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In this article, we examine the television series about global surveillance Person of Interest (POI) (aired on CBS, 2011–2016) to reflect on popular understandings of surveillance and account for its representation of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic surveillance. Drawing on television, media, and surveillance studies, we focus on the power of representations of social relations and diegetic technologies in possible and imagined futures to explore the role of cultural representations in shaping social order. Through the character of the AI Machine representing algorithmic surveillance, we evaluate the show's critique of algorithmic autonomy and contend that, as a media technology of surveillance, the show participates in the hype of big data as a panacea while banalizing surveillance. We argue that POI could facilitate a comprehensive analysis of the politics of algorithmic surveillance but fails to do so due to its uncritical representation of artificial intelligence agencies in detecting security risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars find that security cooperation increases the foreign aid that allies receive from a major power, other studies show that an alliance also has negative effect and its terms can change over time. This article argues that a donor's security environment impacts its participation in security cooperation and, subsequently, foreign aid allocation to allies. When the security environment is competitive, a donor will concentrate its resources on strengthening its ties with allies. In contrast, when the environment is favorable to a donor, it can use security cooperation as leverage to obtain policy concessions from allies, thus reducing its own foreign aid expenditures. This paper analyzes the aid allocation of three major power donors as well as 72 formal defense pacts and 70 bilateral defense cooperation agreements, and it finds that a favorable security environment allows a donor to reduce its economic contribution to its allies by 19 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception as a modern and evolving discipline, psychology has been concerned with issues of human security. This think piece offers an initial conceptualisation of human security as a broad security concept that encompasses a range of interrelated dimensions that have been responded to by different sub-disciplinary domains within psychology. We advance an argument for a human security psychology as a connecting focal point for general psychology that enables us to bring knowledge from across our eclectic discipline into further dialogue. This is a necessary step in understanding better the state of current thinking on the psychology of security and as a basis for informing further theory, research and practice efforts to address issues of human (in)security. This initial effort is informed by Assemblage Theory, which offers a dynamic and contextually rich perspective on people as agentive beings entangled within evolving natural and social formations that can foster or undermine their experiences of [in]security. The article is completed with a brief agenda for advancing human security psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deepening levels of poverty in Zimbabwe have resulted in high numbers of Zimbabwean women migrating to South Africa in the hopes of securing better wages and job security. Most of these migrants end up working in the informal sector with limited income, high levels of insecurity, and a lack of protection against gender-based violence and xenophobia. Regardless of the adversities that these women encounter, they often display resilience and adaptability. Based on semi-structured interviews with 22 Zimbabwean migrant women, this article documents how these migrant women navigated some of the vulnerabilities and challenges they encountered. Instead of always being constrained by different structures of violence, this article unpacks the women's strategies to ensure their survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compensation for internally displaced persons (IDPs) is one of the most important ways in which IDPs can be cushioned against multiple forms of insecurity. If conducted timely and impartially, it can increase resilience in the wake of the sudden and often unplanned livelihood-related and social changes that are associated with internal displacement and concomitant vulnerabilities for the displacees. Yet, states have a poor reputation of delaying the compensation of displacees, sometimes indefinitely. Often, displaced communities have to engage in protracted legal and illegal battles with states to get compensation for land and for other valuable and compensable assets. Many such battles never end in the favor of the displacees as delays in compensation erode its value, particularly in countries with hyperinflation, such as Zimbabwe. In this article, we argue for thinking about compensation as a critical component of IDPs' human security. More precisely, we conceive of compensation as one of the key means of enhancing two forms of human security: food security and housing security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the broader concept of human security emphasizes the need for safety from livelihood security threats, the roles of attachment and violent conflicts on rural migration remain a subject of considerable debate. This study examines the drivers of rural migration within the context of potential relative deprivation. Using data from 1,750 households residing in rural areas of Nigeria, the study reports two key findings. First, the results show that migration is structured by the socio-economic stratification of rural households. Secondly, the results of ordinary least squares reveal that rural attachments, deprivation, cattle