Security, Law and Borders: At the Limits of Liberties

This book focuses on security practices, civil liberties and the politics of borders in liberal democracies.In the aftermath of 9/11, security practices and the denial of human rights and civil liberties are often portrayed as an exception to the liberal order, and seen as institutionally, legally and spatially distinct from the liberal state. Drawing upon detailed empirical studies from migration controls, such as waiting zones, excision zones, maritime spaces and offshore locations, the author here argues that security is a form of political rule that is not distinct from the liberal state, but established by means of regular political and legal processes, practices of legal identification and legal bordering. These zones are under state law but legal rights for policed populations are gravely restricted. The problem of security, it is argued, is not its exceptionality, but rather its banality. Security is a normal mode of government in the repertoire of liberal democracies.The book develops three inter-related arguments: First, it questions the discourse of exception that seeks to separate liberal from illiberal rule in liberal democracies, as if both belonged to different times and spaces with a clear boundary line. Second, it questions the space of the government and argues for a turn in perspective from territorial to legal borders ' legal borders of policing and legal borders of rights. Third, it emphasizes the role of ordinary liberal practices and ordinary law, and argues that law's most powerful tools are also its most ordinary tools: the creation of legal identities, the creation of legal borders and the definition of the scope of legal rights.This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, social and political theory, political geography and legal studies, as well as IR in general.