Critical Approaches to Security in Europe

Dans le cadre du programme Européen de recherche COST, la Chaire Jean Monnet de Sciences Po, présidée par Renaud Dehousse, et le programme Challenge, dirigé par Didier Bigo, organisent des rencontres doctorales autour du theme: « Approches Critiques de la Sécurité en Europe ». La conférence de trois jours aura lieu au Centre d’Etudes européennes de Sciences Po en présence des professeurs les plus en vue dans le champ des études critiques de la sécurité : entre autres : Ole Waever, Michael Williams, Jef Huymans et Didier Bigo. La conférence réunira plus de 30 étudiants doctoraux venant de plus de 12 institutions européennes. Pour plus de renseignements se rendre sur le site internet de la conférence

L’évènement est bien sur ouvert au public dans la mesure des places disponibles.

Contacts : Stephan Davidshofer ou Francesco Ragazzi

COST Doctoral Training School

"Critical Approaches to Security in Europe"

ACTION A24 : The evolving social construction of threats

Centre Européen,

Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France

117, boulevard St-Germain 75006 Paris

June 16, 17, 18 2005

Doctoral School Programme

DAY 1 / THURSDAY, JUNE 16th

09:30 Welcome coffee

10:00Welcome speechby the conference organizers:

Prof. Marc Lazar (Dean of Sciences Po’s Ecole Doctorale)

Prof. Renaud Dehousse (Head of Sciences Po Jean Monnet Chair)

Prof. Didier Bigo (COST programme & Challenge programme)

10:15Introductory lecture 1:

Prof. Didier Bigo & Prof. Michael Williams11:15 Coffee break

11:45Introductory lecture 2:

Prof. Ole Waever & Prof. Jef Huymans

13:00 Lunch

(SESSION 1 / STRUCTURATION OF THE (IN)SECURITY FIELD)

14:30Panel n°1: IR theory, security and the political

Discussant: Ole Waever (University of Copenhagen)& Tarja Väyrynen (Tampere University)

Balzacq Thierry (Research Fellow, CEPS )

Security Relations and IR Theory: the problematic boundaries between neorealism and constructivism

Olsson Christian (Sciences Po)

External interventions, securitization, and the concept of the political: conceptualising interactions between the military and local societies

Stritzel Holger (LSE)

Securitisation Theory and the Politics of Threat Images: A Critical Appraisal

16:00 Coffee break

16:30Panel n°2: Three schools of security studies and their understanding of politics

Discussant: Michael Williams (Universty of Wales, Aberystwyth)

Taureck Rita (The University of Birmingham )

‘Positive and negative Securitisation - Bringing together securitisation theory and Welsh School Critical security studies’

Aradau Claudia (The Open University/King’s College London )

‘Copenhagen, Paris, Aberystwyth - three schools, one politics?’

DAY 2 / FRIDAY, JUNE 17th

09:00 Welcome coffee

(SESSION 2 / EU & SECURITY)

09:30Panel n°3: Orders 1 : The role of experts and expert knowledge

Discussant: Didier Bigo (Sciences Po)

Basaran Tugba (Cambridge )

European Security Discourses: The Role of Expert Knowledge

Yamamura Takayuki (University of Helsinki)

One Problem, Many Institutions: Japan’s Security Institutions Fight

against North Korea

11:00 Coffee break

11:30Panel n°4: Borders 1 : EU, Internal security and migration

Discussant: Grazina Miniotaite (University of Vilnius)

Hovdal Moan Marit (Norwegian University of Science and Technology )

Irregular migration and the ethics of internal control mechanisms

Mervola Markus (Tampere University)

Production of illegal immigration: On Political Rationalities of Migration Control

13:00 Lunch

14:30Panel n°5: Borders 2 : Neighbourhood policy and securitization

Discussant: Elspeth Guild (University of Nijmegen)

Jakniunaite Dovile (Vilnius University )

Constructing the neighbouring space

Jeandesboz Julien (Sciences Po)

The European neighbourhood policy: analysing the securitisation(s) of the Union’s ‘external border’

16:00 Coffee break

16:30Panel n°6: Identity 2 : Security, citizenship and minorities

Discussant: Augustin Domingo (University of Valencia)

Matti Jutila (University of Helsinki )

Desecuritizing Minority Rights: Against Determinism

Tönsmann Susanne (University of Hannover )

Securitizing Citizenship: the Construction of Non-citizens as a Threat to Security in Latvia

DAY 3 / SATURDAY, JUNE 18th

09:00 Welcome coffee

09:30Panel n°7: Orders 2 : External security policy and the notion of field

Discussant: Vivenne Jabri (King’s College)

Loisel Sébastien (Sciences Po)

Securitisation processes in the formulation of European foreign and security policy in sub-Saharan Africa

Davidshofer Stephan (Sciences Po)

Crisis management as the EU ’added value’: a politics of the non-political

11:00 Coffee break

11:30Panel n°8: Identity 1 : Citizenship and security

Discussant: Peter Burgess (PRIO)

Ragazzi Francesco (Sciences Po )

Diaspora politics: the other side of the securitization of citizenship

Guillaume Xavier (University of Geneva)

Securitizing identity: citizenship and contemporary European politics of alterity

13:00 Lunch

(SESSION 3 / POWER/KNOWLEDGE)

14:30Panel n°9: Power/knowledge : theory and practice, scholars and politics

Discussant: Jef Huysmans (Open University)

Villumsen Trine (University of Copenhagen )

A field of European security: The problem of studying the theory and practice of European security.