rustling and human capital are salient factors determining the patterns of rural migration. It can be argued that cattle rustling, as one of the major security threats affecting pastoral communities, is constraining pastoral households from pursuing their normal livelihoods and thus reducing the raiding of pastoral livelihood assets may help in reducing rural-urban migration in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studied human trafficking and associated threats exacerbating insecurity of victims, families and the community in Atsbi Wenberta woreda. Besides, it examined the response to the problem. Subsequently, this article underlined applying a human security perspective is required to address the root cause and risks of human trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws attention to the consequences of simplistically equating gender, sex and women when doing peacebuilding. Drawing on the ambivalent nature of security architecture interventions from the African continent, I make a case for keeping a variety of conceptual approaches to gender mainstreaming in mind in order to avoid a narrow fixation on adding women. I show through selected examples how institutional frameworks and commitments may appear progressive but could have potentially exclusionary effects. Gender is an important lens to analyse peacebuilding practices and commitments, but only if viewed as an action or means of 'doing' that disrupts additive liberal approaches to peacebuilding. As an alternative, the article proposes a gender-relational and intersected analysis of everyday securities and peacebuilding. A focus on lived, gendered and racialised experiences of insecurity and peacebuilding at the everyday level offsets the abstract and universalised approach adopted by states as well as regional and continental players. The article concludes that approaches to gender mainstreaming through sameness, difference and diversity should be seen as complementary to allow space for a context-specific, thick analysis of gender relations on the ground as well as gendered processes of structural or institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since independence on October 1, 1960, Nigeria has been a victim, at one time or the other, of intra-ethnic, inter-ethnic, religious, and communal conflicts which have undermined the human security of her citizens. Nigeria's corporate existence had also been threatened by 3 years (1967–1970) civil war which impacted negatively on the well-being of its people. In addition, the inability of the Nigerian Police to cope with the magnitude of the surge of violence in recent years has brought about the idea of involving the military, a core component of traditional security apparatus to deal with internal insecurity. This article is anchored on human security paradigm with reliance on secondary data to analyze the operations of the Nigerian Military in counterviolence campaigns between 1999 and 2017. This article points out that the involvement of the military in internal security has worsened the problem of insecurity due to the military's unprofessional approach and, at times, deliberate targeting the civilian populace which it is supposed to protect. It, therefore, recommends among others, the need for the Federal Government of Nigeria to urgently review the role of the armed forces in addressing internal security situations in a way that will bring about respect for the rule of engagement in internal security operations and adherence to global best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the globalizing international relations (IR) debate, the "West" and "Global South" have conventionally been presented as fundamentally different categories. This has disguised any interconnectedness between the two categories and variation within them. What does this mean for the quest for "Global South theorizing?" In order to address this binary logic in the globalizing IR literature, I analyze the case of human security as an example of Global South theorizing. First, I disentangle the Western/Global South origins and inflection of the human security concept and find that there is Global South agency related to its conceptual development, but also Western inflections. Second, I examine and compare the apparent rejection of the concept in two regions of the Global South—Southeast Asia and Latin America—and find both similarities and differences in their disinterest in engaging with the concept. Curiously, the similarities lie in the positionality of these regions and their difference to the West. In this way, the article points to the danger of using these categories in a manner that reemphasizes binary logics and their constitutive effects, and it exposes the complexity regarding what we consider Global South and Global South theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security concerns, including poverty and violence, are viewed as critical factors in understanding the drivers of and experiences with internal and international migration from Honduras. Drawing on a broad definition of human security that encompasses 'freedom from fear' and 'freedom from want', in addition to insights from critical and feminist security studies, we interrogate different dimensions of human security for rural households from one region of Honduras. We include data from 248 household surveys and a qualitative activity with 60 secondary school students to explore how experiences of security influence migration decisions and outcomes from this setting. For surveyed households, we find that migration contributed to enhanced economic and emotional security among family members left behind. Fear of violence was a prominent barrier to migration rather than a motivation for migration. Additionally, educational attainment raised personal and household expectations concerning the feasibility