Titolo completo

Spatialising Security, Securitising Space: Ways into the Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

Situating Securitisation Theory (ST) in Security Studies and reflecting on several conundrums that have animated debates within ST, this Special Issue advances a critique of how integrating ‘space’ into ST enables empirically grounded modes of theorising and analysing ‘non-Western’/Global South contexts. Each contribution approaches security and space as always-becoming processes that shape, and are embedded in, relations. It is not only that relationality and processuality are ontological attributes through which security and space are understood; they are also mutually co-constitutive. This relational, processual and co-constitutive interplay between security and space is accompanied by a shared interest amongst the contributors in interrogating ‘the political’ through this lens. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region offers an especially productive vantage point for unpacking the entanglements of ‘the political’ across notions, domains and scales of security and space. In particular, the study of the MENA contributes to developing an understanding of security and space beyond Western-centric, state-centric and methodologically nationalist assumptions in Security Studies and International Relations.
Keywords: security; securitisation; space; spatial turn; Middle East and North Africa