The Political Psychology of (De)Securitization: Place-Making Strategies in Denmark, Sweden, and Canada

Abstract

In this article we demonstrate how both state structures and collective agencies contribute to patterns of securitization and, in so doing, reconfigure conceptions of space and place. Focusing on the life-chances of Muslim minority populations in Denmark, Sweden, and Canada, we begin by establishing how experiences of empire and colonization have shaped dominant regimes of citizenship and multiculturalism. Analyzing responses to the Danish newspaper publication of the 'Mohammed cartoons', we illustrate the dynamics of place making that are operative in the political psychology of securitization. Our analysis illustrates the cosmopolitical and dialogical character of Canadian multiculturalism and how such a regime facilitates a politics of space that is distinct from the cartographies of imperialism that inform place making in Denmark and, to a lesser extent, Sweden.

Full text

Introduction
As in many other parts of the world, residents in the metropolitan and multicultural
areas of Copenhagen i n Denmark, Malmo
«
in Sweden, and the Greater Toronto Area in
Canada, daily experience the growing complexities and hybridizations of borders and
identities, of interio r and exterior, and of spaces and faces. The experiential borders
of `Danishness', `Swedish ness', and `Canadianness' are smudging and eroding. Global
cyberflows of information and capital, substantial waves of immigration, and a more
visible and thriving multiculturalism have challenged much of what was previously
taken for granted in defining societal and proprietorial borders. It is, in fact, less and
less viable to construct place-based realities on the scale of national-level institutions
and social organizations. T he new dynamism in the public sphere is located in the
microsociology and psychology of neighborhood morphology, housing allocations,
the politics of schooling, interpersonal enc ounters, food habits, dress codes, and other
similar s ignifiers. As we explain below, the experiential scope of such ostensibly
localized place-based identifiers is in fact `glocalized' (Robertson, 1995). Glocalization
is constituted by the practice s of local agents as they constru ct meanings, negotiate
identities, and reproduce institutional forms within the context of globalization.
Glocalization is practiced dialectically as agents invoke, claim, refine, and hybridize
phenomenal elements whose territory, place, scale, and network swoop from the local
to the global, often apprehended in the same experiential moment. Although glocal-
ization is a matter of deliberative agency, it is not entirely a matter of voluntarism.
Certain glocalizing projects are s tructurally more feasible than others, and some come
with greater privilege and prestige than others.
In this article we discuss this sociopsychological place-making as a process of
`se curitization' among both majority and minority communities. Our con ception
of securitization develop s the work of the Copenhagen School (Buzan et al, 1998)
and defines securitization as the social construction of an existential threat that
The political psychology of (de)securitization: place-making
strategies in Denmark, Sweden, and Canada
Catarina Kin nvall
Departm e nt of Political Scienc e, Lund University, Box 52, 22100 Lund, Sweden;
e-ma il: catarina.kinnvall@svet.lu.se
Paul Nesbitt-Larking
Department of Political Science, Huron University College, The University of Western Ontario,
1349 Western Road, London, Ontario N6G 1H3, Canada; e-mail: pnesbitt.uwo.ca
Rece ived 3 November 2008 ; in revised form 18 February 2010; published online 18 August 2010
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2010, volume 28, p ages 1051 ^ 1070
Abstract. In this article we demonstrate how both state structures and collective agenc ies contribute
to patterns of securitization and , in so doing, reconfigure conc eptions of space and place. Focusing on
the life-chances of Muslim minority populations in Denmark, Sweden, and Canada, we begin by
establishing how experiences of empire and colon ization have shaped dominant regimes of citizenship
and multiculturalism. Analyzing responses to the Danish newspaper publication of the `Mohammed
cartoons', we illustrate the dynamics of place making that are operative in the p olitical psychology of
securitization. Our a nalysis illustrates the cosmopolitical and dialogical character of Canadian multi-
culturalism and how such a regime facilitates a politics of space that is distinct from the cartogr aphies
of imperialism that inform place making in Denmark and, to a lesser extent, Sweden.
doi:10.1 068/d1 3808

successfully justifies extraordinary political measures. To securitize an issue that had
not previously been viewed as a s ecurity threat is to challenge the state to commit
greater resources to solving problems associated w ith it. To desecur itize an issu e means
to remove it from the realm of existential survival, thus making it easier to resolve
through cooperative and/or routine means of problem solving in civil society (Sheehan
2005, page 54). Thus, the very invocation and attempted reassertion of borders, sovereign
powers, and state apparatuses is evidence of bids for securitization, not merely on the
part of majorities but also minorities.
Our theoretical orientation applies elements of structurationist analysis (Giddens,
1984) to the emergence of place-making strategies among Muslim minorities in
Denmark, Sweden, and Canada. We demonstrate how both structures and coll ective
agency contribute to patterns of (de)securitization. The life-chances and statuses of
Muslim minorities are established in three distinct regimes of c itizenship, which are
themselves grounded in histories of e mpire and colonization. We discuss this colonial
legacy and set out the nature of these three regimes in the first two sections of the
article. Such regimes constitute formative forces in preferring and privileging typical
place-making strategies o n the part of Muslim minorities. Of central importance
are the specific regimes of multiculturalism adopted in each political society. In order
to understand the dynamics of pl ace making, we require a political psychology of
securitization. The praxis of such place-making strategies i s evident in the responses
to a common global event: the September 2005 publication of the Mohammed
cartoons in Denmark. This event substantially destabilized both majority and minority
Muslim populations and led to a series of actions and reactions related to bids to
securitize and desecuritize. We use the example of the Mohammed cartoons to illustrate
how different regimes of citizenship affect and instigate different responses in securitizing
practices. In the third section of the article we analyze the political psychology of
(de)securitization in each of the three societies, focusing in particular on the place-making
strategies that typify each country's responses to the Mohammed cartoon and other
associated crises. Our analysis draws upon a range of secondary sources, notably the
published responses of political and community leaders to the Mohammed cartoon
crisis, as well as data from sixty-two in-depth interviews we conducted with Muslims
in Denmark (fifteen), Sweden (thirteen), and Canada (thirty four).
Empire and c oloniz ation : reconfigu ring space and place
As with much in the late modern experience, the growing complexity of borders
and margins can be c elebrated as an expression of creative opportunity or feared
as an existential threat. Hall (1992) recalls the p owerful Eurocentric intellectual tradi-
tion that regards hum an diversity as fixed and immutable differences a mong types
of human b eings. Under the influence of nationalist ideas that emerged in the era of
imperialism and colonialism, this tradition resulted in notions of political societies as
singular, bordered, sovereign, and internally integrated. Within these realms, people
were basically the same, whi le outside they were entirely different
ö
they were the
`Other' and essentialized as such (Calhoun, 19 95, page 44). A common reaction against
the erosion of clear bound aries and the onset of global m igrations and flows has been a
series of moral panics, seeking to reassert clear lineages of ethnic her itage and demar-
cations of cultural homogeneity both in Wester n Europe and, to a lesser extent, in
Canada. Those who l am ent the loss of the mythic past of ethnoreligious solidity find it
difficult to come to term s with a society that i s no longer (and in fact never was)
monocultural and monoracial. Given the refusal of majorities in Europ e (and
their reticence in Canada) to open the door to sin cere and egalitarian regard
of the newc omer and to inclu de them as fully entitled and integrated memb e rs
1052 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