of migration to mitigate insecurity. Overall, we find human security to be a useful framework to understand motivations for and outcomes from migration among these rural households. However, the relationship between experiences of security and migration needs to be situated in the context of broader rural livelihoods, including local economic realities and intrahousehold characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to analyse the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its repercussions for humanity from the perspective of Human Security. In addition, the aim is to focus on the international systemic problems in the UN on the basis of Human Security. The Human Security approach is expected to bring new insights both to the analysis of what happened to Iraq and its people and how the 'noble' aims of the US invasion brought about just the opposite outcomes. It is argued that Iraqis and the country's future should be thought in the context of Human Security rather than abstract ideals of democratisation and emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current migration and refugee crisis in Europe requires an understanding of the different migration drivers beyond the well-known economic determinants. In this article, we view migration from a broader human security perspective and analyze the determinants of regular and asylum seeker migration flows from Africa to Europe for the period 1990 to 2014. Our results show that, in addition to economic determinants, a combination of push and pull factors influences migration decisions of individuals. In particular, rising political persecution, human rights violations, ethnic tensions, political instability, and civil conflicts in African source countries are all significantly associated with increased migration flows into European destination countries. Therefore, our results underscore the need for the European Union and European countries to collaborate with the source countries, not only in terms of supporting economic development in the source countries but also in promoting human security: human rights, democracy, peace, and social stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War, the UN’s collective security model has been questioned as to whether it has been well equipped to respond to the changing landscape of global security. By using the UN Security Council’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, this paper traces the discursive contestations of the traditional understanding of the UN Charter-based collective security model. It examines what meanings the member states collectively attach to public health crises, how they frame the COVID-19 pandemic, and, finally how they consider the role of the Security Council in responding to non-military emergencies. An analysis of the debates by the Council members suggest that there is a slow normative change in the recognition of health security as an indivisible aspect of peace. We argue that the pandemic has created a normative environment for the Council’s members to rethink ‘broadening’ and ‘deepening’ collective security beyond military conflicts to emphasize the Council’s role in addressing health issues, structural inequalities, and other human security threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial extraction of nitrogen (N) from the atmosphere began soon after World War II and has provided N fertilizer that has transformed agriculture to meet, through greater crop areas and yields although with some regional shortfalls, the increasing food demand of a world population that has increased from 2 billion then to 7.6 billion in 2018. N fertilizer now provides more N input to agriculture (113 Mt N/year) than biological N fixation by legumes (33–46 Mt N/year) on which earlier agriculture relied entirely. Persistent claims over the last decade for return to organic methods, which include rejection of fertilizer N, are based on studies that erroneously claim adequate productivity to feed the world. Previous analyses, by contrast, have estimated that organic agriculture (OA) could at best support a world population of three to four billion. The problem is two-fold. First, organic crops grown in sequences with legumes or treated with N manures mostly yield less than crops grown with N fertilizer. Second, substantial areas of legumes are required to provide adequate N for required yields of non-legume crops. Recent analyses have overestimated the yield of organic crops by omitting the effect of weeds, pests and diseases, and by ignoring the land required for legumes. The result is a large overestimation of the relative productivity of OA. The effect of area is critical because, since there is little opportunity to increase cropping area beyond the current 1400 Mha, land for legumes means less land for, and consequently lower total production from, non-legume food crops. To replace 100 Mt N fertilizer/year with legumes at a net fixation of 100 kg N/ha/year would leave just 30% of cropland available for non-legumes producing a similar proportion of current yield. Even with major gains in yield, organic systems cannot feed our populous world and less so as the population increases to an expected 9.8 billion by 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main task of this article is to link the issue of the identity of migrants to the human security of migrants with temporary labor status. This article explores not only the politico-economic circumstances of temporary labor migration amid conditions of insecurity, vulnerability, and precarity, and its social and cultural underpinnings, which are mediated by migrants’ class position, but also the consequences on temporary migrants’ identities. The temporary migrant workers from Bangladesh in the Gulf Coordinating Council (GCC) countries including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) belong