Säkerhetisering och kosmopolitiska moment. Smittoutbrott från brittisk till europeisk riskfråga

Abstract

Since time immemorial, outbreaks of infectious disease have caused serious harm to societies and their citizens. Yet, infectious disease did not become securitized in the European Union until the early 2000s. Why did the securitization of infectious disease take place at this particular point in time even though this harm had always been around? This article addresses this puzzle by combining the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory with elements from Ulrich Beck’s risk society theory. The former framework is useful for examining how securitization occurs. However, if we also seek to understand why, at a deeper level, a particular issue is securitized at a specific moment in time, incorporating Beck’s concept cosmopolitan moment is helpful. Empirically, the article identifies three key events that together are taken to have caused such a cosmopolitan moment, which facilitated the European securitization of infectious disease.