Attempting to securitise EU membership : a discourse analysis of the UK's EU referendum

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Attempting to Securitise EU Membership:

A Discourse Analysis of the UK’s EU Referendum

Author: Melissa Y. Beeston

Master Political Science: International Relations Research Project: European Security Politics Supervisor: Dr. Rocco Bellanova

Second reader: Prof. Dr. Marieke de Goede Student number: 10890629

Date: June 2018 Words: 21,594

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Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the way in which leading United Kingdom (UK) politicians attempted to make the issue of the UK’s 2016 European Union (EU) Referendum intelligible as a matter of security. Crucially, it asks how UK politicians attempted to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof) between the announcement of the referendum and the day of the vote. As such, this thesis will contribute to the limited theoretical debates regarding processes of securitisation in instances of direct democracy. The theoretical framework of this thesis conceptualises securitisation in terms of a sociological approach. A two-layered analysis of a total of 13 speeches, articles, statements, and analyses will be used in order to deconstruct the ‘security threats’ presented to the British public by four leading UK politicians (David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage). The first layer assesses UK politicians’ attempts to securitise EU membership with reference to a sociological approach to securitisation. The second layer utilises an Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) in order to further deconstruct the discursive practices through which the actors attempt to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof). Ultimately, this thesis will argue that the selected UK politicians utilised strategic discourses in their attempts to make EU membership (or a lack thereof) appear threatening to the UK’s security in terms of its national borders, economic stability, and state sovereignty. It claims that the actors did so by pairing the use of powerful and emotive language with an imagined post-vote scenario, in which the security of the British public was presented as being threatened by EU membership (or lack thereof).

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List of Abbreviations

ADA – Argumentative Discourse Analysis BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation Brexit – British Exit

DIY – Do It Yourself EU – European Union UK – United Kingdom

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Ch.1: Introduction

“Let me be clear. Leaving Europe would threaten our economic and our national security” David Cameron (Independent, 2016) “If we Remain our country will never be the same again. Our public services will be pushed to the point of failure and our national security will be greatly weakened as EU open borders expand further still”

Nigel Farage (Express, 2016)

1.1. Objective and Formulation of The Problem

On 20th_{February 2016, it was announced that there would be a referendum in the United}

Kingdom (UK) regarding whether the country should remain in, or leave the European Union (EU) (Independent, 2016). On 23rd June 2016, 51.9% of the British public voted to leave, marking Britain’s decision to exit, or Brexit, from the EU (BBC, 2016a). The months preceding the referendum were characterised by political and ideological contestation both within and outside of the UK. Political, economic, and public actors attempted to provide the nation with an answer to the underlying question; what would a post-vote Britain look like? Within this context, competing visions emerged over whether remaining in, or voting to leave the EU, would enhance Britain’s ‘security’. The opening statements of this introduction, made by David Cameron, a ‘Remainer’, and Nigel Farage, a ‘Brexiteer’, reflect how these imagined post-vote scenarios were constructed discursively. Perhaps more crucially, however, is the way in which these statements reflect the malleability of the notion of ‘security’ throughout the period leading up to the UK’s EU Referendum. The political intensity of the Brexit debates, as reflected in the competing performances of security, suggests that Brexit may have been marked by a moment of securitisation.

This thesis aims to investigate the way in which leading UK politicians came to make the issue of the 2016 Referendum intelligible as a matter of security. In order to do so, it will examine the development of imagined post-vote scenarios as constructed through security discourses and political practices of actors within the UK’s EU Referendum. Accordingly, the guiding research question of this thesis is, how did UK politicians attempt to securitise

EU membership (or a lack thereof) during the campaign leading to the UK’s EU Referendum? This thesis defines the referendum campaign period as the months between the

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announcement of the referendum, on 20th_{February 2016, until the day of the vote on 23}rd

June 2016. My central proposition is that key UK politicians strategically drew on various socio-linguistic and discursive resources in their attempts to present either remaining in the EU, or leaving the EU, as a threat to the security of the UK. This thesis argues that this threat to the UK’s security was formulated in various ways by the Remain and Leave campaigners. Among proponents of the Remain campaign, a loss of EU membership was presented as threatening to the UK’s national and economic security, whereas, those supporting the Leave campaign conveyed the continuation of EU membership as threatening to its national security and sovereignty as an independent state. Ultimately, this thesis will argue that the construction of these threats can be traced through the discursive practices of leading UK politicians. It is important to note that this thesis does not aim to determine a causal relation between these discursive practices and the outcome of Brexit. Rather, it seeks to identify how these discursive practices and constructions of security played out within the Referendum itself.