of the nation, minorities have been confronted with hostility, social closure, and
inward-looking nationalism. Such patterns have b een intensified in the context of
global terror, catalyzed in the attacks on New York, Bali, London, Madrid, and
elsewhere. Being estranged and Othered, certain members of minor ity groups have
retreated into their own glocalized reimagined parallel societies, invoking strands
of ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious tradition in order to reify their existences
and thereby construct their own ontological security.
Both majorities and minorities have sought refuge in the idealized and distantiated
cartography of metropolis and hinterland, anachronistically invoked from the era of
navigation and impe rial con quest. Indeed, the very constructi o n of majorities as
fundamentally unilingual, Caucasian, and possessing what Anderson (1983, page 15)
refers to as ``a broad horizontal comradeship'' is itself illustrative of the bid to assert a
fixed social identity in a field of multiple m inorities and overlapping place-making
projects and practices. This process of sociopsychological place making becomes manifest
in `securitization' strategies in which both structures and collective agency contribute to
patterns of (de)securitization.
The Mohammed cartoons controversy, for example, remains vital to discourses
of securitization among majorities and Muslim minor ities five years after the original
publication. This b ecomes evident by looking at the case of Tahawar Hussain Rana.
Rana is a former Pakistani cadet and medical student, with Canadian citizenship of
convenience, operating an immigration business and an abattoir in Chicago, USA
(Freeze and Ha, 2009). Rana was recently arrested for plotting with David Headley
(a Muslim known as Daood Gilani until his name change in 2006) to kill two Danish
journalists ass ociated with the Mohammed c artoons publications. The postcolon ial
referents associated with the case exemplify the deep intertextual ironies and complex-
ities that undermine ontological security among majorities and minorities alike as they
engage in a complex of glocali zed practice s. Rana's immigration business is called
First World Imm igration S ervices, while his terrorist operation with David Headley
is labeled Mickey Mouse; Rana is a Canadian with scarcely any contact with his
country of citizenship; Headley's powerful association with h is Pakistani and Muslim
identity is revealed in his decision to conc eal his aims under a Christian and Wester n
name of convenience; Tahawa Rana is known as Dr Rana in Chicago, drives a
Mercedes, and ostentatiously shows off his wealth; Rana and Headley met on a Yahoo
discussion website (did they get the Swiftian irony?); and Headley got a visa to visit
Denmark under the pretenc e of wanting to open a branch of First World Immigration
Services in Cop enhagen. Although Rana and Headley are under arrest for susp ected
terrorism, the sociospatial relations of their existence, their sense of ter ritory, place,
scale, and network are typical of late modern Muslim minorities in the diaspora (Jessop
et al, 2008).
The ambiguity of citizenship, identity, and residence associated with Rana is
uncomfortably dissonant for majorities and minorities alike. The example of Rana
serves to illustrate h ow assertions of fixed identity become increa singly difficult to
uphold, although not necessarily less desirable, in a postcolonial context where space
and place are being reconfigured and reasserted. It also points to the inse curities
involved in the erosion of clear boundaries and a stable world where identities are
known once and for all. As McLuhan so vividly describes it in the introduction to his
WarandPeaceinaGlobalVillage(2001, page 1): ``Globes make my head spin. By the
time I have located the place, they have changed the boundaries.'' That this quotation
was found as graffiti on a New Delhi toilet wall by one of the authors one year
after its original publication only serves to propel a further posthumous spin for
McLuhan.
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1053

Regimes of citizenship and multiculturalism in Den mark, Sweden, and Canada
In the era of decoloni zation, following the Second World War, European regimes
of citizenship and denizenship were established to a ssimilate new immigrants from
the former colonies. A range of entitlements was established, from full and equal
(if only `formal') citizenship to limited guest-worker status. Irrespective of their former
status, new immigrants have remained culturally malintegrated throughout Europe and
have re mained outsiders to the European n ation hoods, even when they have made
successful claims as citizens of European states.
The `new natio nalism' (Kaldor, 2001) emerging in Europe over the past decade in
particular is no longer centered on other nation-states but is increasingly concerned
with the enemy within. The definition of the host community b e comes cru cial as
populations m ay fear changes in their ethnic, religious, or cultural compos ition, while
their governments may fear an increase in xenophobia and populi st, antiimmigrant
political parties. As Sheehan (2005, page 95) has noted: ``European politicians in the
early 1990s allowed migration to come to be seen as an issue that could threaten
domestic social and political cohesion, and subsequent political developments such as
the Gulf wars and Al-Qaida terrorist attacks made it comparatively easy to manipulate
sentiments and securitize the migration issue in a negative manner.'' Muslims have been
particularly targeted as being invaders with alien cultures, worshipping other gods and
threatening the majority community's ways of life. In the face of such perceptions,
and in line with a discourse on terror, European governments have opted for restric-
tions on migration and for particular measures of surveillance of Muslim communities.
Denmark
As with the French citizenship regime of la|
«
cite
¨
, the Danish model h as been one of
substantial assimilation, grounded in the expectation that new immigrants who aspire
to citizenship will adopt the Danish language, civic values, and Danish culture. The
Danish nation is defined as an ethnic community whose cultural survival is guaranteed
by the state. This is achieved through the assimilation of immigrants into Danish
cultural values. ``The con cept of cultural homogeneity is thus the most definitional
element of the Danish nation'' (Holm, 2006, page 4) and has constituted the basis for
cultural and institutional racism aimed towards the Muslim community. The growing
conc er n with issues of immigration and settlement has seen a tightening of Danish
immigration and refugee regulations sinc e the early 1990s (Valentine et al, 2009,
pages 242^ 243). The liberal ^ conservative govern ment that came to power in the 2001
election, with support from the extreme right Danish People's Party, successfully
integrated such anti-Muslim notions into a `fear of immigration' platfor m. It was no
coincidence that Jyllandsposten, a Danish newspaper, decided to publish the caricatures,
as immigrants, culture, and religion were integral to the Danish debate (Hedetoft, 2003;
Hervik, 2002; Larsen and Seidenfaden, 2006; Mouritsen, 2005). Although not explicitly
stated, many of these tough new policies on citizenship and immigration have been
directed against Muslim minorities (Holm, 2006; Rytter and Hervik, 2004).
The `new nationalism', grounded in racist discourses and securitization against the
perceived threat of Islam, became culturally and institutionally manifest in the current
Danish governm ent and among segments of the Danish p opulation. Su ch was evident
in the governm ent's response to the publication of twelve caricatures of the prophet
Mohammed in Jyllandsposten in September 2005. When critics argued that Denmark
needed to downplay the cartoon crisis in foreign policy, the Prime Minister immediately
rejected that plea, asserting: ``Denmark will not become an introvert country. We will
maintain our key values both in Denmark and abroad'' (Fogh Rasmussen, Politiken
11 February 2006). This response echoes previous Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup
1054 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