to multiple spaces yet their families and homes are foremost anchors in their narratives of belonging. The space most temporary migrant workers occupy is glocal with a specific focus on geography as well as the community. The article addresses the class-based identity and human security of the temporary Bangladeshi migrants in the UAE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates forced migration amid intersections of burgeoning human insecurities that force increasing numbers of people to leave their homes and become susceptible to exploitation. Drawing upon data on trafficking in Pakistan, the author argues that marginalized groups often go through multiple migrations that can include episodes of trafficking for sex, labor, or other purposes. The disjuncture between policies and realities on the ground, and the trend of current interventions do little to address the human security of these migrants. The article emphasizes that the human security frame provides a more nuanced human rights-based approach to analyze this form of migration and address the root causes and risks associated with the forced displacement of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is on post-migration entitlement and access to health security of women international migrants in England who are in vulnerable circumstances. Here ‘health security’ is defined as the protection of health within a broader public health context. The aim is to understand the factors underlying migrants’ vulnerabilities and how national and local health policies and practices respond in allowing or denying them rights to healthcare, thus impacting their ability to safeguard their health. This article is predominantly concerned with experiences of access to healthcare of categories of migrant women who may be in vulnerable situations including asylum seekers, refugees, refused asylum seekers or other undocumented migrant women, women with no recourse to public funds who are supported by local authorities, trafficked women, Roma women, women with limited fluency in English, and migrants from the European Union (EU) with no health insurance card. By examining empirical evidence of such women’s experiences of entitlement and access to healthcare we are able to gain theoretical insight into the relationship between migration, gender and human (health) security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the experiences of diverse groups of migrants in a highly developed non-Western society: Japan. Using critical analysis of literature and semi-structural interview data with 50 Japanese nationals and 109 foreign migrants, it explores how Japan, which sees itself as a relatively racially homogeneous society, operates in response to increasing demands for migrants, and how the structures of the state and interactions of dominant and migrant groups affect migrants’ security. It shows the salience of glocal racial ideologies creating an uneven terrain of migration for migrants from different parts of the world. Specifically, the Japanese state grants work visas for highly-skilled and specialized labor migrants as it maintains that it only accepts highly-skilled labor migrants, while opening a side-door to recruit Japanese descendants and trainees from the Global South as low-skilled laborers. This bifurcated visa structure reinforces racial hierarchies, where those who are perceived to be from Western societies are deemed as superior foreigners, while those who are from non-Western societies are seen as strangers who are a potential threat to the country’s moral standards. This hierarchy shapes their level of human security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade or two the notion of human security has emerged as a benchmark for assessing the quality of everyday lives. Despite the paradigmatic shift, scholarly inquiries on human security rarely center sexual migrants. This article attends to this gap. Based on 30 in-depth interviews and supplemented with web material, the article describes the unique and multidimensional vulnerabilities endured by queer immigrants of color – queer South Asians – in the US. The article simultaneously contextualizes and moves beyond the areas of law and public policy, to examine queer migration and security from the subjective lens of the migrants (documented, undocumented, refugee and asylees) in order to demonstrate that safety, security and acceptance are negotiated with multiple agents (such as intimate partners, family, co-ethnic community, etc.) amid social cleavages (such as class, nationality, religion, gender and age) that facilitate or interrupt migration in ‘glocal’ contexts where the global and local intersect in complex ways to suffuse all such experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article outlines a framework to bridge some of the current fragmentation and knowledge hierarchies in the sociological field of migration. The article builds on the insights – and epistemological roots – used in different parts of the world to reflect on 21st-century realities of migration and human security. It considers international migrants, internally displaced persons, refugees and trafficked persons as part of a continuum of migrants who exhibit seasonal, temporary and long-term migration patterns. The framework draws upon the scholarship of the Global South and North on political-economic processes that have historically influenced migration and migrants’ lives and continue to do so today. It considers the dominant approach used in studies of international migration and shows why it is necessary to go beyond the focus on nation-states and an emphasis on a particular group of migrants. The framework weaves the insights of scholars who work on international, internal migration and forced migration, as well as the critical literatures on intersectionality