Before moving forward, it is necessary to define three key concepts that will guide the structure of this thesis: securitisation, discourse, and practices. Traditionally, securitisation is defined as the perceived presence of an existential threat, which then in turn permits the use of extraordinary measures (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998). However, for the purpose of this thesis, securitisation will be defined in terms of a sociological approach to securitisation. This approach establishes securitisation “in the social context, a field of power struggles in which securitizing actors align on a security issue to swing the audience’s support toward a policy or course of action” (Balzacq, 2005, p. 173). Discourse is defined as the “ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to social and physical phenomena, and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices” (Hajer, 2006, p. 67). Finally, practices are defined in accordance with Balzacq’s (2005) approach to a sociological theory of securitisation – i.e. as strategic or pragmatic acts that occur through discourse and operate at the level of persuasion. More extensive accounts of these crucial concepts will be elaborated upon later in this thesis (in particular, Chapter Two). Taken together, these three concepts entail a post-structuralist approach to the UK’s EU Referendum debates. This permits a critical analysis of the competing post-vote scenarios in which ‘security’ can be understood as constructed by discursive practices.

This thesis analyses the publicised claims of four leading UK politicians: David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. These claims take the form of

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speeches, articles, statements, and analyses in which the actors relay their arguments directly. The chosen research design is a qualitative case study, which uses a two-layered analysis with regard to the selected data. The first layer will assess UK politicians’ attempts to securitise EU membership with reference to a sociological approach to securitisation (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012). The second layer will utilise Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) (Hajer, 2006) in order to further deconstruct the discursive attempts to securitise EU membership. ADA is a methodological approach that is aware of the strategic dynamics of language and discourse and through which it is possible to deconstruct and examine argumentative structures. An in-depth account of the research design, methods, and data is provided in Chapter Three.

The remainder of this introduction will concern itself with introducing and discussing the most relevant academic literature on Brexit (Buckledee, 2018) and securitisation theory (Huysmans, 2006; Neal, 2009). In doing so, it will reveal the vital academic and societal importance of applying a sociological approach to securitisation the case of the UK’s EU Referendum. Finally, this chapter will present a brief overview of the structure of this thesis.

1.2. State of the Art

Studies have analysed the UK’s EU Referendum from a multiplicity of perspectives. In the immediate aftermath of the Referendum, a significant proportion of these studies focused on providing an answer to why the UK public voted to leave the EU on the 23rd June 2016. This wave of academic research has led to the emergence of competing perspectives in which the British public’s decision to leave is claimed to have been prompted by a lack of exposure to the benefits of globalisation (Hobolt, 2016), the unequal experiences of European citizenship and the freedom of movement (Vasilopoulou, 2016), the fundamental characteristics of voters (Goodwin & Heath, 2016; Becker, Fetzer & Novy, 2017), or by voters’ desires to preserve British identity (Curtice, 2017).

Almost exactly two years on from the vote, politicians, economists, and public actors continue to attempt to provide an answer to the question; what will a post-vote Britain look like? Academics have attempted to fill this gap, offering possibilities for Britain’s future regarding the difficulties that may be involved in negotiating new trade deals (Holmes, Rollo & Winters, 2016; Trommer, 2017), the negative regional economic impacts that will be felt within the country (Los, McCann, Springford & Thissen, 2017), and also the possibilities of a positive financial outcome for both the EU and the UK (Ringe, 2018).

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However, the academic emphasis on the outcome and the future of Brexit has resulted in a failure to address the internal dynamics of the Referendum itself. This has resulted in a very limited body of research invested in analysing the role that actors, their discourses and their political practices may have played in the formation of the public’s opinion regarding EU membership. Buckledee (2018) marks the first academic step in this direction with his book The Language of Brexit. The aim of Buckledee’s (2018) contribution is to highlight the linguistic features and strategies that distinguished the Leave and Remain campaigns from one another. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that the linguistic structures utilised by central actors played a key role in determining voting behaviour and thus the outcome of the Referendum. Buckledee (2018, p. 2) attributes this to “the highly effective linguistic strategies employed by the Brexit campaigners compared with the dispassionate, at times spiritless language used by the pro-Remain supporters”.

