What counts as security?
This school of thought argues that “security” is socially constructed through speech acts rather than objective threats
What is securitization theory?
Derek Gregory describes today’s diffuse forms of conflict using this memorable phrase.
What is “the everywhere war”?
Foucault’s term for the form of power that manages populations through health, circulation, and regulation.
What is biopolitics?
This term describes the increasing practice of enforcing border control far from a state’s geographic boundary.
What is border externalization?
Many contemporary authoritarian leaders rise to power through electoral means, making them this subtype of authoritarian regime.
What is electoral authoritarianism?
Critical security studies pushes us to move the object of security away from this traditional referent
What is the state?
Laleh Khalili argues that contemporary counterinsurgencies rely heavily on this geographic technique of control, also central to colonial governance.
What is confinement?
Amoore (2006) shows how borders increasingly rely on this category of biological data.
What is biometrics?
Mat Coleman argues that U.S. immigration enforcement must be understood through this analytical lens, not just as a Mexico-US border issue.
What is geopolitics?
Chris Ogden (2025) groups four powerful leaders as “horsemen” of authoritarianism, highlighting the global spread of this form of governance.
What is strongman rule / personalist authoritarianism?
Barkawi & Laffey critique this perspective for universalizing its own experiences and ignoring colonial histories.
What is mainstream/Western security studies?
Claudio Minca’s writing on “spaces of exception” draws heavily on this political theorist’s notions of sovereignty.
Who is Giorgio Agamben?
Simone Browne emphasizes that modern surveillance is deeply shaped by this social construct, producing differential vulnerabilities.
What is race?
Mountz & Hiemstra highlight these maritime spaces where states detain migrants beyond traditional legal oversight.
What are extraterritorial zones / off-shore detention spaces?
Noura Erakat’s “Boomerang” metaphor describes how violent practices abroad return to reinforce these domestic institutions.
What is policing or the security state?
Adamson (2018) argues that global security concerns increasingly transcend these political boundaries central to Westphalian thinking.
What are national borders?
This approach in critical geopolitics examines how maps, narratives, and representations shape understandings of threat.
What is discourse analysis?
Akbar’s “Policing Radicalization” critiques this U.S. law-enforcement practice that targets Muslim communities through suspicion-based logics.
What is counter-radicalization policing?
Ian Urbina’s investigation reveals how the EU relies on these secret carceral infrastructures to prevent migrant arrival.
What are black-site migrant prisons or detention centers?
Scheppele and Eisen warn the U.S. public about “sleepwalking” into this political condition where executive power bypasses democratic constraints.
What is autocracy (or creeping authoritarianism)?
This term refers to the process through which particular groups are cast as dangerous and thereby governed through extraordinary measures—rooted in the politics of identity described by David Campbell.
What is the construction of threat or enmity?
Ingram & Dodds describe how the “War on Terror” creates imaginative geographies that link distant places into networks of insecurity—an example of this classic Said-ian concept.
What is Orientalism?
NYC’s “Mapping Muslims” report exposed secretive surveillance justified under this post-9/11 policy framework.
What is national security (or counterterrorism) policing?
The practice of using third countries (e.g., Libya, Turkey) to intercept migrants exemplifies this Foucauldian strategy of managing population flows.
What is governmentality through circulation?
Loxton traces modern authoritarian durability to this structural feature—political systems where early competitive arenas are manipulated to entrench rulers.
What are incumbent-biased institutions?