Vulnerability: Governing the Social Through Security Politics

Social policy, welfare administration and national security have all witnessed the spectacular rise of 'vulnerability' as an organising concept. 'Vulnerability governance' identifies persons, communities and even nations which require psycho-social and developmental assistance to prevent them from becoming dangerous. 'Governing through vulnerability' combines the logics and practices of both the welfare state and the national security state - enabling corrective interventions to delve further and deeper into society.

This volume explores the use of 'vulnerability governance' across Europe, North America, North and Western Africa, and the Middle East. Contributors explore how migration detention centres, psychiatric diagnosis, public health campaigns, integration programs and counter-extremism all deploy the language of vulnerability to undertake corrective, securitised interventions at the local level. When defining their subjects as 'vulnerable', these programs do not simply provide care and support. Rather, they frame communities through a narrative of 'needy now, but potentially dangerous later' - securitising them as a future risk to society. Socio-economic support is used to aid the vulnerable group or individual, but only according to the level of threat they pose to the world around them.

Vulnerability governance demonstrates the complex co-interaction of welfare and security logics in contemporary global politics. This book debates whether this is an effect of neoliberal welfare transformation, which reserves welfare for those who pose a threat to society, or whether the original welfare states were similarly permeated with this security agenda. Vulnerability affects the governance of the social through security politics, but also integrates social policy sectors within counterterrorism.