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Countering violent extremism in a multicultural city : from national security to local implementation in Melbourne, Australia

University of British Columbia

Since the events of 9/11, counter-terrorism has been a top priority for governments around the world. Concern over “homegrown” or domestic terrorism has led many governments to consider community engagement as fundamental to counter-terrorism and national security policy. Preventative frameworks are now commonplace. “Soft” approaches to counter violent extremism (CVE) rely on community-based models to tackle the underlying causes of violent radicalisation. Counter-terrorism and CVE programs have been seen to disproportionately target Muslim youth, typically seeking to address disenfranchisement, alienation and social exclusion as factors contributing to trajectories of radicalisation to violent extremism. Critics have described a national security paradox, in which soft security measures have “securitised” integration, social cohesion, and multicultural policies and programs. Implicit to the examination of national security policy in a multicultural setting are the scalar dynamics that shape how national policies are translated and implemented. By adopting an approach that cuts across multiple scales, it becomes clear that when paradoxical national security policies are ported to the local scale, significant negative consequences can follow. Under Australian national security policy and rhetoric, Muslim communities have been targeted, anti-Muslim sentiment and suspicion of Muslims has been endorsed, and belonging and access to welfare services rendered conditional upon self-identification as “at risk” of radicalisation. This dissertation is motivated by a pressing central question: what is at stake when social policy is predicated on fear? Drawing on semi-structured interviews with state and local government workers and extended participant observation in a Melbourne local government this dissertation uncovers how policy practitioners negotiate two potentially conflicting objectives—multiculturalism and national security policy. The extended case study highlights capacities at state and local levels to mitigate the detrimental effects of hostile national security rhetoric, policy contradictions, and the stigmatising effects of participation associated with CVE. This dissertation argues that combining multicultural social policy with a national security agenda risks undermining positive social relations and service delivery for marginalised communities. However, it also highlights the conditions under which local government can afford resistance to the securitisation of Muslims, extend new spaces of belonging, and to promote a meaningful politics of diversity.  

Text

2019-09-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/71793

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/