ASYLUM SEEKERS AND THE STATE. WHOSE THREAT? WHOSE SECURITY?

Abstract

This dissertation examines the disparity between how states define asylum seekers and who identifies him or herself to be an asylum seeker. Using interpretive methodologies I examine how states construct asylum seekers in security discourses, and the role of international geopolitics in solidifying state-based identities in state discourses. Narrative interviews with asylum seekers offer insight into how state security discourses act upon asylum seekers as individuals. I juxtapose narratives addressing the experience of being an asylum seeker with the state based analysis. I use the theory of ontological security as an analytical tool capable of furthering a comprehension of the contention between state-based security discourses and decentered security that reveals the power of state-based identities and how the dominance of state-based identities in the international system actively detracts from other identities. The theory of ontological security can offer an explanation as to how and why state discourse positions asylum seekers as a threat. The biographical identity narrative within the state and the way the state acts amongst its international peers offers insight into the ways migrants contest state identity and state security. By intersecting the this security literature that assumes the state and migration literature that problematizes the state I make an intervention. This intervention is situated within the human security paradigm, in which I offer a decentered human security that incorporates the logic of ontological security without the state, whereby human security does not have to rely on state based identities.