Book Review: The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk, and Social Order

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717733785
• Author: Daniel K. Pryce
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

unique characteristics of migrants’ families links the psychological effects of detainment and

deportation to their experiences of violence in their country of o rigin and the deep-rooted fear

prominent among this population. In Chapter 7, Lykes and her colleagues focus on the challenges

of transnational and mixed status families on both sides of the border within a historical and

transnational framework by utilizing participatory action research. The book concludes with the

alienation and discrimination felt by deportees “returned” to El Salvador and the effect this influx

has on receiving communities. The chapter and book closes with the deportees’ coping mechanisms

and thoughts on potential improvements to the immigration system through pathways to citizenship

and the need to facilitate deportees’ reintegration back into their countries of origin. Many deportees

have no memory of their “homeland” due to childhood migration and lack the social support net-

works to satisfy basic housing and employment needs.

Criminology can draw heavily from The New Deportation Delirium and s imilar works. The

authors’ combined perspectives place immigration and deportation into a larger transnational, socio-

logical, and legal context, with intimate insight into each system’s complexity and relationship to

criminological mechanisms. The vignettes utilized throughout the text increase the readability for

young scholars who may be unfamiliar with the legalities of the immigration system. While slightly

overused, the vignettes can aid readers to draw parallels between immigrant experiences to those of

other marginalized groups with regard to over criminalization, repression of civil rights, over

policing, over incarceration, and the effects of separation on families and communities. In conclu-

sion, undergraduate upperclassman and graduate students in criminology, Latino/Latina studies,

political science, and law, who have an interest in understanding the broader effects current policies

have on the immigrant community may benefit from the intersectionality between disciplines and

enhance their understanding the complexity of deportation within a larger transnational framework.

Schuilenburg, M. (2015).

The Securitization of Society: Crime, Risk, and Social Order. New York: New York University Press. 343 pp. $28.00

(paperback), ISBN 978-1-4798-5421-9.

Reviewed by: Daniel K. Pryce, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567717733785

In The Securitization of Society, Dutch Scholar Marc Schuilenburg discusses the concept of security

and how it is gained in modern society. The book attempts to fill the gap in the extant literature on

the collaboration that exists between public and private entities for improving safety and security for

communities. Security is not an avant-garde phenomenon; rather, the concept has always straddled

society’s proclivity for safety, amid the panoply of competing societal “interests”—crime, disorder,

governmental action, private interests, self-interest, private space, public space, among other fac-

tors—that make enforcing security a difficult task. In laying the foundation for his argument about

the modern security situation, Schuilenburg borrowed heavily from philosophy—primarily from the

works of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Gabriel Tarde—to explain how securitization of

society has been transformed from a top-down, government-superintended approach to a collective

effort involving public–private partnerships.

The book begins by defining the problem of security in modern society—from simple to intricate

security structures. Schuilenburg refers to these working structures as security assemblages and

argues that success in achieving security may hinge more on security partners’ willingness to engage

in a “horizontal” relationship—an equal partnership, as it were—than on a top-down approach in

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