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

Abstract

International Relations (IR) has increasingly paid attention to critical pedagogy. Feminist, post-colonial and poststructuralist IR scholarship, in particular, have long been advancing the discus-sions 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 join-ing 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 pro-duction 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’ lifeworlds, 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 Pol-itics 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.