Rasmussen who c alled a meeting with representative im migrant organizations shortly
after the 9/11 attacks. In thi s meeting he demanded that th e participants pledge
allegiance to the Danish Constitution and that they should ``let their women marry
who they want, resp ect the ideals of democracy and not put the Koran above the
Constitution'' (Politiken 28 September 2001). As Schmidt (2004) has noted, th e demand
that women should be able to marry `who they want' was implicitly connected to the
terrorist attacks in the US, although the attacks had no direct relation to gender
relationships. Rasmussen was in fact stitching together a glocalized narrative in which
Danish security and oriental cultures met through the articulatio n of the (veiled and
benighted) woman. In Nyrup Rasmussen's terminology Muslims were also implicitly
regarded as disloyal to democ racy b ecause many Muslims claimed that religion should
play a role in publi c life and that Islamic pri nciples should not be secondary to secular
legislation (Schmidt, 2004). Thi s official viewpoint was premised on the tw i n conceits
that Christianity is entirely absent from public discourse and practice in Denmark
and that Islam as a religio n is somehow l ess rational than either Danish secularism
or other religions. As Mouritsen (2005, p age 76) argues:
``The Lutheran heritage remains important as facilitating the presentation of Danes
as old Christian people. But religion is particularly important in terms of the contrast
between Islam as an overly serious un-modern religi on, which denotes on the one
hand authority and inequality and on the other hand `modern' individualism and
secularism... .''
Globalization and the `war on terror' have also affected the securitization of
religion among Muslim minority groups living in Denmark. Initially, the protests
in D enmark following the publicatio n s of the cartoo n s on 14 Octob er 20 05 d rew
only some 3500 protes ters, who peacefully demonstrated in Copenhagen ( Larsen
and Seidenfaden, 2006). The reason they later became globalized was partly due
to the existence of Islamic entrepreneurs of identity, who played off the reactions
of the Danish state, relaying the incident into Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. T he
publications constituted an ideal platform for promoting narratives of a worldwide
Islamic resurrection.
Swe den
Both Den mark and Sweden, along w ith other Europe an countries, have experienced a
dramatic sh ift from predominantly economic m igration to the contemporary m igration
of refugees. Co mpared with European colonial societies, however, De nmark and
Sweden experienced l arge-scale migration at a relatively late stage. Through the 1980s
and the 1990s Sweden sustained a very open migration policy, whi ch resulted in a high
level of immigrants in relation to the total p opulation. This policy, which took shape
in the 1970s, was g rounded i n an official multiculturalism whose ideology set the
parameters for subsequent public activities. Swedish immigrants were not only encouraged
to keep their cultures, but the state actively supported minorities' cultural heritages in
terms of home language programs, immigrant organizations, and support for vernacular
newspapers and books. With the new liberal ^ conservative government that came into
office in 2006, these policies have increasingly come under question, but a social demo-
cratic political hegemony (Alsmark, 2007), characterized by egalitarian notions of welfare,
equality, and justice, still continues to dominate much Swedi sh political thought. In this
system migrants have been provided with full formal access to the welfare system, and
both Denmark and Sweden are two out of seventeen European states that provide
voting rights (denizenship) at the local and regional levels to third-country nationals
after three years in residence (Groenendijk, 2007).
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1055

However, as S cuzzarello (2010) notes in a recent doctoral dissertation, the
so-called `Swedish model' of im migration and integ ration is changing. There has
been a tendency to emphasize socioeconomic integration at the cost of multicultur-
alism (Scuzzarello, 2010; see also Geddes, 2003), and emphasis has b een placed on
individual rights, self-sufficiency, and self-support as positive indicators of succ essful
integ ration. Wh ile Swedish poli c y in the 199 0s prom oted mul ticu lturalism and estab-
lished an Integration Board, the center ^ r i ght government that came to power in
2006 closed it down, thus strengthening the competitive, individualistic approach to
immigrant policies.
In terms of political power, migrant organizations have not been very successful in
Sweden, and it should be noted that ethnic minor ities are much better represented
in Danish local politics than they are in Sweden (Togeby, 2005). In addition, it is clear
that the Swedish multiculturalist model has encountered a number of problems in
terms of majority acceptance of Islam and Muslims. Two consecutive Swedish reports
published in 2005 and 2006 (Integrationsverkets Rapportserie, 2005; SOU, 2006,
page 79 [State Official Report]) show h ow Islam and Muslims are far from b eing
accepted as a natural feature of a multicultural Sweden. The data used in these
analyses com e from the Integration Barometer, which is a recurrent questionnaire-
based national sur vey carried out by the Swedish Integration Board. These reports
show how Muslims are viewed as a threat and how Islamophobia can be discer ned
in Swedish school books, in the media, and on the Web.
At the same time it is important to point out that there have been s tronger
tendencies in Danish mainstream society to protect an essentialist colonial notion of
`Danish' culture and traditions and to lament the loss of a mythic past of ethnoreligious
solidity. In comparison with Denmark, Sweden has had less of a homoge nous id ea
of the nation-state, which seems to have made it somewhat easier for migrants to
integrate (Alsmark, 2007) and less necessary for religion and other identity anchors
to act as securitizers. The fact that there have not been any significant publi c demands
from Muslim and other religious or cultural minorities to insist on their own institu-
tional stru c tures in term s of separate laws and parallel political institutions provides
some evidence of this. Hence it appe ars that, despite considerable tension and structural
marginalization of migrants in general and Muslims in particu lar, Swedish multi-
culturalism has b een able to diffuse stark polarization between majority and minority
populations, and religious tension has often been desecuritized. Whether th is will
continue to be the case is, however, not self-evident, and significant differenc e s remain
between the Swedish and the Canadian case as discussed below.
Canada
Despite the starkness and the phobia of the `wake-up call' discourses of securitization,
evolving political cultures in Canada, and the organizations and institutions that have
arisen from them, have tended to promote a more muted politics of balance, and
Canadians have so far resisted calls to undertake radical change. The power of such
political cultural origins has not been substantially affected by globalization, 9/11, or
the politics of community isolation or the resort to essentialisms and fundamentalisms.
Wiseman's (2007, page 268) attempt to capture Canadian political culture is only the
latest of many expressions of the moderate politics of stumbling along, an orientation
close to Adorno et al's (1950, pages 461^ 464) anti-authoritarian ``tolerance of ambiguity''.
The political basis of such accommodation is grounded in a sustained historical tension
between liberal individualism and communitarianism throughout Canadian history, in
which no single term has been able to achieve ascendancy. Of the many public policy
positions to reflect this sense of balance between individualism and communitarianism,
1056 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

