This chapter introduces the space of inquiry that opens up at the intersection of security and mobility. It begins with briefly setting the stage of the security/mobility dynamic, after which a conceptual exploration follows. Security is regarded as a discourse revolving around threat. Distinct about security today is it being premised on openness which encourages intervention upon and thus regulation of mobility. Mobility is regarded as socially produced motion and concerns the ways in which the fact of displacement is made possible. Attention is then directed at the productive effects of both concepts and their interaction: they bring about particular relations of power, thereby privileging certain forms of security and mobility. The introductory chapter ends with an overview of the structure of the book and the individual chapters.
According to convention, the emergence of 'international terrorism' led the European Community (EC) member states to initiate co-operation from the mid-1970s onwards. A different story is told here by examining how 'international terrorism' appeared as threatening and co-operation in the context of the EC became regarded as a logical solution. The article frames this as political events ('international terrorism') overflowing the space of politics (the state), whereby the latter felt it necessary to set up a series of arrangements to try to encapsulate the excesses of the former. It shows how the interpretation of terrorism as an illegitimate political provocation constituted an obligation for states to respond. Stressing the international character highlighted individual states' inability to tackle terrorism, which made it possible for co-operation to appear as obvious. Trevi and the Dublin Agreement are examined as manifestations seeking to work around, and thus reinventing, the limits of state sovereignty.
This article draws on Foucault's concept of governmentality in order to challenge the view of EU counter-terrorism as simply a response to terrorism. Rather than focusing on the policies directly targeting terrorism, it is concerned with technologies designed to improve the governance process. The article examines three technologies designed for shaping the conduct of government. These technologies are not value-free but underpinned by specific assumptions of what governing can achieve and, as such, they are implicated in the (re)production of insecurity rather than, as institutionalist accounts do, locating the source of insecurity as external to these institutions. In other words, insecurity is in part brought about by the governance process. The article looks at three technologies targeting the gap-this latter term referring to the difference between a current state of affairs diagnosed as undesirable and the ideal situation (lagging policy implementation for instance). The technologies-the action plan, the timetable and the CounterTerrorist Coordinator-are premised on the understanding of bridging the gap as instrumental to the provision of security. This mode of governing fuels a circular logic whereby the need to perform better leads to calls for improved monitoring and vice versa.
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