This study looks at the discursive threat constructions of political elites in Hungary during a time span corresponding to the European Migration Crisis. Securitization theory is used in conjunction with a Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the communicated threat perceptions that led to the extraordinary security measure of building fences. Analysis finds that there was a clear grammar of security in all discourses – on both the state and the regional level - in identifying migration as a possible threat. Characteristics of the discourses varied between the state agents in different contexts in terms of wording, the referent objects they focused on and the utterance of speech acts. The study demonstrates that securitization did successfully happen, but argues that it was likely the result of securitization not happening on a regional level prior. In the study, the European Migration Crisis, the migration-security nexus, and the Copenhagen School’s earlier work: Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe are also explored. The latter work is incorporated in the analysis by testing its correspondence with the communicated threat constructions in Hungary. The study finds strong correlations between the theorized, emerging security landscape and the communicated threat perceptions.

The aim of the thesis is to examine the political discourse related to the Danish ‘ghettos’, and if and how this discourse can be related to ‘securitization of migration’ and ‘repressive liberalism’. The point of departure is the salient explanation in previous research, that the political discourse is deriving from a movement towards nationalism. The findings of the thesis show that the political discourse entails a securitized agenda towards social cohesion, aimed at protecting the liberal core values of the Danish society, even if this requires the use of illiberal means. However, constructing the Danish society as ‘only for liberals’ is excluding (illiberal) immigrants from the social fabric, and the intended objective of the ‘Ghetto Plan’, social integration, is counteracted by the very means proposed to promote it. The thesis thus contributes with an alternative understanding of the political discourse, which is seen to derive from liberalism itself, though it turns into a tougher and more substantial form, where membership of Danish society is ‘granted’ based on attitudes and beliefs.

After the fall of ISIS ‘caliphate’, Sweden and other European countries are struggling with how to handle the group of people who left Europe to join the terrorist organisation and now seek to return. In traditional narratives of gender and war, women and children are commonly perceived as innocent victims in need of protection. This narrative now seems to be challenged by European countries hesitation to repatriate, not only men, but also women and children affiliated with ISIS. Drawing on securitization, feminist and postcolonial theory, this thesis examines political discourses surrounding women and children in Sweden after the fall of the ‘caliphate’ and considers how this seemingly discursive transformation allows for exceptional measures. The analysis finds that these women are foremost ascribed meaning in relation to the men of ISIS and appear to be portrayed as guilty perpetrators rather than victims. While the lives of the children are construed as more valuable, they are yet associated with different risks and problems. In these meaning-making processes, it is possible to identify hierarchies in relation to gender and race in which women and children are perceived as ‘the other’ and, to some extent, reabsorbed into the threatening mass of ISIS terrorists that Sweden needs protection from.

This dissertation investigates the specific factors that drive state action in Canadian Arctic security policy, particularly in relation to securitization of the Arctic region and historical factors that influence decision-making. The purpose of this research is to develop stronger linkages between securitization processes and actual policymaking. When studying the Arctic as a defined geographical space, we see considerable differences between Arctic states when it comes to how cultural and historical attachment to the Arctic region may serve as a selling point for the ability of national governments to justify allocation of defense resources to their respective publics. Using the Canadian case, this research illustrates the strength of identity factors when compared to day-to-day bureaucratic politics and the influence of public opinion. This dissertation does not follow the ideas of one particular theoretical paradigm, but instead utilizes eclecticism to better illustrate the depth of the various factors that may contribute to policymaking. Additionally, the effects of policymaking and securitization processes are measured through public opinion. The ultimate findings of this research support a hypothesis of linear identity factors as a major influence on Canadian Arctic security policy, but also suggest that research on securitization theory needs to better connect rhetorical v securitization processes to actual policymaking. Through this, the research not only provides value in using this case as a test for the strengths and limits of securitization theory, but also emboldens understandings of security policy as being driven by a combination of domestic policy, foreign policy, endemic historical factors, and government strategic communication practices.