Canadian multiculturalism is of greatest relevance to how the challenges of ethnoreligious
diversity have been addressed. Balancing core individual rights grounded in the
liberal tradition with a communitarian commitment to certain r ights associated
with cultural distinctiveness, Canadian multiculturalism affirms collective aspiratio ns
to the exte nt that substantial groups of citizens continue to demand them but also to
th e lim it that the realization o f su ch aspirations does not inhibit the full and free
expression of individual citizenship rights among those claimed as members of
designated communities. Thus, communities emerge and are recognized within the
Canadian polity, but the groups that claim to speak on their behalf are tentatively
welcomed to the extent th at their claims to representativeness continue to b e vali-
dated. Rhetorically, Canadian multiculturalism is premised on the egalitarian claim
that all Canadians are refugees and i mmigrants. Such a bland statement of equality,
however, glosses over the critical point that Canada's modern h istory is that of a
Europ ean white-settler colony, w ith all the consequences and reverberations of that
mode of h istorical emergence. Canada's h istory is profoundly underwritten with
practices of racist exclusion, ethnic discr imination, attempts at forced assimilation,
and social closure. In this context, the contemporary possibilities for multicultural-
ism seem restricted and p erhaps doomed. The fact that they have not b een is due to
two important countervailing historical realities. The first is that as an outpost at
the margins of European empires, Canada practiced forms of internal colonialism,
that, though oppressive, did not constitute Canada itself as an imper ial power.
It remained on the p eripheries, a rich and pr ivileged dep endency. An important
by-product of this lack of an imper ialist past is that, on ce Canada abandoned
its overtly ethnocentric and racist immigration policies in the 1960s and 1970s,
it implemented a universalistic and h ighly selective model of legislated immigra-
tion control, grounded in a points system. Thus, multiculturalism in Canada has
lacked any direct association with the institutionalized guilt and the deep complex-
itie s of postcolonialism associated with many European states. The second historical
reality is that, through a complex series of accords and accommodations, n o dominant
way of life came to achieve cultural hegemony. Thus, a sense of openness and balance
has been rendered possible in Canada by the characteristics of its evolving political
cultures. The absence of totalizing grand narratives of nationhood has l ed major
public intellectuals in Canada, notably Gwyn (1997) and Saul (2001), to refer to
Canada as the first postmoder n state long before the postmoder n itself had been
theorized.
Despite the ongoing challenges, and to some extent because of them, a broad range
of empirical evidence, b oth quantitative and qualitative finds widespread support for
the principles and Canadian practices of multiculturalism among the Canadian public,
including Muslim minorities. A number of representative samples of Canadian Muslims
and non-Muslims have revealed firm and widespread commitment toward multicultur-
alism among substantial majorities (Adams, 2007; Canadian Islamic Congress, 2003;
Khour, 2002; Valpy, 2004). Triadafilopoulos (20 06) argues that multiculturalism is of
ce ntral importance to the life-chances of all Canadians, including Muslims. Not only is
it institutionally entrenched an d culturally legitimated, but there is powerful evidence
that Muslim im migrants value their citizenship rights within the Canadian state.
He says: ``Canada has su cc eeded in integrating immigrants and non-immigrants into
a tolerant public culture that combines respe ct for cultural differenc e s with robust levels
of national belonging'' (Triadafilopoulos, 2006, page 9).
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1057

Regimes of citizenship and multiculturalism compared
The Danish regime of citizenship requires Muslims to adopt and adapt to a Danish
civic i dentity and enforces assimilation. Such a regime leaves many Muslims experienc-
ing thei r citizenship as outsiders and aliens, ``feeling vulnerable in the face of narrow
definitions of Danish nationhood predicated on secularism and whiteness'' (Val entine
et al, 2009, page 246). In contrast, Swedish multiculturalism (despite its deficiencies)
tends to allow for the viability of Muslim communities, networks, and practices,
permitting what Valentine et al refer to as the ``freedom to define their own narratives
of identity'' (2009, p age 246; see also Ph illips, 2006, page 35; Staeheli et al, 2009,
page 638). The Canadian variant of multiculturalism encourages both Muslim com mu-
nity development and integration into a network of pan-Canadian civic opportunities
for citizenship. In the Danish context those Muslims who are not willing or able to
assimilate constitute unwelcome parallel communities that coexist uncomfortably with
the regime and the dominant culture. In the Swedish i nstance, as discus sed below,
multicultural com munities identify with their cultural spaces in the Muslim en cl aves
but experience the ir citizenship more broadly through the Muslim diaspora globally.
By way of contrast, Muslim m inorities in Canada are i ntegrated into a m ore unified
civic nationality. In this regard Muslims in Canada are in ``the metaphorical spaces
of the public realm'' (Staeheli et al, 2009, page 646). The valence of their glocalized
existences is shifted strongly toward the national political community relative to their
peers in Sweden and especially Den m ark.
The political psychology of (de)securitization in action: place - making strategies
in Denma rk, Sweden, and Canada
In increasingly multicultural societies, the search for security refers to th e o ntological
anchoring engaged in by both majority and minority communities in order to cop e
with a range of discursive and structural threats to identity and m eaning (Baum an,
1998; Dupuis and Thor ns, 1998; Giddens, 1991, pages 38 ^ 39). Stated in simpl e terms,
ontological security is a security of being, a sense of confidence and trust that the
world is what it app ears to be. For Buzan et al (1998) societal insecurity exists when
communities define a ser ies of events or an issue as a threat to their survival as
a community, be it n ational, religious, ethnic, or racial. These perceived or real threats
may prompt communities to seek sociocultural and religious refuge in a series of `born
again' adoptions of religious, national, or ethnoracial signifiers in order to reestablish
meaning and confidence. Majority political societies b ecome more rigid, closed, and
authoritarian, while parallel societies among m inorities are constructed to foster
an e qual ly e s s ential ist p olitical p sych olog y of co mmunity cohesion through isolation
and retreat.
Culturally, the established orders of religion, community, and family are every-
where in question in response to rapid moder nization, global m igration, and cultural
diffusion, prompting equally strong reactionary countermovements. Ideologically,
the liberal enlightenment and its insistence on truth and reason no longer occupy the
center stage, and the late modern ideological world is increasingly skeptical of grand
narratives. The war on terror has played into the tension created by such processes by
simplifying the issues at stake and portraying values as co nstant, essential, and in need
of preservation or eradication. Conditioned by existential panic, discourses on `civiliza-
tional wars', the `West against the rest', `fundamentalism', and `islamophobia' have
increased cu ltural raci sm in many Western societies at the same time as m any minority
populations, i n p articular Muslims, have felt targeted (Modood, 2005). I n comparison
with past wars conc e rned with power and territory, the new enemies are seen as being
dr iven by dogmatic belief rather than power gains.
1058 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