and human rights to build an approach that centers questions of migrants’ human security. The framework emphasizes the glocal – i.e. intersecting global-national-local – terrains of migration and discusses human security within glocal terrains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article foregrounds the overlapping continuum of local to global fault lines that structure the human security experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kenya. Drawing on data from the 2007–2008 electoral violence-induced displacement of ethnic minorities in the Rift Valley region, the article discusses how the intersections of ethnicity, national politics, land rights, and global humanitarian politics on displacement positioned IDPs as outsiders in their own nation and how this shapes their ability to live secure lives. By so doing, the study transcends nation-state border focused forced migration to question the relevance of dichotomizing IDPs and refugees, which shapes their protection. The author argues for the need to critically examine the less visible and fluid borders which displace people from their homelands in order to address the human security of all who are forced to flee from their homes regardless of whether they have crossed national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-term analytical view of Indian migration and their human rights experiences in South Africa is essential to understand what prompts continued Indian migration and the factors that shape migrants’ human security experiences. The intersections of global, social, political and economic powers combine with national and international forces to determine the experiences of migration and human (in)security among Indian migrants in South Africa. This article focuses on historical Indian indentured migrants and the continued post-apartheid contemporary migration of Indians to South Africa. Throughout South Africa’s turbulent, violent and exploitative history, the political constructs of slavery, colonialism, economic expansionism, economic dispossession and apartheid convened in the passage of poor men, women and children from the Indian subcontinent. The article argues that traces of earlier exploitative histories continue to shape the framework for present-day Indian migrants in a way that impacts directly on their human security within a contemporary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research demonstrates that refugee populations can threaten the security of receiving countries. This study, in contrast, seeks to examine the physical security challenges refugees face in host states. It utilizes a new, geographically referenced data set on subcountry refugee demographics to test the hypothesis that locations home to larger refugee populations are more likely to experience one-sided attacks by conflict actors. Results demonstrate that refugee accommodation is a significant predictor of one-sided violence in Africa. In particular, combatants commit significantly more acts of violence against civilians in locations home to larger numbers of self-settled refugees compared to other locations. These findings suggest that scholars and practitioners account for possible dangers presented by refugee flows and threats to refugees simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to explore the securitisation of water in the Nile basin. As in the wider Middle East, the securitisation of water occurred in the context of larger political grievances, inherited from colonial times. The trigger in all cases has been water scarcity. The securitising actors in all cases were decision-makers; in the case of the Tigris–Euphrates basin, NGOs and human rights activists have also emerged as securitising actors. The target audiences in all cases included the national public and international public opinion, as well as decision-makers in donor countries, especially in the case of the Tigris–Euphrates and Nile basins. Several securitisation mechanisms have been used simultaneously in all cases; in the case of the West Bank Aquifer, for example, resource capture (structural securitisation) went hand in hand with joint water management committees (institutional securitisation). In all cases, language played a crucial role in the securitisation of water resources, especially in the cases of Egypt and Israel, where the symbolic value of water and land are closely tied with religious traditions inherited from ancient times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on issues of (in)security has tended to have a military/safety angle and focus on global/national scales linked to spectacular events. This paper addresses the overlooked insecurity realities of urban dwellers in the global South through a focus on more persistent and enduring forms of employment insecurities among young people. Building on both quantitative and qualitative data collected in a low-income settlement in Lusaka, Zambia, we explore how young people perceive their employment situation and examine the practices they engage in when seeking ways of making a living. Through analysing their views and experiences we show how employment insecurity is influenced by processes operating at the body, local, national and global scales, and how employment insecurity is closely interconnected with insecurity in other domains of young people's lives including the household, housing and education. Although the youth unemployment situation is often viewed as a serious threat to human security, we show how the lack of stable employment in itself is a manifestation of insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Echoing the call recently made by Ed and Dana Luck and building on a research project triggered several years ago by Siba Grovogui’s postcolonial critique of the concept of responsibility to protect (R2P), this article explores the