This study aims to explore the presence of ”China threat” and the securitization of China in Swedish print media. The key objective is to measure the portrayal of China as a threat and if/how that representation has changed during the time period 2012-2022. This is studied through a frame analysis investigating China as an ideological, military, and economic threat. The study shows that the usage of portraying China as an ideological, military and/or economic threat is indeed present and increasing during the period, with a peak of publications in 2019. All frames are used by all studied newspapers, and there is a growing trend visualized through the data. This trend demonstrates that the perspective of China as a threat has become more normative in reporting, proving the notion of that securitization as a speech act is in fact present in the investigated time period. The articles are not portraying China as a direct threat to the readers in Sweden, but rather through ways of causal interpretation and moral evaluation that conceives China as a threat to the liberal international order. The most frequently used attributions are within the ideological threat frame, the second most used frame is the military one closely followed by the usage of attributions from the economic frame. Understanding how China is framed and perceived in Swedish print media can be useful in the exploration of the nuanced phenomena of Sweden-China relations, completed and future policy interventions, and to understand the influences of opinion that the readers might receive to secure an informed, impartial, and globally aware society. This study can be seen as an ignition towards further research in this nestled marvel of securitization and global politics.

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The crisis of overdose deaths in British Columbia (BC) continues into its seventh year. This thesis applies a human security lens to a mixed methods computer-assisted discourse analysis on a corpus of public-facing documents from drug enforcement organizations in BC, and one from community-run harm reduction organizations in BC. Analysis uses a “What is the Problem Represented to Be”? (WPR) approach to analyze conflicting conceptual logics and answer the question “What human security problems are constructed in Harm Reduction and Enforcement discourses surrounding the crisis of overdose deaths in British Columbia?” Conclusion: Both corpora construct different problematizations. Whereas enforcement discourses emphasize criminality and proximal substance use harms, harm reduction discourses look at enforcement as a structural threat to people who use drugs. / Graduate / 2023-08-17

In 2022 the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place, which caused millions of Ukrainians to flee their homes. The refugee crisis occurred seven years earlier in 2015, and millions of refugees fled their home countries as the Ukrainian refugees did in 2022. However, during the refugee crisis of 2015 people commonly fled from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. During these refugee waves, people have searched for asylum in Sweden. However, the political measures have differed between these two refugee waves. Therefore, research regarding Sweden’s three biggest political parties’ construction of refugees during these two events is significant.  This essay examines how the construction of refugees differs between the refugee crisis of 2015 and the Ukrainian refugee wave of 2022 within the Swedish parliament. To do so, a critical discourse analysis has been applied while analyzing protocols from the Swedish parliament. The findings show that the three political parties constructed refugees differently depending on their geographical origin. Ukrainian refugees were constructed in more positive terms and often as victims in need of help compared to non-European refugees, who were constructed in more negative terms and often as a burden or a threat. Additionally, this might be the explanation regarding why refugees were securitized in 2015 and why they were not in 2022, which this essay showed.

The Eastern Partnership was founded in 2009 with three main areas of focus: one being security. The research questions: ‘What effect has the changing security situation had on the usage of the term security by the EU/joint statements by the Eastern Partnership on selected non-security terms from 2009 to 2021?’ and ‘How have the security terms been affected?’Using content analysis, sampling was kept to official statements concerning the partnership as a whole and do not include material from sub-co-operations, such as the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. The coding, with a focus on ‘security’, includes several expressions that include security, such as; ‘energy security’; ‘human security’; ‘cyber security’; as well as ‘resolution of conflicts’ and ‘peaceful settlement’; while the codes included in the primary analysis are; ‘economic integration’; ‘stability’; ‘strategic’; ‘prosperity’ and ‘common values’. The theory of securitization was utilized due to its foundation in constructivism and the theory aims to explain how securitizing actors use speech acts to bring attention to issues. Findings show that ‘security’ has been used more in later years, while ‘stability’ is used frequently across all years with data. The selected non-security-related terms are used more overall than the selected security-related ones; a reason for this is that ‘economic integration’ is the core of the EU and one of the founding principles of the Eastern Partnership. Furthermore, one explanation why the non-security-related terms are used more could be that the Eastern Partnership and the EU do not always know where to put the focus, and as a weakness does not recognize the urgency of certain issues, and too little is done too late.

The spread of disinformation on social media platforms has in the last few years gained much scholarly attention, in particular its ability to alter democratic processes. The focus of this thesis has however been on the discourse surrounding disinformation rather than disinformation itself, more precisely, the construction and perception of disinformation as a security threat. Disinformation is an issue which is rapidly evolving with the creation of new technologies and opportunities. The aim of this thesis has been to investigate if this has led to a shift in the perception of disinformation as a threat and therefore a change of policy for the EU. This was realised through the utilisation of Carol Bacchi's WPR approach toolkits, in combination with the foundational principles derived from securitization theory. The thesis shows that the EU’s perception of disinformation as a threat has evolved from mainly focus on the decline of public trust and democratic processes. To also include and recognise a more multifaced view of the issue with a larger focus on manipulation, technology driven threats and media literacy deficiency.