For Giddens (1991, pages 51 ^ 53) to be ontologically secure and to avoid existential
anxi ety is to provide answers to fundamental existential questions. Religion, like
nationalism, supplies existential answers to individuals' quests for se curity by supply-
ing a consistent structure, thereby distilling order from the chaos and un certainty
in the world. In so doing, religion, like nationalism, provides answers to questions
concerning existence, self and other, good and evil, and the meaning of life. In
providing answers to these questions, religions privilege partial truths, implying an
automatic exclusion of those who do not adhere to such truths. The fact that God
has set the rules and made them difficult to contest absolves the individual psycholog-
ically from the responsibility of having to choose (Juergensmeyer, 2000; Kinnvall, 2006;
Mol, 1976). Religion, especially in its monotheistic form, thus provides a foundation
for the c reation of intolerance against those who do not share core beliefs. Othering
be comes, in other words, a fundamental part of the closing of religious boundaries and
borders.
The process of constructing religious beliefs as the singular truth is one of ideo-
logical work u ndertaken by religious entrepreneurs of meaning (Laustsen and Waever,
2003). In response to globalization, consumerism, and the spread of Western ideas
and practices, religi ous leaders rail against modern society's lack of mo rality, loss of
ethical values, in creased corrupti o n, and so on, arguing th at the only answer to the
current decay is a return to traditional values and religious norms. Valentine, Sp orton,
and Nielson's research on Somalis in the UK and Denmark stresses the importance of
a Muslim identity and illustrates how ``their faith provides an impor tant anchor within
their broader exper ience of dislocation'' (Valentine et al, 2009, page 239). Clear boun-
daries around one's own religion and attacks against other religious interpretations
be come defensible through the conviction that th e sacred struggle is not only a thing
of the past but of the present and the future (Juergensmeyer, 2000).
Much has been written about the extent to which nationalism and issues of nation-
hood provide essentiali st notions of bounded communities. Mary Caputi (1996) offers a
psychoanalytic reading of national identity in which she explains the deep socialization
to a given culture as ``a sense of b eing at home, of being known by others'' (page 689).
The ontogenetic development of the healthy person is grounded in the capacity to link
a core d eveloping personal identity to the social identity of what is known and familiar.
The psychodynamic basis of home and community is therefore the process of differ-
entiation and separation that constitutes the very emergence of the human subje c t.
As noted by Reicher and Hopkins (2001, page 51), ``[I]f national mobilization depends
upon national identity, then establishing identity dep ends upon embedding it within
an essentiali zing historical narrative.'' Many of th e symbols and tropes of the nation
are also invoked in the social construction of religion. As with 19th-c entury romantic
and ethnic nationalism, much of the power of religion resides in its confrontation
with Enlightenment pr inciples of rationalism, universalism, secularism, and materi-
alism (Haynes, 1999). As with national consciousness, an assertive religious identity
varies in its spatial perception (Haynes, 1997). In the present conjuncture powerfully
territorialized nationalisms are encountering radically global and deterritorialized
senses of religious belonging. Through its p ersistent confrontation with modernity,
religion has increasingly come to be seen as a distinct `entity' that is clearly distin-
guishable from less religious existential spheres (Kin nvall, 2004). As a clearly defined
body, it becomes a stabilizing anchor in an otherwise chaotic and changing world,
linking past, present, and future action.
Both m ajority and minor ity entrepreneurs of identity in Europe are engaged in
ideological struggles to win hearts and minds to their securitized national and religious
projects (Kepel, 2004, page 249). A number of p olitical/religi ous leaders would like
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1059

young Muslims to develop a more rigid Islamic identity, rejecting cultural integration
and embracing cultural separatism. `Islamophobia' has often been used by these tradi-
tionalists a s a resource to define and strengthe n Islamic identity
ö
to `re-imagine the
Ummah' (Kahan i-Hopkins and Hopkins, 2002; Mandaville, 2001) among Muslim
diaspori c communities. At the same time, expressing anti-Mu sl im sentiments has
almos t become a legitimate exercise among parts of the majority communities
(Modood, 2005). In this sense, Muslims are featured as invaders, even in societies
such as Scandin avia that are marked by an absence of any historical encounter with
Muslims. As BjÖrgo (1997) has noted, some Norwegian and Danish r ight-wing dis-
courses have substituted classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with anti-Islamic
ones. I n such discourses Muslim migrants are viewed as part of a coordinated plan
to conquer Europe. Responses to 9/11 and the following attacks have also increased
a general feeling among Muslims that they are guilty by association even when being
separated in both time and space from the actual attacks. Hence, they have often been
forced to either condemn actions they had nothing to do w ith or to explain the true
(peaceful) nature of Islam (Larsso n, 2005, page 34). They cannot, in other words,
separate themselves, their group identity, from the attacks.
Most European countries have also seen an up su rge in populist antiimmigrant
parties who encourage the myth that the immigrants, especially Muslims, are taking
over `our' national soil and heritage (eg Le Pen in France, Haider in Austria, Vlams
Bloc i n Belgium, and the Danish People's Party in Denmark). Responding to such
tendencies, the state has institutionalized h arder legi slation and migration controls to
defuse perceived threats to identity and to prevent the spread of xenophobic politics.
Some Muslims in Europe have increasingly come to interpret this Eurocentric `we' as
being about threats to their religious identity, at times insisting upon their own system
of law, order, and societal security. Among right-wing parties racist views are often
combined with mo re general antiglobal discourses as is the case for the Swedish
far-right party Sverigedemokratern a's (Sweden Democrats), for whom immigration,
the European Union, US imperi alism, and econom ic globalization are viewed as threats
to Swedish culture and `Swedishness' (Sverigedemokraterna, 2010). There exist some
major diffe renc es between Sweden and other European societies in ter ms of real power
of right-wing racist parties, however. In Sweden, far-right parties h ave, so far, been
effectively marginalized, while in Den mark and Norway they have gained considerable
voter support (Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking, 2010; Rydgren, 2005).
Many Muslims in the diaspora find that their religion assumes n ew sig nificance,
and/or discover that its symbolic connotations have somehow shifted (Mandaville,
2001; Schmidt, 2004). When the security anchor of home is lost, new moorings
ö
or
a new `home'
ö
for ontological security are searched for. Homesteading as a strategy
means making and shaping a political space for oneself in order to go beyond and
surpass the life of contradictions and an xieties of homelessness (Sylvester, 1994).
For many migrants and minority communities, homesteading works as a bordering
practice and become s a way to counter homelessness and return intim acy and security
to their everyday lives.
Homesteading often involves what Castles and Davidson (2000) have referred to
as `pla ce-making' processes. These can be seen as spatial extensions of homebuilding.
Place making means creating an area, a neighborhood, that visibly transforms the
previous landscape into one that reflects the tastes and values of a certain community.
The use of signs on shops, restaurants, minority markets, and other signifiers, delineates
the community's boundaries. The place-making construction of localized communities
is defensive, a bid to secure a familiar public space with symbolic attachments to the
homeland. Thus, the local is constituted from and in vibrant interaction with the global.
1060 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

