Book Launch: Emma Mc Cluskey- From Righteousness to the Far Right

Speaker: Dr Emma Mc Cluskey

Chair: Prof. Didier Bigo

Discussants: Ms. Alvina Hoffmann (KCL via skype), Professor Ben Rampton (KCL), Dr. Martina Tazzioli (Goldsmiths)

In the wake of Europe's so-called refugee ‘crisis’, even traditionally open countries such as Sweden and Germany adopted hostile policies on refugees, closing borders and linking refugees with threats to national security. Once taboo, uncharitable conduct towards those in need has become increasingly acceptable throughout the Western world. From Righteousness to Far Right follows nineteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with a grassroots NGO in a Swedish village, where over one hundred refugees were housed. Through an embedded, anthropological study of day-to-day life, Emma Mc Cluskey examines how increasingly antagonistic and xenophobic policies concerning refugees gained legitimacy. Arguing that existing approaches to critical security studies inadequately address the textured, contradictory, and often resistant practices of everyday life within societies, Mc Cluskey re-gears securitization theories along anthropological lines and shifts the focus of the investigation onto the quotidian realm, where much of the migration and security controversy plays out.

Emma Mc Cluskey is a Research Associate and Teaching Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She is currently working on the Open Research Area funded project; 'GUARDINT, Intelligence and Oversight Networks: Who guards the guardians?' and is co-editor in chief of the bi-annual journal Political Anthropological Research in International Social Sciences (PARISS).

This event is sponsored by the Research Centre in International Relations and the IR and Ethics Theme.