significance of what may be labeled individual R2P. It argues that acknowledging individual R2P as part of the doctrine not only highlights the role that a heretofore underappreciated layer of actors can and does play to protect individuals from some of the worst crimes. At the theoretical level, it also has the potential to mitigate some of the R2P doctrine’s main ambiguities, while in real life, acknowledging individual R2P does, without exonerating institutional actors from their obvious responsibilities, recognize at the very least the right of people of conscience, worldwide, to take matters in their own hands even in the worst cases of international paralysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A powerful new wave of alienating land from those who live on it is sweeping the global commons, and discourses such as “Emerging Economies” and “Brazil, Russia, India, China” are the ideological mediators of this wave. In India, the “slow violence” of the Nehruvian decades has been replaced by the accelerated pace of such processes under a neoliberal dispensation. In both periods, the overwhelming costs of “development” have been preponderantly visited upon Dalits, tribals, and landless laborers. Colonial laws regarding land acquisition and Eminent Domain have been an important legacy for the postcolonial state in its efforts to acquire land for private capital. They have intersected with notions of race and caste within the habitus of the Indian middle class, whose efforts to make the nation are simultaneously the unmaking of various subaltern groups and classes. Yet, as the struggle between the multinational Vedanta Corporation and a tribal group called the Dongaria Kondh in the Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha in southeastern India demonstrates, the outcomes are by no means a foregone conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper remaps the geographies of terrorism. Everyday terrorism (domestic violence) and global terrorism are related attempts to exert political control through fear. Geographical research on violence neatly reflects the disproportionate recognition and resourcing that global terrorism receives from the state. The paper explores the parallels, shared foundations and direct points of connection between everyday and global terrorisms. It does so across four interrelated themes: multiscalar politics and securities, fear and trauma, public recognition and recovery, and the inequitable nature of counter-terrorisms. It concludes with implications for addressing terrorisms and for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is emerging as an important source of threat to the peace and security of Central Asia. This is happening, notwithstanding the fact that this region is receiving substantial amount of external remittance. Apart from lack of economic opportunities, existence of blurred boundaries, emergence of authoritarian regimes with a tilt towards strong ‘ethnic state’ as well as the alienation of substantial number of population are contributing to the process of flow of illegal migration. This results in loss of young population, growing ethno-nationalistic conflict, spurt in religious terrorism, proliferation of narco-trafficking as well as HIV/AIDS in this region. These above-mentioned threats are generating a lot of ‘insecurity’ in Central Asia. The best way to meet the challenges posed by migration is to ensure ‘sustainable security’ in this region by adopting a broader approach ranging from cooperation among the states of this region so also to ensure human security at the ground level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on primary focus group research to explore the differing ways in which UK publics conceptualise and discuss security. The article begins by situating our research within two relevant contemporary scholarly literatures: The first concerns efforts to centre the ‘ordinary’ human as security’s referent; the second, constructivist explorations of security’s discursive (re)production. A second section then introduces six distinct understandings of security that emerged in our empirical research. These organised the term around notions of survival, belonging, hospitality, equality, freedom and insecurity. The article concludes by exploring this heterogeneity and its significance for the study of security more broadly, outlining a number of potential future research avenues in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Security issues in international relations, particularly during the era of the Cold War, were and had been dominated by the realist paradigm which saw the preservation of the state from external threat. Such a conception of security provided a very myopic and narrow understanding of the security problem of states, particularly smaller states. During the past decade, attempts are being made to broaden the security agenda to include not only military but also other sectors: political, economic, societal and ecological. Furthermore, with globalisation and the opening up of the economy has provided scope for cross-border migration and also illicit trade, especially narcotics, terrorism and a dangerous mix of both: narco-terrorism. This article will throw a light on the non-traditional security threats problem and issues of illicit drug trafficking and narco-terrorism in North-east India particularly in the case of Manipur. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