Majority populations, in responding to real or perceived increases in migration, are
also engaged in homesteading. The whole notion of home is built upon the idea, or the
discourse, of the nation-state, bringing with it an emotional attachment to those on
the inside and an exclusion of those on the outside. Hence, place making
ö
in terms of
reinterpreting tradition, religion, and culture
ö
is as likely among the majority population
as it is among the minorities.
Amplifying the alienation of the secular state and civil society, minority religious
leaders assert their own religious doctrine through their criticism of structured margin-
alization and the emptiness of Western culture. Such righteousness sanctions the
construction of parallel societies, a withdrawal from majority culture, and therefore
an ever-essentialized portrayal of in-group and out-group characteristics and motives. In
extreme cases, such conditions may lead to the sanctioning of violence. As Juergensmeyer
(2000, pages 383^ 384) has noted, religion provides a metamorality, which can di s-
regard regular moral restrictions on the dehumanizing of others and even killing.
Like the nation, religion is not `just there' in any objective sense of the term but must
be rediscovered, reinvented, and rebordered every time it is called upon as an answer
to ontological insecurity. The major world religions may have fixed texts, ``but they
do not have fixed beliefs, only fixed interpretations of those beliefs'' (Thomas, 1999,
page 37). The more essentialist such interpretations become in establishing links
between past histori c events, the more successful they will be in terms of inclusiveness
and exclusiveness
ö
in creating boundaries between self and Other.
(1)
As we stated earlier, the specific legacy of empire and colonization in conjunction
with its citizenship regimes has conditioned a deep and mutual multiculturalism
in Canada. Within the context of such a political society, a politics of engagement
is poss ible, and cosmopolitic al and dialogical p ractices are able to counter trends
toward essentiali sm and retreatism. A cosmopolitical approach is sustained through
a radical problematization of self and Other in the ongoing reproduction of individual
consciousnesses, discourses, and social relations. Its sociopolitical prerequisites include
the pluralistic politics of engagement and mutual regard within the context of cr itical
postcolonial multiculturalisms. Cosmopolitics eschew both extremes of the bland univer-
sal space of liberal cosmop olitanism (a cartography of imperialism and colonization) on
the one hand and the attempted enclosedness of com munitarian spa ce (an essentialist
mapping of fixed and immutable cultures) on the other. Traditional cosmopolitanism
relies on a discourse of individual rights that is grounded in ideologie s of possessive
individualism and the nation-state form
ö
while communitarianism is based on a
discourse of social rights that is often expressed i n exclusive localism. Both run the
risk of substituting ethics for politics. A cosmopolitical approach is i n line with critical
multiculturalism, which is both aware of its own history and fully open to transfor-
mation, and proceeds from an understandi ng of sel f as dialogical (Calhoun, 2003).
Drawing on Bakhtin (1979/1986), Markova
¨
(2003) formulates an ontology that places
dialogicality at the center. Dialogicality, according to Markova, refers to the capacity of
the human mind to conceive, create, and com municate social realities, implyi ng that the
dialogical relation is also an existential relation. Taking dialogicality seriously suggests
that our social ^ psychological questions must be posed differently than those asked in
nondialogical approaches. They should not involve individuals and groups as separate
entities. Instead, they should involve vari eties of Ego ^ Alter relations, which cannot
be anything but communicative. T hus, when investigating m inorities, for exampl e, they
should be viewed as mutually interdep endent with majorities.
(1)
The attack on the Twin Towers, for instance, can be seen as an attack on a building symbolizing
the antithesis of the values of Islam (seen in the eyes of the attackers), personifying the moral de cay
of the West with the US as its main representative.
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1061

Denmark
Our interviews with young Danish Muslims show how structural exclusion and
psychological vulnerability have affected many of them in th eir search for an identity.
Islamic organizations or movements have been able to securitize religion by emphasis-
ing cross-national Muslim belonging, which has appeale d to many young Muslims.
In th is sense young Muslims tend to be more likely than their parents to adopt the
categorical classification of the majority community to see th ems elves first and fore-
most as Muslims (Lassen and Òstergaard, 2006; Schmidt, 2004). Some of these young
Muslims distance themselves from their parents' homeland traditions in favour of a
`pure' and `authentic' Islam
ö
as expressed by the now dec eased Sheik Abu Laban and
other fundamentalist leaders.
Hence for many of these young people, often young me n, an abstract u mmah
ö
a
global Muslim community
ö
reflects their beliefs in a more expansive Islam. The
emphasis on a global ummah op ens up for a hardening of the boundaries around
both a Danish identity and an anti-Western g lobal identity, often referred to as
`Western-phobia' (see Larsson, 2006). The identification with a global ummah ten ds
to challe nge th e self-perception of Western liberal democracies and the ideas of a
secular and essential national identity by providing an alternative approach. Schmi dt's
(2004) interviews with young Muslims in Denmark and Sweden confirm how the
migration process itself has added to this `purification' of Islam, while Mandaville
(2001) shows how loc al Muslim student a ssociations use the Internet as an effective
tool for the establishment of a transnational Islamic discourse
ö
a reimagined ummah.
Transnational communication therefore opens up local possibilities for emotionally
identifying with global discourses and movements. The global com munity rep re sents
a `good enough' locus of religious anchoring in which place making is made possible
through the minim alist requirement of `a room (or cubicle) of one's own'. The
Mohammed cartoons would never have rece ived the same amount of attention without
the new information and communications te chnologies. In response to perc eived
structural and psychological exclusion among many young diasporic Muslims, global
narratives have been integrated into local institutional and cultural practices.
The Mohammed cartoon crisis became globalized due to some strategic and
tactical moves by certain members of the Danish Muslim community. The crisis
was further aggravated by the decision on 19 Oc tober 2005 of then Danis h Prime
Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, not to meet with ambassadors from eleven Islamic
countries to discuss the cartoons. This meeting had been initiated by a Danish imam,
Ahmed Abu Laban, one of those involved in the circulation of the caricatures.
By the middle of November 2005, Abu Laban had made arrangements on behalf of
the Organization of Islamic Faith to send a delegation to publicize the cartoon issue.
The delegation visited Cairo, Damascus, and B eirut in De cember to present the
original twelve cartoons along with three others that had not been originally pub-
lished. There were also several letters by Abu Laban con cer ning the increasingly
hostile climate in Denmark towards Islam (Politiken 2005). The narratives around
these pictures became severely distorted in the process of translation. O ne of the
pictures, a photograph of a man with a pig's ear and snout [later identified as an
old Associated Press picture from a French `pig-squealing' contest (Reynolds, 2006)],
was in cluded only as an example of the hate letters that had been circulated in the
process (Larsen and S eidenfaden, 2006). However, it was assumed by many to have
been part of the original set.
Hence, it i s not enough to say that it was the offensive nature of the cartoons that
created the outcry throughout the world. More important is how the diffusion of the
cartoons p layed into a number of local events, such as the electoral successes of
1062 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

