Spatial-Moral Ordering in the War on Terror: Ungoverned Spaces as a Challenge to Humanitarianism

Abstract

We investigate how processes of spatialisation through military interventions in the War on Terror challenge the theory and practices of humanitarian aid. To elucidate these challenges, we introduce the concept of spatial-moral ordering. We argue that discourses and practices of ordering people and space in the War on Terror and in certain forms of humanitarian aid entail bio/geopolitical modes of governing. Their goals mirror each other negativelyone allowing and controlling lives, and the other disallowing them. We reflect on these challenges to humanitarian aid against the background of its increasing securitisation.

Humanitarianism, securitization, and containment in Jordan's Za'atari Refugee Camp

“…Through its consideration of the security priorities and securitization processes of the Jordanian State, this paper contributes a minority South‐focused perspective to the existing body of critical literature on refugee governance, which largely remains focused on northern liberal actors economic and political interests in seeking to manage and “contain” unwanted mass migration from poorer, illiberal Southern States (e.g., Chimni, 1998; De Genova & Peutz, 2010; Duffield, 2008; Hyndmann, 2000; Ilcan & Rygiel, 2015). While many studies illuminate on the securitization of southern migrants in and by liberal northern States since the War on Terror (e.g., Bigo, 2002; Humphrey, 2013; Prinz & Schetter, 2020), with literature increasingly highlighting the role of the UNHCR in supporting State priorities (e.g., Hammerstad, 2014; Jacobsen, 2017; Scheel & Ratfisch, 2014), Southern actors are largely still framed as subjects rather than actors of securitization discourses and processes. The political interests of a Southern State in supporting migratory containment has arguably not received the level of scrutiny needed to more holistically illuminate the local and global connectivities between securitized‐humanitarian processes, which this paper hopes to put forward by highlighting the interplay between Jordanian interests in managing the effects of the Syrian war and the ways these priorities are projected in the humanitarian sphere through the UNHCR's camp governance strategies.…”

Criminal Violence, Political Violence, and the Politics of Line-Drawing in Latin America

“…In terms of the production of international order, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stabilization strategies are often presented as responses to such contexts, whose "ordering" would require a combination of military and civilian practices -or of "security and development". In general, such prescriptions are essentially aimed at containing or managing the risk posed by such spaces to the rest of the world, rather than at a positive transformation of the threats experienced by local communities (CONSTANTINOU; OPONDO, 2016;MCCORMACK, 2018;MITCHELL, 2010;PRINZ;SCHETTER, 2016SCHETTER, , 2020.…”