Securitization Theory in the Light of Time

Abstract

This article provides a state-of-the-art review of securitization theory, tracing its intellectual evolution from the early 1990s to the present. Beginning with the Copenhagen school’s foundational formulation—wherein security is theorized as an intersubjective speech act through which actors frame issues as existential threats warranting extraordinary measures—the article maps the principal traditions that have since expanded, refined, and contested this framework. It examines the Paris school’s sociological emphasis on the everyday practices of security professionals and bureaucratic fields; the Welsh school’s critical theory–inflected critique of securitization’s elitism and its conservative equation of security with survival; and the substantial contributions of Thierry Balzacq, whose work reconceptualizes securitization as a legitimacy-laden “politics of the extraordinary.” The article further surveys the empirical application of securitization theory across migration, religion, climate change, and health, before engaging critically with the field’s persistent Eurocentrism—both institutional, given the dominance of Western and U.K.-based scholarship, and conceptual. By synthesizing these perspectives, the article clarifies the ontological and epistemological foundations of securitization theory and demonstrates that the field remains a vibrant and unexhausted domain of enquiry within critical security studies.