Envisioning human security – commentary to Gill

Abstract

Prompted by Nick Gill’s review essay, ‘The suppression of welcome’, this commentary additionally reflects on attendant questions of security and responsibility in seeking to conceptualize a more human-centred vision of populations and population management in our current moment of refugee crisis in Europe. It charts how we might productively conceptualize and enact a ‘human security’ vision of population management, how such a vision requires us to think differently and cooperatively about security, and ultimately how this compels us to supplant a prevailing narrative of external threat and risk with a story of shared precarity, human empathy and collective responsibility.