Buckledee’s (2018) approach is an important contribution to the analysis of the 2016 EU Referendum, paving the way for a new body of research invested in the linguistic and discursive strategies at play throughout the campaigning. What Buckledee’s (2018) approach is lacking however, is a focus on the role of security discourses specifically, and the way in which actors may have utilised such discourses with the strategic intention of mobilising the British public’s support to either remain in, or to leave the EU. Therefore, the role of security discourses and the political practices of central actors in the UK’s EU Referendum remain to be analysed within academic literature to date.

However, discursive and pragmatic approaches to security threats within the EU and the UK are not new to academic research. The proliferation of such research has often been associated with the post-9/11 era in relation to its effect on global security practices (Lazaridis & Wadia, 2015). Despite the relation between 9/11 and the transformation of security practices remaining a disputed issue within academic research, this thesis will not concern itself with this disputation. However, this thesis will delve into the growing body of research dedicated to the analysis of security discourses and practices as a strategic resource for actors and as a possible mode of governance (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012; Bigo, 2002, 2012) (see Chapter Two).

Despite the lack of discursive approaches to security in the UK’s EU Referendum, it is worth noting the way in which broader securitisation literature ties into the theoretical perspective of this thesis. This can be identified in three cases: the first regarding the securitisation of migration within Brexit, the second specific to referenda, and the third with regard to EU integration. Firstly, there has been some mention of the role of securitisation in

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the Brexit debate on scholarly blogs. Donnelly and Gani (2017, p. 1) discuss the way in which the leave campaign continued the UK’s tendency to “frame migrants as an existential threat to the nation” throughout their campaign. However, the brevity of the authors’ blog post fails to delve deeper into the manifestation of securitisation in the UK’s EU Referendum. Rather, Donnelly and Gani (2017) focus on the positive impact that post-Brexit campaigns, such as ‘#LondonIsOpen’1, have had on the desecuritisation of migration in British politics.

Secondly, specific to the UK, Neal (2017) investigates the inclusion and exclusion of security discourses during Scotland’s Independence Referendum and debate. Interestingly, Neal (2017) finds that security issues were left out of Scottish public and political debates. In part, Neal (2017, p. 217) attributes this to the “reproduction of existing structures of power, expertise, and authority on security” within the UK. Specifically, this regards the way in which security structures and authority reside predominantly within Westminster. In turn, Neal (2017) suggests that the relative ‘silence’ of security within the Scottish Independence Referendum derived from Westminster’s dominance over security practices, intelligence, and authority. This conclusion provides an interesting point of departure for the analysis of securitisation within the UK’s EU Referendum. It would imply that evidence of security discourses within the UK’s 2016 Referendum would support Neal’s (2017) findings, the reason for which being that ‘security’ would emerge within the UK’s Referendum in a way that it did not within Scotland’s.

The third way in which securitisation ties into the theoretical perspective of this thesis regards the role of security discourses in European integration. Typically literature has focused on the way in which process of securitisation have led to the enhancement and acceleration of European integration. Huysmans (2006) discusses this dynamic within the context of the abolishment of internal borders within the EU. According to Huysmans (2006, p. 71), the transition toward open borders within the EU has led to the facilitation of “a security continuum connecting border control, terrorism, and international crime and migration”. Huysmans (2006, p. 63) claims that the effect of which, is that the security continuum has transformed issues of border control, terrorism and migration into “objects of fear […] that are directly relevant for the regulation and constitution of belonging in the European Union”. In this case, security discourses are identified as a central tool in the

1_{#LondonIsOpen is a campaign launched by the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, a ‘Remainer’ who}

succeeded Boris Johnson’s term. The intention of Khan’s campaign is to ensure that London continues to be perceived as welcoming to foreign nationals in the UK post-Brexit

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formation and governance of a European identity in which the ‘Other’, or migrant, is characterised as fundamentally threatening to the survival of this identity. Huysmans’ (2006) findings exemplify the current focus on the ways in which securitisation has played into the integration of Europe. The relevance of this literature to this thesis derives from Brexit marking the first exit of a Member State and thus the possible disintegration of Europe.

1.3. The Relevance of a Sociological Approach to Securitisation

The relevance of a sociological approach to securitisation within this case derives from both its academic and societal significance. The academic importance of this research is twofold. For one, securitisation theory is yet to be applied to the case of the UK’s EU Referendum, making this the first of its kind. Secondly, as mentioned above, despite the development of academic research pointing to the way in which security discourses have led to the integration of the EU (Huysmans, 2006), there is little research that highlights how security discourses play into the disintegration of Europe. This lack of academic research makes this thesis an important contribution to the study of securitisation in referenda and in the possible disintegration of Europe.

