08 February 2022
The moderation of extremist content is prone to error, causing real-world harm
Policies intended to limit the ability of terrorist groups to organize, recruit, and incite — as well as for individuals to praise such groups — have been expanded in recent years via content moderation efforts online, and often result in the erasure of not only extremist expression, but human rights documentation, counterspeech, and art. Continue reading >>
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07 February 2022
9/11 on Turkish Shores
The 9/11 attacks exposed the precariousness of the public sphere, however, they did not result in a dramatic shift in the Turkish public sphere. Rather, the coup attempt of 2016 turned out to be Turkey’s “9/11 moment.” Continue reading >>
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02 February 2022
Constitutional Battles beyond China’s Regulation of Online Terrorist Speech
The Chinese government’s suppression of Internet speech is almost legendary. It forms an impregnable cornerstone of what Oxford professor Stein Ringen dubbed the Party-state’s “perfect dictatorship”. China's approach to terrorist speech must me understood within the entire picture of China’s developing agenda of taming speech online. Continue reading >>
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31 January 2022
The Impact of 9/11 on Freedom of Expression in the United States
In the United States the actual impact of 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” on speech and press freedoms has been complex, and in many ways much less than expected. In fact, free speech rights vis-à-vis the government remain largely robust in the United States; the real conflicts and issues today concern the role of private Internet companies, notably social media, in restricting free speech. Continue reading >>
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15 December 2021
Der “Ketchup-Effekt”
Ein genauerer Blick auf den Einsatz von Überwachungsmaßnahmen durch die schwedischen Behörden nach dem 11. September 2001 zeigt, dass diese Entwicklung am besten mit dem "Ketchup-Effekt" beschrieben werden kann: Wenn man die Flasche öffnet, kommt zunächst nichts heraus, und dann kommt alles auf einmal, und man hat sein Gericht ruiniert. Continue reading >>
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24 November 2021
The Long Shadow of 9/11
At the broadest level, 9/11 exacerbated the chronic precarity of non-citizens’ status as legal subjects governed under the rule of law. In principle, the rule of law is indifferent to citizenship: after all, the legal subject is constituted through subjection to law, not to the state as such. And yet, the rule of law has always been insipid in the sphere of migration, and securitization diluted it even further. This is true across all jurisdictions, including those bound by human rights entrenched in constitutional texts. Continue reading >>
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22 November 2021
Irregularizing Citizenship in India
India has created complex legal mechanisms that have introduced severe insecurity of citizenship status. These mechanisms permit arbitrary targeting of persons as suspected foreigners, place unreasonable evidentiary standards for proving citizenship, and facilitate creeping loss of substantive rights – all without a formal revocation of citizenship status. These processes, I suggest, are best understood as what Peter Nyers calls ‘irregularizing citizenship’. Continue reading >>
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16 November 2021
Counterterrorism rhetoric, the deterrence paradigm, and the end of asylum: an antipodean viewpoint
The Australian government’s agenda of progressive border securitization was, initially, sustained by counter-terrorism rhetoric. However, the focus of concern has shifted away from the potential terrorist threat posed by asylum seekers towards deterring unauthorised maritime migration. Though the nexus between terrorism and asylum lacks an empirical basis in Australia, certain laws, policies and practices premised on counterterrorism in 2001 endure to this day – offshore processing of asylum seekers arriving by sea, notably. I argue that Australia’s deterrence model has had a negative ‘signalling effect’ on some European states’ contemporary asylum policies and practice. Continue reading >>
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11 November 2021
The UK’s Securitisation and Criminalisation of Migration and Asylum
The Nationality and Borders Bill is the culmination of the UK government’s increasingly securitised, criminalised and hostile approach to asylum and migration. While 9/11 served to solidify the highly dubious nexus between migration and terrorism, the UK (alongside other destination states) has for decades been implementing restrictive migration policies and practices designed to deter and prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from reaching its territories and accessing safety. Continue reading >>
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09 November 2021
We are at war
The state of the European Union's asylum and migration policy can be summed up as follows: 20 years after the attacks on the Twin Towers, the "war on terror" has become both a cause of people on the move, and serves at the same time as the normative underpinning for the unimaginable arms race that has taken place at the external borders of the EU. Legitimised by the political leadership of the European Union, it is now a reality that the principles of the rule of law have ceased to apply at the EU's external borders without consequence. Continue reading >>
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