religious parti es in Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories together with increa sing
confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Adel Hamouda, editor of the liberal
Cairo-based weekly, h ad actually published the cartoons in Oc tober 2005. He pointed
out that: ``[N]o one noticed. Those who saw the cartoons did not react, and those who
reacted are those who did not see them'' (quoted in Newsweek 2006; see also The
Guardian 2006). The subsequent outcry can partly be traced to the Danish delegation's
visit to the Middle East and the televised press conference broadcast throughout the
Arab world in which Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen spoke of Presi dent B ush's
support for Denmark (Larsen and Seidenfaden, 2006, page 170). However, the reaction
should also be viewed in relation to how the election results emboldened regim es and
movements in the region that were able to channel diffuse discontents i nto anti-Western
hostility.
In a narrative sense, we must understan d the eme rg ence of `new nationalism'
in Europ e as a shift in rhetoric from `race' to `culture', where racist discrimination
is increasingly justified by means of exclusive cultural difference. Th e emphasis in
the media and among policy makers and many ordinary Danes is increasingly that
immigrants do not `naturally' belong to Denmark: ``Residents are `We', the `Danes',
`the indigenous Danes', those who were here `to begin with' or those who belong `natu-
rally' to the territory and imagine themselves as a homogenous cultural community''
(Hervik, 2004, page 258) The narrative dimensions of colonization, globalization, and
the war on terror have b een esp e cially instructive for the securitization of Danishness,
as more Danes have become preoccupied w ith securitizing the ir home and nation
ö
particularly in opposition to a v ilified Muslim Other.
For their part, Danish Muslims have been largely denied the possibilities of dialog-
ical engagement and a cosmoplitical entrance into the broader Danish political society.
Under circum stances such as the Mohammed cartoon cr isis, phenomenologie s of
territory and place have found Danish Muslims retreating from shared public space
and entering the virtual u mmah or the basement m osque: a politics of grandiose
communities forged in small rooms. Place-making strategies have centered on both
the establish ment of beleaguered Danish Muslim enclaves and the hop e for returns
to the distant homeland wherever possible.
Swe den
As in Denmark, it is clear that anti-Muslim sentiments in Sweden increased following
11 September. A report published in 2005 by the Swedish Department of Integration
showed that 6 0% of respondents agreed with the statement that Islam cannot coexist
with basic `Swedish values', and only four out of ten believed that `Swedish Muslims are
like Swedes in general'. Swedish mosques in migrant cities like Malmo
«
and Trollha
«
ttan
have also been attacked on several occasions by anti-Muslim groups. The effects of
such Islamophobia and racism are most visible in the Swedish job market. Failed inte-
gration has a number of consequence s, documented in Sweden and elsewhere, such
as increased spatial segregation, economic marginali zation, illegal economic activities,
the formation of gangs, and a culture of violence. In Sweden ethnic harassment of and
discrimination against job-seekers (based on ethnicity, skin color, religious affiliation)
are common features of the labor market, as they are elsewhere in the EU (Larsson,
2006). In those cases where i ntegration p olicies fail it is likely that homeland cultural
practices become import ant securitizing tools, thus creating and/or strengthen ing
separate identities and spaces. The emerge nc e of parallel societies and homesteading
practices in both Sweden and Denmark must be vi ewed as a co mbination of housing
policies, restric tions in job-market access, and s tereotypical categorizations of immi-
grants by s egments of the majority society. These enclaves always generate entrepreneurs
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1063

of identity who attempt to strengthen their positions within the ir communities through
further isolating them. Inadequate integration of migrants, especially Muslim migrants,
has also resulted in m ore essentialist, anti-Muslim, secur itiz ing practices among tho se
of the majority population who have retreated to their own suburban `safe havens'.
In comparison with Denmark, however, where discourses on migrants and
Muslims have been significantly more polarized and harsher, Swedish multiculturalism
remains less of a perce ived threat among both politicians and the general public. This
be cam e evident in the Swedish equivalent to the Danish cartoon crisis, th e so-call ed
`Mohammed as a dog debate'. In July 2007 the Swedish artist Lars Vilks drew a picture
of the Prophet Mohamm e d as a so-called `roundabout' dog [a rather pe cul iar phenom-
enon of (mostly) wooden dogs starting to appe ar in the middle of roundabouts in 2007
all over Sweden]. The picture was intended for an art exhibition outside the city of
Karlstad, but the event was cancelled after pressure had been put on the organizers.
There were also concerns about the offensive natu re of the picture. Media soon picked
up o n the i ssue, comparing it to the Mohammed crisis in Denmark, and for a few
months it created an intense media debate. Finally, Vilks's drawing was publishe d in
a small local newspaper (Nerikes Allehanda), and within a month the President of Iran
had publi cly condem ned the publication. This was followed by threats against Swedish
companies, against Vilks himself
ö
in cluding a reward from (allegedly) al-Qaeda for
havingVilks killed
ö
and the burning of a puppet of the Swedish Pr ime Minister Fredrik
Reinfeldt (Bri n k, 2007a; 2007b; Hansson, 2007).
Compared with the Danish Mohammed cartoon controversy, reactions came a lot
faster from both diplomats and repres entatives of Islamist networks and tensions were
soon deescalated
ö
mostly by looking at the Danish experience and then doing the
opposite. Hence, Prime Minister Reinfeldt decided to visit the main mosque in Stockholm
to discuss the situation. He also received ambassadors from Arabic and Muslim countries
and contacted Swedish embassies in these countries to spread the message that ``Sweden
is a country where Christians and Muslims live side by side'' and that ``our constitution
does not decide what the newspapers should print'' (El Mahdi, 2007). Muslim organiza-
tions in Sweden also immediately tr ied to avoid an escalation of the crisis, declaring
that this was a local Swedish issue that should be handled peac efully. Even if there were
some people within Swedish Muslim organization s who wanted to internationalize
their protests, the m ajority preferred dialogue to boycotts and violent demonstrations.
They also offered to cooperate with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs at an early
stage of the crisis. In addition, young Muslims in Sweden had developed a network
of `peace agents' in response to the Danish cartoon crisis in order to better respo nd
to Islamophobia and prejudices and to counter extremism and violence. These young
people spoke out against violence as the debate was unfolding in Sweden (El Mahdi,
2007). These developments illustrate the relatively greater cosmopolitical and dialogical
elements that undergird Swedish political culture. As is evident in the range of respon-
ses to the Mohammed crisis in Swede n, majority actors were prompted to engage their
Muslim neighbors in face -to-face dialogical encounters and to imagine the realm of the
glocal together.
As an avant-garde artist, Lars Vilks made it his business to provoke. Irrespective
of his particu lar motivations, however, a considerable number of Muslims of diverse
origins viewed Vilks's roundabout dog as a deliberate act of defamation against the
Muslim religion and an attempt to increase Swedish Muslims' alienation from main-
stream society. Even among mo derate and se cul ar Swedish Muslims many felt offended
by this act. The fact that it failed to escalate as it did in Denmark can b e explained by
a number of factors. One has to do with the political climate in Denmark, where an
openly racist, anti-Muslim party (Danish People's Party) has influenced the securitization
1064 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