The societal relevance of this thesis derives from the necessity to better understand the influence politicians can exert through the strategic utilisation of securitising discourse. A greater awareness of this could alter social responses to future instances of direct democracy such as referenda. The context of a referendum is of particular interest, as these instances of direct democracy provide an arena in which political actors must compete with one another in their efforts to communicate the most compelling problem frame to the public (Farrell & Schmitt-Beck, 2002; Semetko & de Vreese, 2004). LeDuc (2002, p. 147-148) discusses how “an important part of the dynamic of a referendum campaign involves [actors] changing and refining the subject matter of the referendum through the campaign discourse”. Thus, the importance of a sociological approach to securitisation within the UK’s EU Referendum derives from the necessity to analyse how, through their political practices, key actors strategically ‘changed and refined the subject matter of the referendum’ through the use and application of security discourses.

1.4. Structure of the Thesis

This thesis is divided into six parts. Each chapter builds upon the previous in order to provide a structured and comprehensive answer to the guiding research question. The Introduction

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has displayed the importance of this research by outlining the current academic analyses of the UK’s EU Referendum, and the gap within this line of research: that gap being, a discursive approach to the construction of security threats within the Referendum. Chapter Two will examine key theoretical contributions to securitisation theory. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the applicability of a sociological approach to securitisation (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012) to the UK’s EU Referendum. Chapter Three will outline the research design and methodology. This will explain and justify the choice to focus on four UK politicians – David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage – and the selection of a data set of 13 documents in which these actors speak directly. In turn, it will explain the methodological approach, constructing the two-layered analysis. The analysis will then be executed over two chapters in which the selected actors will be grouped and divided for heuristic purposes on the basis their campaign perspective – i.e. Remain and Leave. Chapter Four concerns itself with the Remain actors, Cameron and Osborne. Chapter Five focuses on the Leave actors, Johnson and Farage. Finally, the Conclusion will review the findings with reference to the theoretical framework of the thesis, the limitations and replicability of the research, and suggest other areas of research needed to take the field forward. Ultimately, it will provide an answer to the guiding research question of this thesis.

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Ch.2: Theoretical Framework

2.1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to review the available theories of securitisation and to ultimately argue that a ‘sociological approach to securitisation’ (Balzacq, 2005, 2015; Stritzel, 2012) provides the best guiding framework for this thesis. A sociological approach to securitisation provides a theoretical perspective with a specific focus on (1) external context, (2) unequal power relations, and (3) the role of audiences (Balzacq, 2005). This viewpoint offers the most comprehensive theory for studying the strategic practices and discourses used within the UK’s Brexit campaign. However, in order to develop an argument for the sociological approach to securitisation, it is first necessary to review the alternative conceptualisations of securitisation and evaluate these theories both in terms of their merits and shortcomings.

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first section (2.2) will briefly introduce the traditional approach to securitisation theory as proposed by Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde (1998), commonly referred to as the Copenhagen School (Peoples & Vaughan-Williams, 2010). This section will outline Buzan et al.’s (1998) key theoretical contribution to security studies. The following section (2.3) of this chapter will review more recent conceptualisations of securitisation theory (Bigo, 2002, 2012; Balzacq, 2005, 2015). This will provide the foundations for developing a case for a sociological approach to securitisation (Balzacq, 2005, 2015; Stritzel, 2012). With regards to the specific purpose of this thesis, this section will address the ways in which a sociological approach offers a more comprehensive basis for the study of securitisation as opposed to that offered by the Copenhagen School. In doing so, it will refer to the way in which a sociological approach provides a more extensive account of (1) external context, (2) unequal power relations, and (3) the role of audiences. The chapter will end with a concluding section (2.4) summarising what it means to utilise a sociological approach within this thesis.

2.2. Traditional Securitisation Theory

The key theoretical contribution of Buzan et al.’s (1998) traditional securitisation theory is their innovative claim that an issue becomes a security issue by being presented as such – i.e. the issue is securitised. According to Buzan et al. (1998), the following conventional process guides the way in which an issue ‘becomes securitised’. The process firstly stems from Buzan et al.’s (1998) conception of security being first and foremost about

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survival. In order to survive, that which is threatened (the referent object) must be protected from existential threats. As such, the perceived presence of an existential threat provides the necessary justification to employ which ever measures necessary to ensure the referent objects protection and survival. In turn, Buzan et al. (1998) claim that this process by which a threat is constructed and justified, by an actor in an authoritative position, permits the use of extraordinary measures. Buzan et al. (1998) define such measures as those outside the bounds and logic of ‘normal politics’.

