Secure borders, safe haven, domopolitics

What implications do emerging spaces, concepts and identities of security have for the practice of citizenship? This article examines security and citizenship in the UK. As its focus it takes a recent White Paper published by the British government called Secure Borders, Safe Haven (2002). Two arguments are developed. First, it is argued that with this document, and the reforms it proposes for immigration, asylum and citizenship in the UK, we are in the presence of ‘domopolitics’. Whereas political economy is descended from the will to govern the state as a household, domopolitics aspires to govern the state like a home. Consequently, domopolitics and liberal political economy exist in tension with one another. Second, we need new forms of comparison if we are to adequately map domopolitics. To this end, the article compares the domopolitics of the homeland and similar securitizations not with the interstate security games of the Cold War, but with the governmentality of social security.