Securitization of immigration under the Trump administration: reconceptualizing the functional actor through the judiciary and the media
Date
2018
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The act of “speaking security” has grave implications for political debate. By evoking a threat, political resources are mobilized in a way that lifts the issue at hand “beyond” politics and calls for an immediate response by adopting extraordinary measures that may result in the restriction of civil liberties. This approach was developed by the so-called Copenhagen School. The efforts of subsequent researchers to develop the several concepts left under-theorized in the original framework remain incomplete.
The aims of this thesis are twofold. First, to develop a model for analyzing securitization processes in a more comprehensive manner, accounting for the bureaucratic policy-making procedures that undergird securitizing moves, for the reiterative deliberations between securitizing actors and audiences in the construction of threats, for the multiplicity of audiences involved in the process, and the influence wielded by functional actors on the success of securitization. To this effect, this thesis expounds on the theoretical aspects of securitization and media studies, the judicial precedents regarding immigration policy in the US, and adopts John Kingdon’s three streams model of policy-making.
Second, this thesis presents a novel definition of the functional actor. Functional actors are entities that (1) affect decisions in a field of security in general and the success of a securitizing move in particular, (2) cannot independently produce security meanings, (3) stand to gain or lose, in material, ideational, social, or other terms, as a result, and (4) can, in their particular function, operate as a secondary securitizing actor or as a secondary audience but is not the direct target of a securitizing move. Specifically, this thesis argues that the media and the judiciary should be treated as functional actors in the securitization process.
The latter point is tested by applying an enhanced model of securitization to the presidency of Donald Trump whose signature policy has been immigration. This thesis analyzes four categories of immigration policy through which the Trump administration
has sought to securitize immigration. Each category is presented through the Kingdon model, followed by an overview of securitizing and desecuritizing moves, of media frames, and of judicial proceedings. The results confirm the utility of treating the media and the judiciary as functional actors. However, it also reveals a shortcoming of the Kingdon model because its presumption of temporal linearity is found to be unjustified.