelli (University of Firenze) concentred his intervention on the extra-juridical category of the enemy combatant.

The second session of the workshop has been devoted to the production of social, political and juridical definition of terrorism/terrorist thread. Danilo Zolo (University of Firenze) has focused his intervention on the complex relation between war and terrorism, particularly emphasising the anamorphic process according to which, while terrorism is more and more assuming the dimension of a Schmittean «global civil war», the contemporary global war on terror has more and more assumed the traits of terrorism itself. Aldo Giannulli (University of Bari) outlined the new mixed scenarios of intelligence services between private and public actors. Two further interventions, of Jacqueline Ross (University of Illinois), and Gabriella Petti (University of Genova), respectively stressed the performative dimension of extraordinary renditions and of the trials against alleged terrorists in the production of both enemies and threads.

The first session of the second day, concerning the «securitarian frame», has been introduced by a presentation of Didier Bigo (Sciences politiques, Paris), a critical survey on the concept of exceptionalism, particularly focusing on the redefinition of state sovereignty through a network of «professional of (in)security» linked together by the securitarian imperative. Peter Lock introduced the issue of biometric technologies, and the consequent privatization in control policies. Inaki Rivera (University of Barcelona) outlined the contents of a research on internment facilities and border policies adopted by Spanish government, particularly focusing on the situation in the Ceuta e Melilla enclaves. Roberto Oliveri del Castillo (Judge) analysed the juridical implications of security policies, focusing on the challenges terrorism implies towards the very notion of rule of law, as the extreme case of the legitimisation of torture directly testifies.Yasha Maccanico (Statewatch) concluded the session emphasising the political costs the introduction of security special measures (such as the ASBO - antisocial behaviour order act) determined in U.K.

The second session was devoted to the analysis of the impact of security policies beyond European borders, particularly focusing on the southern Mediterranean area. Michel Peraldi (Centre J. Berque- Rabat) introduced the ethnographic case of the impact, in terms of representations within the Moroccan society, of the securitarian migration policies adopted by E.U. Emanuela Paoletti (Oxford University) and Silja Klepp (Leipzig University) make both the case of the Libya situation, respectively thematising the integration between Italy and Libya in migration control policies, and the practices and experiences migrants are confronted with while detained in Libya. Dalila Nadi (University of Berlin, Freie) synthesizes the contents of a research about the conditions of Chinese migrants in a small town on the southern Algeria. Rutvica Andrijasevic (Compas – University of Oxford) proposed a critical analysis of the role of OIM in the governmental practices of migration control. Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo (University of Palermo) concentrated the attention on the detention and internment facilities introduced by Italian government in order to control migration, while Paolo Cuttitta (University of Palermo) presented his book «Border signals» concerning the radical transformations involving the political notion of border.

The last session of the workshop has been dedicated to the transformations that security practices determined within the European space, particularly for what directly concerns migration policies. Federico Olivieri (SNS - University of Pisa) has analysed the ambiguous role played by the social agencies for migrants insertion in European labour market. Miriam Mir (Ceps – Bruxelles) analysed the controversial new institution of the European Agency for migrants control (Frontex), making the case of the situation in the Canary Islands. Pablo Ceriani (University of Barcelona) analysed a similar complex situation focusing on the control policies the Spanish government has adopted in Ceuta and Melilla.

Genoa, June 14th, 15th, and 16th 2007