Buzan et al. (1998) claim that this conventional process by which an issue is securitised is only successful if the three following conditions have been met. The first condition requires that the securitising act follow the conventional structure as outlined above – i.e. the presence of an existential threat permits the use of extraordinary measures in order to ensure the survival (and security) of the referent object (Peoples & Vaughan-Williams, 2010). The second condition touches upon power relations and claims that the securitising move must be made by an actor in a position of authority with sufficient social and political capital. This is essential to Buzan et al.’s (1998) theory, as it increases the likelihood of the relevant audience being convinced that an existential threat exists. Audience acceptance is essential because it provides that basis from which an actor is granted the permission to deal with the issue as they best see fit (Peoples & Vaughan-Williams, 2010). Within this theory, the audience is not complicit in the shared perception of the threat, they are merely compliant, accepting the certainty of the threat as it is presented to them. The final condition relates to whether the issue is associated with a pre-existing threat or hostility. Should this be the case, the issue will appear more threatening, and thus, enhance the success of the securitisation process (Peoples & Vaughan-Williams, 2010). As such, Buzan et al. (1998) suggest that there are “certain issues and objects are easier to securitize than others depending on the associated connotations” (Peoples & Vaughan-Williams, 2010, p. 79).

Beyond these three conditions, the final attribute that determines whether a particular process is genuinely securitised regards the form in which the process occurs. For Buzan et

al. (1998, p. 26), the mechanism through which a securitisation process occurs is called a

‘speech act’: “it is the [security] utterance itself that is the act. By saying the words, something is done (like betting, giving a promise, naming a ship)”. The speech act itself does not have to be as explicit as “uttering the word security” (Buzan et al., 1998, p. 27, emphasis in original). Rather, it can be implicitly assumed when speaking of particular institutions or sectors – i.e. military defence. Whether explicit or implicit, the utterance of security can only be classified as securitisation if the utterance incites a sense of urgency in accordance with

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the perceived presence of an existential threat (Buzan et al., 1998). The format and structure of a ‘speech act’ provides Buzan et al.’s (1998) theory with a final requirement for a successful securitisation: a securitising move must follow the general structure and format of a speech act in order to be successful. Thus, according to the Copenhagen School, the fulfilment of the general structure of a speech act can transform an issue from being perceived as ‘secure’ to ‘insecure’.

In short, the key contribution of the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitisation is that an issue becomes a security issue once an actor in ‘a position of authority’, by uttering ‘security’, presents the issue as an ‘existential threat’ and, in turn, receives the permission of the audience to deal with the issue using ‘extraordinary measures’ (Buzan et al., 1998).

2.3. Towards a Sociological Approach to Securitisation

This section will highlight key scholarly contributions to the study of securitisation in order to clearly explicate the way in which this thesis will define and utilise a sociological approach. This first requires a review of Bigo’s (2002, 2012) work in order to reveal the shortcomings of the speech act approach. Once this is made clear, this section will delve into developing a clearer framework for a sociological approach to securitisation (Balzacq, 2005, 2015; Stritzel, 2012).

Bigo’s (2002, 2012) work has led many security scholars beyond Buzan et al.’s (1998) traditional conception of securitisation theory. The central claim of Bigo’s (2002, 2012) theory is that practices play a definitive role in the enactment of security. Upon this basis, Bigo argues:

“Authors like Buzan have little sense of the routines, the day-to-day practices, of the bureaucracies that are necessary to understand how discourses work in practice. Securitization works through everyday technologies, through the effects of power that are continuous rather than exceptional, through political struggles, and especially through institutional competition within the professional security field” (Bigo, 2002, p. 73).

Bigo (2002) thus advances the theory of securitisation beyond the bounds of exceptional cases of ‘existential threats’ and encourages a consideration of the ways in which security is performed in ‘day-to-day practices’. Within this theoretical approach, Bigo (2002) encourages a specific focus on the effect that the practices of security professionals and institutions have on ‘security’. This marks a significant development from the Copenhagen

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School’s approach in which security is studied specifically within the occurrences of speech acts. Bigo (2002, p. 65) extends this further, arguing that actors use these practices in order to “play with the [population’s] unease, or to encourage it if it does not yet exist” – Bigo (2002) terms this dynamic ‘a governmentality of unease’. Thus, not only does Bigo (2002, 2012) extend the analysis of securitisation beyond speech acts, but he also encourages a more extensive analysis of the effect of securitising an issue – i.e. beyond the use of extraordinary measures.