“International student security” refers to the international student’s maintenance of a stable capacity for self-determining human agency. The article focuses on the role of English-language proficiency in the security of students from English as Foreign Language countries, drawing on evidence from a program of semistructured interviews with 200 international students. The interviews show that language proficiency is a pervasive factor in the human security of the international students in all domains inside and outside the classroom. There is a strong link between language proficiency and the capacity for active human agency. Both findings confirm prior research literature. The article concludes with implications for practice and for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how conflict in the country of origin interacts with other factors in shaping migrants' remittance-sending practices. Our data come from a survey of 10 immigrant groups in Norway and semi-structured interviews with Somali and Pakistani remittance-senders and receivers. First, we conduct an in-depth comparison to explore the differences in how Somali and Pakistani migrants decide about remittance-sending. Second, we use survey data on all 10 migrant groups to evaluate whether the differences that are not explained by socioeconomic characteristics, may partly reflect whether or not there is ongoing conflict in the country of origin. In our analyses we differentiate between (1) the effect of migrants' capacity to remit and their prioritizing of local and transnational expenditures, and (2) the impact of state collapse and absence of human security on migrants' and refugees' desire to remit. We find that ongoing conflict in the country of origin exerts an upward pressure on remittance-sending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors examine two set of issues that constrain contemporary peace support operations (PSOs): one centered on the kinds of knowledge prevalent in PSOs and the second involving the organizational structures that characterize them. The authors' aim is to show the deep discursive and structural limitations and contradictions that continue to characterize the actions of armed forces and the dominance of militaristic thinking within PSOs. This article centers on multidimensional peacekeeping marked by emphasizing two main points in regard to the complex nature of such peacekeeping. First, Western military thinking is still dominant in the professional discourse of peacekeeping despite the fact that in many cases it is less relevant to the arenas where it is applied (in weakened or failed states). Second, forces in second-generation peacekeeping missions are by definition a form of hybrid organizations, and therefore conceptual changes in regard to PSOs not only involve the realm of knowledge but also entail practical consequences for the very organizational means used to achieve their aims. The authors' analysis demonstrates the blending, hybridization, and linkages that are an essential part of PSOs as processes that carry both advantages and disadvantages for organizational action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the problem of global norm diffusion in international relations with particular reference to the implementation of ‘the responsibility to protect’ (R2P) in East Asia. Exposing the limits of previous work on norm localization, we develop the framework of the norm diffusion loop. Rather than understanding norm diffusion as a linear top-down process, we demonstrate that the reception of R2P has evolved in a far more dynamic way that can best be described as a feedback loop. We first look into the processes and causal mechanisms that helped to construct R2P as an emerging transnational soft norm; then we analyse the challenges of diffusing R2P from the global to the regional and domestic levels; and, finally, we examine the variation of norm effects within the same region across states, investigating in particular how R2P has shaped Chinese and Japanese policy responses respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations. Economic human rights are expressed in Ailicles 23, 25, and 26. The UDHR requires that poverty be seen not just as an unfortunate living condition but also as a violation of human rights. In this study,20 women with children were educated about the UDHR and interviewed in order to understand their stories of poverty through the lens of rights violations. Implications for reframing poverty as a rights violations and how social workers can advocate for policies that promote the well being of families are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls from the climate change community and a more widespread concern for human security have reawakened the interest of geographers and others in disaster politics. A legacy of geographical research on the political causes and consequences of disaster is reviewed and built on to formulate a framework for the analysis of post-disaster political space. This is constructed around the notion of a contested social contract. The Marmara earthquake, Turkey, is used to illustrate the framework and provide empirical detail on the multiple scales and time phasing of post-disaster political change. Priorities for a future research agenda in disaster politics are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the UN promulgation of the concept of human security in the early 1990s, one of the countries most enthusiastic about the new paradigm has been South Africa. That country has endeavored to reflect human security values in virtually all state activities. This article examines how South Africa has applied the concept to its armed forces. It argues that the military "operationalization" is evident in two key respects: first, in the country's support for Africa's emerging security architecture; and second, in an increasing willingness to commit military forces to external peace operations. However, this application has largely occurred at the national strategic level. It was much less clear in 2007 that any human security ethos was forming within the South African armed forces themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Human Security, Law and the Prevention of Terrorism," by Andrej Zwitter.