threat if it is perceived to threaten something that signifies group boundaries.
[…] But once the thing in question no longer signifies group boundaries a threat
to it no longer threatens these boundaries,’ is an extremely fascinating model for de-securitising threats. 57 By applying this to current societal security issues like
immigration, if being a ‘white country’ ceases to be a defining aspect of ‘who we
are’, then ‘non-white’ immigrants stop threatening ‘our identity.’ Thus, opening
the door for a future security agenda that shifts the focus away from racial
matters and into more civic ones.
The importance of the contribution of CS theory of securitisation cannot
be underestimated within security studies due to how it offered a new security
paradigm that was the first shift away from the restricted nature of the
traditionalist approaches which always reinstated the power of the state. By
broadening the agenda, it offers the theoretical framework to explore
securitisation discourses and practices of non-state actors and referent objects.
Although, as articulated throughout, as a stand-alone theory the CS
securitisation would gets swallowed in criticism due to its gaps in analytical
frameworks of the social world. However, this essay concludes that biggest
overall strength of the CS theory, is that it provides solid foundations to allow
other theoretical approaches, all constructivist in nature, to develop the
securitisation discourses and practices that is better equipped to deal with future
matters of security than any a vast amount of other security theories, especially
traditionalist ones. Thus, through the constructivist combining of a post-
structuralist lens that this entwined with discourse analysis, the merging of CS
and CSS in creating a humanitarianism security agenda, and the incorporation of
socio-psychological literature, it becomes possible to revise the CS approach to
security provide a unified critical security studies.
57 Theiler, 267.
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