Cette note de recherche examine la convergence des politiques économiques du Canada et du Québec avec le cadre discursif élaboré par l’administration Biden autour des chaînes d’approvisionnement en minéraux critiques. Elle montre comment les États-Unis érigent les chaînes d’approvisionnement en enjeu de sécurité nationale, impliquant leurs principaux partenaires économiques dans une stratégie de friendshoring. L’étude met en évidence une logique duale de coopération et de compétition entre le Canada et les États-Unis, révélant une adhésion partielle du Canada au projet sécuritaire américain. Le nœud du problème tient au fait que le Canada aspire à créer des chaînes de valeur sur son territoire afin de transformer ses ressources naturelles avant leur exportation. Dans le contexte nord-américain, ce projet est en compétition avec les États-Unis sur les segments clés de la chaîne de valeur, situés en aval de l’exploitation minière.

The Russian state’s approach to information has recently been subsumed under the concept of hybrid warfare – a term that recognises that information manipulation has become an important tool alongside traditional military resources in pursuit of national security. I argue that information warfare is more than just an additive tool for military planners. It is also constitutive of the field of understanding that gives states and citizens their sense of self, of threat, and of unity. I examine recent developments in Russian information warfare to illuminate how the securitisation of the field of information has constructed a new world of security threats. My analysis of Russian military doctrine, official government documents, Putin’s speeches, academic articles, and strategic pieces illustrates how Russian elites have cultivated a perception of threat from technological innovation and its potential use by the West to justify domestic controls and international confrontation. My larger point is that these developments are important for all of us as media and digital technologies are penetrating more areas of life. I contend that this may give rise to a radical realpolitik of the new media environment, which allows sovereignty to be the primary arbiter of truth in pursuit of epistemological security.

Digital policymaking in the European Union (EU), once seen as an internal market concern, is increasingly shaped by non-economic aims, such as the pursuit of security and the protection of fundamental rights. Recent pieces of legislation, such as the AI Act or the Cyber Resilience Act, have nominally acknowledged the relevance of such factors, but serious concerns have been raised about security considerations de facto trumping all others. In this article, we argue that, despite its predominance, security does not displace fundamental rights or the internal market as the foundations of EU digital law. Instead, we propose a framework to explain how the interaction among rationales for security promotion, rights protection, and market-making goes beyond mere opposition. Applying this framework to three case studies of post-GDPR regulation, we show that the deepening of fundamental rights safeguards in digital regulatory instruments offers, at most, a limited check to creeping securitisation – and sometimes even allows the EU legislator to extend the reach of security measures in the name of protecting certain rights. Understanding the logics and actors that shape the triple helix of markets, rights, and security is therefore crucial for properly understanding – and responding to – security overreach in cyberspace.

This article explores (a) how conceptualisations of movement embed sedentism within the security–migration nexus and its protection logics and (b) which conceptualisation of movement can analytically challenge that embedding. The overall aim is to problematise the opposition between sedentism and movement. I address these questions by analysing mapping and countermapping practices and considering what insights can be gained by conceptualising life as fundamentally in motion. The maps reveal four concepts of movement: border crossing, routes, journeys, and threads. Each operates within the security–migration nexus. The article then extends the notion of threads into a conceptualisation of life (and matter) as inherently in motion, or life-in-motion. Allowing life to emerge from and through the coexistence of movements offers an analytical framework that creates cracks in sedentism inscriptions within the security–migration nexus while avoiding the reduction of movement to nomadism – the ‘other’ of sedentism.

Over the last decade, the Scottish Government have pursued a positive, highly visible immigration politics, despite Scotland lacking formal immigration powers and being enveloped within a United Kingdom that has simultaneously pursued an increasingly securitised approach. With securitisation intensifying globally, coupled with a rise in, and political success of, anti-immigration parties and actors, this article investigates the question of why the Scottish Government has pursued a desecuritising approach – a neglected strand of (de)securitisation studies that principally focuses on the how. We draw on insights from ontological security studies to investigate the Scottish Government’s desecuritisation activity between 2014 and 2024, demonstrating that, whilst there are rationalist-materialist explanations, desecuritisation was not inevitable. Instead, by exploring the relationship between immigration and the construction of the Scottish self at the ontological level we can more fully understand the drivers behind desecuritisation. Pursuing a desecuritised immigration politics is shown, first, to support the Scottish Government’s core autobiographical narrative about who ‘Scotland’ is (open, welcoming, and internationalist), and second, through nurturing a Lacanian fantasy, to be affectively rewarding. Last, the article contributes to the (re)conceptualisation of linearity and temporality in (de)securitisation studies, showcasing contemporary-orientated desecuritisation moves dovetailing with moves aimed at an institutional ‘future-proofing’ of desecuritised immigration governance.