of political discourse and the cultural institutionalization of such discourse. In Sweden
anti-immigrant parties have been relatively marginalized from mainstream politics. The
political climate in Denmark has polarized communities, pushing immigrants and Danish
nationalists apart
ö
thus feeding securitizing responses from both sides. They literally exist
apart fr om each other and eschew contact. Another factor ma y have to do with the
Danish decision to send troops to Iraq, thus implicating Denmark in President Bush's
war on terror. In addition, not much support existed among the majority population in
Sweden of Vilks's portrayal of Mohammed as a `roundabout dog'; it was mainly perceived
as an artistic provocation. In contrast, the decision by the Jyllandsposten to publish was,
according to Larsen and Seidenfaden (2006), more than a diffuse expression of artistic
freedom. It was a defiant assertion of `freedom of speech' in the face of what the editors
had constructed as Islamic backwardness and extremism. Such aggression is the conse-
quence of `two solitudes', engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, the concussive battering
of bland claims-making as opposed to truly speaking to each other and being heard.
Canada
The 49th Parallel dividing Canada and the USA is said to be the longest undefended
boundary in the world, and Canada's borders have been variously described as `perme-
able' (Gibbens, 2005; Salter, 2004) and as `porous' (Ferguson, 2006; Olmedo and Soden,
2005). Among the large nations of the world, Canada has the highest rates of immigra-
tion (Canada, 2004). Faced with growing global discourses of securitization and `moral
panics' (Thompson, 1998) over the malevolent intentions of terrorists, Canada has
appeared to some to be naively unprepared to confront its enemies. Mark Steyn (2006)
and David Harris (2008) are among the more prominent voices to have promoted anti-
terrorist discourses of securitization and to have claimed that the Canadian government
and Canada's `elites' are in denial regarding the surging tidal waves of global terror.
While their voices are dramatic, confrontational, and insistent, the securitizing discourses
that they represent have not so far overwhelmed the deeper and more nuanced Canadian
political culture of moderation and balance (Nesbitt-Larking, 2007).
The dialogue on individual rights and community respect, on the balances among
liberty, equa l ity, and o rder in an equitable polity are both inte rsubjective and
ö
through practices of dialogicality
ö
subjective. Through open and frank dialogue
and through critical introspection, the challenges confronted by insults toward reli-
gious beliefs and perceptions of blasphemy and apostasy can be addressed without resort
to the politics of suppression, group entrenchment, and essentialism. The Canadian
response to the dissemination of the Mohammed cartoons is typical of a pattern
of resp onses toward community sensitivity that have em erge d over the past decades
and are grounde d in the broader evolution of Canadian political culture. Prior to the
Moham med cartoon crisis, an earlier global sho ck took plac e in 1988 and 1989 with
reactions to the release of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. In a carefully
researched analysis of Canadian Muslim reactions toward the impact of the novel,
Amir Hussain (2002) establishes both the extent of knowledge, concern, and hurt
regarding the novel as well as the determination among Muslims in Canada either to
demonstrate peacefully or to assist their fellow Muslims toward a deeper appreciation
of the complexities of the novel itself. Hussain concludes that: ``On the whole, the
Canadian responses were much more muted and peaceful than those in other countries''
(2002, page 26).
Reaction to the Mohammed cartoon controversy in Canada in early 2006 was equally
muted and moderate and generally succeeded in avoiding violen ce and prolonged
controversy through careful dialogue, a comm o n will to desecuritize, and the statement
of balanced publi c positions on the part of Muslim organizations, politicians, and the
The political psychology of (de)securitization 1065

Canadian media. A statement signed by twenty-one national Muslim organizations
in Can ada, released on 17 February 2006, read in part: ``Canadians have collectively
responded to the publication of the offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad
in a man ner that has strengthened our nation... . Canada's response has been unique
and has struck the right balance between freedom of expression, and the legal and
moral r ight of citizens to be protected from publications promoting hate and racism ...
as Muslims, and as Canadians, we say to our nation: you have made us p roud!''
(CAIR-CAN, 2006). Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister called
for g reater u nderstanding of Islam and Muslims, while condemning violent actions.
Canada's mainstream newspapers followed the lead of a carefully worded and lengthy
editorial from The Globe and Mail, explaining why within the context of a strong
defense of freedom of expression the newspape r decided not to publish the cartoons.
Editor Edward Greenspo n pointed out that there was lengthy and fraught discussion
among the editorial team o n the m atter of whether to reproduce the cartoons and that
the decision had not been easy. In the end, they came to the conclusion that to publish
would b e ``both gratuitous and un ne cessarily provocative, especially g iven what we knew
about how offended Muslims... felt about the cartoons. It didn't seem to be a m atter of
publish and be damned, but more like `damn you' and publish...'' (Greenspon, 2006,
page A2).
An insignificant number of minor publications in Canada chos e to take a stand
and to publish the cartoons, most notably the Western Standa rd. Editor Ezra Levant
claimed that other newspapers had refused to publish through fear of an economic
backlash and/or violence from angry Muslims (Levant, 2006). Along with Steyn and
Harris, Levant represents a distinctive voice in Canada that regards contemporary
Islam and Muslims as dangers to freedom and democracy and believes that the most
useful approach toward sustaining democracy in Canada is uncompromisingly aggres-
sive and combative. These views are sufficiently resonant among a minority of others in
Canada to have led the town council of Herouxville, Quebec (population 1338), a
village with no nonwhite or Muslim immigrants, to pass a resolution banning (among
other matters) the stoning of women, female genital cutting, and burning women alive.
The passage of the se measures attracted international attention and condemnation
from a range of ethnoreligious organizations. However, the prevailing Canadian view-
point is best expressed in the words of Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, autho rs of
the Reasonable Accommodatio n report, written partially in response to the Herouxville
incident, who said: ``The way to overcome Islamophobia is to draw closer to Muslims,
not to flee them'' (2008, page 84). In light of the Mohammed cartoon crisis, key
members of majority and m inority communities in Canada insisted upon sustaining
dialogue and a cosmopolitical approach toward balancing rights, responsibilities, and
sensibilities.
Conclusion : d ese curiti zing rel igion, promoting dialogical ity an d cosmopol itic s
The Canadian and to some extent the Swedish example indicate the importance of
a cosmopolitical approach toward the desecuritization of religion (Archibugi, 2003;
Cheah and Robbins, 1998). Notions of dialogicality and cosmopolitics can be helpful
in avoiding the danger of eth nocentrism and of being locked in either the epistemic
overpowering of the Othe r, or in historicism, i ndividualization, and conce alment of
power structures and practices (Kinnvall and Linde
¨
n, 2010). Desecuritizing religion,
in particular Islam, hence requires a careful rethinking of how Muslim minority
communities are being targeted in d iscourses on ter ror and new nationalism in Europe
and Canada, as well as in th e institutionalization of such discourses in antiterror mea-
sures and securitizing activities. Desecuritization is a dissolving of borders and m argins,
1066 C Kinnvall, P Nesbitt-Larking

of metropole and hinterland, based upon practices in whi ch a plurality of com munities
and individuals participate in mutual practices of political engagement through
en counter and engage ment across a range of settings from the local to the global.
The dialogical encounters of a cosmopolitical order are frequently agonistic, resisting
easy recon ciliation, but nonetheless in dialogue. The discourses and narratives that
constitute the shifting majority and mi nority cultures are neither hopele ssly remote
from each other nor blandly in concert. Far from being essential entities, Balibar
reminds us that cultures have ``a history, and it is the unending process of translation
[through dialogue] that reflects and allows them to transform this history'' (2009,
page 209). Dialogical encounters permit the d etermination and maintenan ce of inhabit-
able and adequate space in what Sloterdijk refers to as `hyperpolitics' (Morin, 2009,
pages 68 ^ 69). Cosmopolitan assimilation ( Den mark) and limited multiculturalism that
stops short of full engagement in the civic nation (Sweden) promote a neo-Westphalian
politics of constructed borders and imagined metropoles and remote peripheries. A
cosmopolitical and deeply dialogical multicultural order, such as that which has been
emerging in Canada, is capable of reconfiguring space and place through renewed
networks of contingent and hybrid belongi ng.
Acknowledgements. The authors wish to thank Stuart Elden (Durham University), Jeff Hopkins
(University of Western Ontario), and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable guidance in
the preparation of this article. One of the authors (Kinnvall) also acknowledg es support from the
project ``Democracy Beyond the Nation State? Transnational Actors and Global Governance'',
funded by Riksbankens Jubileum sfond.
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