Description
Research in ontological security has identified identity practices of states, the needs of states to narrativize and reproduce their identity, and the formative impact of relations with peers in the international community on that identity. Ontological security blurs the distinction between the levels of analysis conventionally adopted in IR and considers the relationship of society with the state, how collectives are invested in global power structures, and the interaction of individual and collective security. Yet, despite these ventures into what makes the state and explains its security practices, and research that considers destructive and violent properties of states, there is little in the way of normative approaches to ontological security in pursuit of active political change. This research adopts the approach of Lea Ypi’s ‘non-ideal theorizing’ and begins with a political problem that is acknowledged yet isn’t solved by current theorizing in critical and /or ontological security studies: The intractability of the migration-security nexus and the lack of political accountability for state violence against migrants. Identifying core properties of ontological security as performative and emotional I map out a process of advocacy and activism for political contestation of state violence against migrants.
