Ontological Insecurity as an Emergent Phenomenon

Abstract

Abstract. One of the central debates in Ontological Security Studies (OSS) has been about the level-of-analysis. While some authors focus on individuals, others have scaled up the concept and applied it to collectives such as states as the main ontological security seekers. In this article, we contribute to the level-of-analysis debate in OSS by providing a novel argument in defense of scaling up. By drawing on the literatures on complexity and securitization, we conceptualize ontological security as an emergent phenomenon. It arises from the ground-up and is driven by feedback loops in a non-linear and spontaneous fashion from horizontal micro-interactions and securitizations from below, ultimately reaching a tipping point. We illustrate this argument in a case study of anti-immigrant mobilization in Serbia since the outbreak of the European migration crisis (2015–2020). At the outset of the crisis, state officials interpreted the migration crisis as a manageable and temporary situation, adopted an “open door” policy and even banned far-right extremist demonstrations against migration. Over time, however, ontological insecurity over the migrant threat has gradually emerged from the bottom-up through a cascade of rumors, connective action, and everyday securitizing acts. While it might be too early to conclude that the national tipping point has been reached, this case study clearly shows why ontological insecurity merits to be studied as an emergent phenomenon.

Accounting for inequalities: divided selves and divided states in International Relations

“…Ontological security theory in IR has grappled with these questions, and consequently with the levels of analysis by refusing to subscribe wholeheartedly to that ontological choice, instead seeking to uncover the processes behind perceptible state agency (there are too many excellent examples of this to do justice, but they include Abramson, 2019; Agius, 2017; Cash, 2017; Edjus and Rečević, 2021; Steele, 2019; Subotic and Steele, 2018). To foreground how ontological insecurity is produced in a way that interacts across and between the conventional individual-state-system triad and additional units and levels of analysis enhances the explanatory capacity of ontological security studies in IR.…”

“…Rumelili (2020) described ontological security as ‘pragmatically’ situated across levels of analysis, again recognising the flexibility this offers with respect to constituting the state both as composed of individual citizens and simultaneously as a unitary entity that can be understood to act and feel. Edjus and Rečević (2021) connect these separate dimensions of the state, moving through levels of analysis to conceptualise ontological security as an ‘emergent phenomenon’ that is produced in a bottom-up way starting with the individual, spreading through a community and reaching a tipping point to manifest at the state level. Moreover, ontological security theorists have critiqued the centrality of the state in IR; for example, Delehanty and Steele (2009) note the masculine bias at the heart of state-dominant autobiographical narratives.…”

Border Governance, Migration Securitisation, and Security Challenges in Nigeria

“…The culture of profiling foreigners for national security challenges and the attendant use of discriminatory immigration policies have been adopted in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe and the USA (Ejdus and Rečević, 2021 ). Within Nigerian government circles, for instance, there is a widespread perception among Nigerians that gunmen who were trained and armed by Muammar Gaddafi but later escaped with their arms after the assassination of the latter are among those now terrorising Nigeria (Ogundipe, 2018 ).…”