Description
The ‘near unanimous focus in the literature on successful cases of securitization’, is demonstrated by Jan Ruzicka (2019) to be as problematic as it is untenable. The call to arms to interrogate ‘failed securitisation’ is one this article responds to, focussing on the securitisation of asylum seekers and refugees in the United Kingdom, and the puzzle of why this securitisation has, in many respects, failed in Scotland. With the normatively troubling securitisation of migration deepening across much of Europe and beyond, the bucking of this trend in Scotland is remarkable and in need of much greater attention. Exploring both discursive and non-discursive mechanisms, empirically, the article reveals that whilst some securitisation policies have been enacted in Scotland, the securitisation of asylum and refugees has not succeeded entirely and that many elements have failed. The article helps refine the theorisation of ‘failed’ securitisation, with consequences for broader understandings of ‘success’ in securitisation studies, in two principal ways. First, by demonstrating that effective contestation of securitisation can play a key role in securitisation failing, and second, by revealing that binary notions of ‘failed’ and ‘successful’ securitisations are insufficient: securitisations can both fail and succeed simultaneously.
