^aUniversity of Southern California, VKC330, SIR, USC, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0043, USA. E-mail: alker@usc.edu

¹For reasons that should become apparent, I take this title from Chilton and Schäffner (2002).

Abstract

As a reaction to Claudia Aradau's essay in this journal, I firstly feel something more should be said about the strengths of the Copenhagen School's modest, but analytically, normatively and empirically useful approach to securitization, and securitization's relationship with desecuritization. When properly understood, this analytical approach helps us in the same limited way to answer Aradau's call for prior political theorizing. Secondly, I want emphatically to demur from Aradau's assertion of the necessary priority of political analyses of securitization before beginning its conceptual or comparative analysis. Sceptically, I am led to ask: 'Can only a master political theorist emancipate the securitization analyst?' Finally, I want to express my appreciation of Aradau's creative and insightful approach to the dilemmas of immigration-relevant securitization in the European context.