This article advances research on ‘collective securitisation’ by theorising how ostensibly separate securitisation processes within different international organisations (IOs) interact and shape each other’s policy outcomes. Focusing on climate change adaptation within the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU), the study uses an extensive database of documents (1972–2023) and interviews with officials to trace these dynamics. The analysis reveals that the UN initially securitised climate change through a risk-oriented approach emphasising long-term risk management, subsequently influencing the EU’s adaptation policies. Conversely, the EU intermittently reintroduced threat-based framing into the UN, highlighting recursive interactions between these organisations. Findings suggest key moments of cross-organisational influence, notably during the audience acceptance and policy output stages. By incorporating insights from transnational policy learning and norm diffusion, the paper theorises precisely how and when these interactions occur, enriching the analytical framework of Collective Securitisation. This article contributes to understanding how international organisations’ securitisation processes interact and shape climate adaptation policies, emphasising the nuanced interplay between threat-based and risk-based logics.

This article conducts a theoretical exploration of how the materiality of ‘the digital’, and, more specifically, the immaterial nature of ‘the digital’, imposes on the securitisation of cyber. Starting from the observation that the implementation of new, draconian cybersecurity policy – illustrated with the Norwegian bulk interception controversy – is legitimised with reference to the immateriality of digital threats and digital transformations, I ask how we may we understand the material agency of immaterial matter in the context of cybersecurity. To address this problem, I turn to existing constructivist and new materialist accounts of the immateriality of cyber (in)security, and build on these to offer my own account of digital immateriality. In particular, I mobilise Yuk Hui’s reading of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s notion of im/materials to suggest that ‘the digital’ can be seen as a material force which concretises imperceptible relations by keeping the invisible invisible, and hence by abstracting and obscuring cyber threats and digital insecurities. In this way, ‘the digital’ engenders a new logic of cyber securitisation which I label ‘exceptionality without urgency’, where cybersecurity policy is aimed at countering fundamental, long-term, and rather vague transformations of politics and society rather than immediate, concrete threats.

The relationship involving the unknown other has so far been exclusively translated into the language of fear as part of the securitised response to migration. The fear of the unknown other divides people into those who are associated with illegality and chaos and those who need to be protected from such ‘danger’. In contrast, the humanitarian approach to migration challenges the securitised response to the unknown other: it refuses to separate the self from the other and instead appeals to the idea of common humanity. This paper draws on the idea of the gothic to develop a humanitarian way of embracing the fear of the unknown. In the gothic framework, the other is feared not because of categorical differences between the self and the other, embodied in the securitised response to migration, but categorical ambiguity between the two. Using UK-based welcome activism as an example, I argue that gothic-inspired humanitarianism embraces the fear of the unknown other through the sharing of not knowing oneself. This offers a new basis for solidarity, in the language of fear, without resorting to the securitised relationship between the self and the other.

Tokenised assets are expected to transform finance, yet their legal treatment remains a source of uncertainty. This article presents an analytical framework for categorising legal structures of tokenised assets, addressing a gap in academic literature and regulatory approaches. We introduce a taxonomy based on the legal relationship between tokens and their underlying assets. In complete tokenisation tokens embody legally enforceable rights. It comprises direct tokenisation, where tokens are the primary form of the asset, and indirect tokenisation, where asset-backed tokens are created through intermediary structures. In contrast, incomplete tokenisation results in tokens that function as “digital twins” with limited or no legal value.

Our analysis reveals that the effectiveness of tokenisation depends on the robustness of this legal bond. We compare how these categories impact tokenisation features, including asset transferability, legal certainty, and composability. Furthermore, we identify limiting factors in current regulatory frameworks, such as form requirements, ownership models, and identity mechanisms. Drawing examples from various legal systems and asset classes, including financial instruments, property rights, and digital assets, this work provides a foundation for evaluating tokenisation strategies, with practical insights for regulators and market participants.

Despite one of the world's strictest and longest lockdown policies, the Philippines' securitized approach to containing the COVID-19 pandemic has led to unnecessary suffering, especially in poor communities. This article explores how the Philippine government's prioritizing of punitive policies such as detaining quarantine violators or attempting to decongest Manila by sending poor families to neighbouring provinces, magnifies existing socio-spatial inequalities and further spreads disease. In many of these communities, poverty is a co-morbidity. As local governments struggle to provide frontline health and social welfare services, high-profile arrests, media shutdowns, and the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill spark concerns about restrictions on free speech while movement is curtailed. Nevertheless, community and private sector efforts around localized healthcare, food security, and inclusive mobility indicate potential paths towards a ‘better normal’ that goes beyond just survival.

The article explores how European Union (EU) democracies respond to the transnational repression phenomenon. Authoritarian transnational repression has become an increasingly recurrent phenomenon in recent years. However, we still have an inadequate understanding of how Western democracies respond to such forms of authoritarian interference. This article sheds light on the EU’s responses to the authoritarian transnational repression phenomenon by using the analytical framework of securitisation as its theoretical approach. In doing so, it aims to find out the extent to which transnational repression has been securitised in the EU. The study demonstrates that the EU’s response to the transnational repression phenomenon exhibits the case of a failed securitisation. The paper draws its analysis from policy documents, semi-structured interviews with EU stakeholders, and descriptive analysis from the Freedom House Transnational Repression Database.