Description
Difference is sometimes taken as a natural fact of (international) life, yet difference can also be seen as the result of practices of ‘distancing’ designed to create a coherent ‘us’ opposed to external, distant and clearly separated ‘Others’. In this paper, I propose to look at the portrayal by France and the United Kingdom of their citizens fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. These citizens occupy an ambiguous position, still being like ‘us’ yet also being portrayed as different. As such, the construction of their difference is particularly interesting as it illustrates the difficulties of creating a coherent sense of identity – these ‘terrorists’ being essentially Other yet also sharing some similarity with ‘us’. The case of these Western ISIS fighters is thus important as the presence of these individuals raises difficult questions for the British and French authorities (in particular around the protection they should be offered, whether they should retain their citizenship, where they should be judged and the rights of children born of these ‘foreign’ fighters). Caught between their desire and obligation to defend citizens (who are like ‘us’) and the distancing from these ‘radical terrorist Others’, the policy responses of the British and French governments have been hesitant and shifting. The objective of this paper is to trace how a specific ‘Othering’ of these Western fighters has taken place using policy sources (political declarations, legislation and parliamentary debates) as well as interviews with French and British civil servants. Overall, the paper will offer a reflection on the creation of difference and the way identity (‘we’) relates to difference (‘them’), with a particular emphasis on the way identity depends on the constant exclusion of difference for its reproduction.
