Securitised Citizenship: Prevent Strategy and the making of Counter-Terror Citizens

The Prevent Strategy and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) 2015, put an obligation on citizens employed in specified authorities, including local government, health, and education sectors, to 'prevent people from being drawn into terrorism' (HM Government, 2015a, p. 18). This duty to monitor citizens turns ordinary members of the civil society into 'managers of unease' and impacts their rights as citizens along with the rights of those who come into contact with them (Bigo, 2002, p. 74). By responsibilising citizens to conduct counter-terrorism policing, Prevent also bifurcates the society, creating good/bad, agent/suspect binaries. This research will investigate the impact of the Prevent Strategy on societal norms by studying the securitisation of citizenship practice. This will be done by focussing on citizens who are tasked with conducting counter-terrorism policing to understand how this new civic obligation is reshaping their identity, their conceptualisation of their rights and duties, and their social relationships. This will provide valuable insights into how responsibilisation of one section of the society and demonisation of another is having a transformative effect on the entire society.

While the primary focus of this research is on the citizens who are tasked with counter-terrorism policing, this research will situate its starting point in the governance of citizenship by the state. This will enable the conceptualisation of citizenship as an avenue through which the state conducts normative regulation of behaviour by setting the parameters of good and bad practice. A focus on citizenship governance will, hence, provide insights into the regulation of civilian behaviour by which citizens are turned into agents of state. This will be followed by a shift in focus on citizens, to understand how, in the face of this regulation, they conceptualise their civic identity, reconcile the balance between their civic rights and duties, and negotiate their relationship with the state and their wider community. By doing so, this research aims to draw out the tensions and power contestations which are emerging in response to the securitisation of civic acts and spaces.