Description
The UK Government defines vulnerability to radicalisation as, ‘the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and extremist ideologies associated with terrorist groups’ (Home Office, 2021). Given this relationship between radicalisation and terrorism the UK Government views disrupting this process as vital for national security and in 2015 passed legislation designed to enhance the national capacity to pre-emptively identify people vulnerable to radicalisation by co-opting frontline public sector workers in fields such as health and education. This new public sector responsibility (‘the Prevent duty’) has seen an unprecedented monitoring of citizen’s behaviours based on a relationship between vulnerability, radicalisation and terrorism that is far from concrete. Despite uncertainties and unknowns, the Prevent duty is presented as a clear and actionable framework designed to support frontline workers identify vulnerability and report cases of concern. In the context of a tension between what is known/unknown about vulnerability to radicalisation and the existent legal requirements this paper adopts a vernacular approach to present findings from focus groups and interviews with university students and staff about their comprehension, experiences and evaluations of vulnerability and Prevent. In so doing we approach these insights as valuable (but oft neglected) instances of “everyday” security knowledge and argue that these insights are even more valuable in the context of a duty that directly co opts these populations as counter-radicalisation practitioners and subjects. Our paper argues that inextricable conceptual dilemmas, operational impracticalities, and concerns combine to leave the duty ambiguous and ineffective in UK Higher Education.
