Towards a pedagogy for critical security studies: politics of migration in the classroom

International Relations (IR) has increasingly paid attention to critical pedagogy. Feminist, post-colonial and poststructuralist IR scholarship, in particular, have long been advancing the discussions about how to create a pluralist and democratic classroom where ‘the others’ of politics can be heard by the students, who can critically reflect upon complex power relations in global politics. Despite its normative position, Critical Security Studies (CSS) has so far refrained from joining this pedagogical conversation. Deriving from the literatures of postcolonial and feminist pedagogical practices, it is argued that an IR scholar in the area of CSS can contribute to the production of a critical political subject in the 'uncomfortable classroom', who reflects on violent practices of security. Three pedagogical methods will be introduced: engaging with the students’ life worlds, revealing the positionality of security knowledge claims, and opening up the class-room to the choices about how the youth’s agency can be performed beyond the classroom. The argument is illustrated through the case of forced migration with specific reference to IR and Politics students’ perceptions of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The article advances the discussions in critical IR pedagogy and encourages CSS scholarship to focus on teaching in accordance with its normative position.

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in International Studies Perspectives following peer review. The version of record, Ali Bilgic, Mandeep Dhami, Dilek Onkal, Toward a Pedagogy for Critical Security Studies: Politics of Migration in the Classroom, International Studies Perspectives, Volume 19, Issue 3, August 2018, Pages 250–266, is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/isp/article/19/3/250/4911476 and https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekx016