Countering terrorism and radicalisation: Securitising social policy?

Abstract

While social and security policies have always overlapped in complex ways, recent developments in counter-terrorism policy suggest that Western European states, and the United Kingdom more specifically, are accelerating what can be termed the ‘securitisation of social policy’1 – namely, the increased submission of social policy actors and their practices to the logics of security and social control. With the PREVENT programme remaining highly controversial, what are the effects of these state practices? Has David Cameron’s project of ‘muscular liberalism’, aimed at integration and community cohesion, been enforced through counter-radicalisation policies? This themed issue examines preventative counter-terrorism policies in the UK and the politics of religion, ethnicity and race they enact. The relation between social policy and critical security studies is explored by an interdisciplinary group of scholars.