Buger Christian (The Instute of Social Research, Frankfurt am Meim)

The devil and the deep blue sea: How security experts securitize and how they might avoid it.

The project

Overview

The «Rencontres doctorales Européennes» are a training school which takes place at the Sciences Po Jean Monnet Chair in Paris. It is a workshop for PhD students chaired by outstanding European scholars.

In 2005 "Rencontres doctorales européennes" focus on new European approaches to security. The focus is on training students into using three distinct European approaches to come to a better understanding of who defines a threat, how threats are sustained and whose threats are responded to. These three approaches play a significant role in the discussion in the working groups of COST Action A24 on the evolving social construction of threats. In the «Rencontre» Members of the COST Action A24 disseminate this aspect of their work to European doctoral students. They will do this mainly by means of discussing students’ work in the area of the evolving social construction of threats. They are primary discussants who frame the initial discussion of papers. They are also participants in the general discussion of the papers. This is considered a more appropriate method than lectures for disseminating ideas among doctoral students.

The training school will draw on the evolutions in the field of Security Theory since the end of the Cold War, which have witnessed the emergence of distinctively European approaches to security, focusing on the concept of security as a continued object of reflection rather than as a given. They share a broad sociological and political approach and are all based on a reflectivist and constructivist epistemology. Their research interests range from the discursive construction of security issues (securitisation) to the merging of internal and external security and emancipation from the concept of national security.

Moreover, it is important to mention the fact that the 2005 "Rencontres doctorales européennes" are for the first time bringing together, European PhD candidates and scholars working on new and challenging security perspectives looking at the evolving social construction of threats in a European context. In addition, this training school runs against the established stereotypes on diverging national security perspectives in Europe, such as the French-British supposed traditional divides.

Themes:

SESSION 1: STRUCTURATION OF THE (IN)SECURITY FIELD

The main idea is to underline the genealogy and the structuration of the security field of security as a specific field of International Relations, bound by the underpinning question of risks and threats. Opposed to the naturalised and unquestioned discourse of the «national interest», the «new schools» develop their analysis around the uncovering of the taken for granted processes of social construction of threats. Moreover, a discussion will be engaged over the emergence of leading European security approaches, and the current debates among them.

SESSION 2: THE EUROPEAN UNION AS A "SECURITY ACTOR" : BEYOND THE INSIDE / OUTSIDE DIVIDE.

The conference will be dedicated not so much to the EU’s strategies as ’security actor’, but rather to interpreting the evolving social construction of European security issues through the lenses of these European approaches to security. In this framework, the reflection will be oriented towards three interrelated objects of study, mainly the security nexus Identities, Borders, Orders. This nexus has been brought out and put under stress by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, «terrorist» violence and the privatisation of security institutions.

Presentations will focus on the mutually constitutive relationship between security and identity, sustained by the definition of threats and risks (1), on social processes of making and unmaking of boundaries (2) and on the ordering processes, read through securitization and/or governmentality.

SESSION 3: POWER / KNOWLEDGE, THE NEW APPROACHES AND THE POLITICAL (2 panels)

As a conclusion of the previous reflections, a debate should be engaged over the relationship between the emerging approaches to the study of the social construction of threats and concepts of the political in Europe (i.e. a reflexive reflection on its positioning in the field).

It focuses on how these emerging approaches to study of the social construction of threats can translate into public knowledge and compete with or offer additional knowledge to the way in which think tanks and other public policy bodies approach security questions. This session discusses how to make the social and political constructivist dimensions of threats convincingly appear in public debates. It includes questions such as: how to discuss the social construction of threats in the public arena, how to diffuse results of the research, how important is the media? These focus obviously benefits a lot from a comparative approach drawing upon national and regional differences and similarities in Europe, which is central programmes such as the COST Action on The Evolving Social Construction of Threats.

Scientific Coordinators

Didier Bigo, Maître de Conférence des Universités à l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris).

Renaud Dehousse, Professeur Jean Monet à l’Institut d’Etudes Poltitiques (Paris)

Jef Huysmans, Lecturer in Government and Politics, Open University (London)

Local Organizers

Francesco Ragazzi

Ph.D. Candidate, Institut d’Etudes Poltitiques (Paris)

Stephan Davidshofer

Ph.D. Candidate, Institut d’Etudes Poltitiques (Paris)