Bigo’s (2002, 2012) theory can be understood as somewhat of an extreme opposite to that of Buzan et al.’s (1998) with regards to both their point of entry and their unit of analysis. In other words, while Buzan et al. (1998) focus on the use of extraordinary measures and speech acts, Bigo (2002, 2012) studies the incitement of unease, and in doing so, utilises an approach that is explicitly focused on practices. What is important here is the way in which Bigo’s (2002, 2012) theory paves the way for a more extensive analysis of security issues in modern societies. However, despite Bigo’s (2002, 2012) contribution, his approach is far too practice-specific for the purpose and scope of this thesis.

Balzacq (2005, 2010, 2015) offers somewhat of a middle ground between Buzan et al. (1998) and Bigo’s (2002, 2012) theories of securitisation. By drawing on both the power of discourse and the strategies implicit in practices, Balzacq (2005) develops an approach equipped to study discursive acts that are grounded in the broader structures and practices in which they occur. Balzacq (2005) theory of securitisation can therefore be seen as a revision of Buzan et al.’s (1998) traditional approach that has incorporated Bigo’s (2002, 2012) insight into practices. As such, Balzacq argues:

“By integrating strategic purposes into the equation, my approach elevates securitisation above its normative setting and, in doing so, ensconces it in the social context, a field of power struggles in which securitizing actors align on a security issue to swing the audience’s support toward a policy or course of action” (Balzacq, 2005, p. 173).

These ‘strategic purposes’ refer to Balzacq’s (2005) conceptualisation of securitisation as a strategic, or pragmatic, practice that can operate within and beyond discursive acts. ‘Within’ discourse, Balzacq (2005, p. 172) argues that there is a strategic action to discourse that “operates at the level of persuasion and uses various artifacts (metaphors, emotions, stereotypes, gestures, silences, and even lies) to reach its goal”. ‘Beyond’ discursive acts, Balzacq (2005) encourages a focus on the way in which security practices emerge in ‘real

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situation’ based on ‘non-linguistic world knowledge’. Balzacq (2005) argues that such knowledge is grounded in external contexts and objective developments. By integrating a focus within and beyond discursive acts, Balzacq’s (2005) approach provides a more holistic analysis of securitisation processes within politics than both Buzan et al.’s (1998) speech act theory and Bigo’s (2002, 2012) practices-based approach. With this as the point of departure, Balzacq (2005) develops the sociological approach to securitisation by elaborating on the three definitive features that amount to a successful securitisation. This section will now further elaborate on these three definitive features as developed by Balzacq (2005) and Stritzel (2012). In turn, it will discuss the way in which a sociological approach provides a more holistic account of processes of securitisation than a traditional approach.

2.3.1. External Context

The first definitive feature of a sociological approach is that the process of securitisation is connected with its external context. This feature detaches threats from their linguistic construction and places them within the broader context in which the securitising actor speaks. Highlighting the importance of external context emphasises the way in which an actor’s claims and actions must resonate with the external reality their audience belongs to. Balzacq demonstrates this here:

“the positive outcome of securitization, whether it be strong or weak, lies with the securitizing actor’s choice of determining the appropriate times within which the recognition, including the integration of the ‘imprinting’ object – a threat – by the masses is facilitated” (Balzacq, 2005, p. 182).

In other words, linking an issue to its external context is likely to enhance the extent to which the issue can be credibly recognised as a threat by the relevant target audience. It is therefore the extent to which the ‘threat’ can be conceived of, and facilitated by, the relevant audience that determines the success of the securitising move. This represents a clear advancement from Buzan et al.’s (1998) speech act theory, which, confines the study of securitisation processes to instances in which an actor, in a position of authority, presents an issue as a security issue in accordance with the established rules of a speech act. Balzacq (2005) criticises this further, suggesting that Buzan et al. (1998) fail to differentiate between ‘institutional’ and ‘brute’ threats. This is to say that, threats aren’t only institutional, created once the conditions of a speech act have been fulfilled, but rather, threats can be real and can

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“wreck entire political communities regardless of the use of language” (Balzacq, 2005, p. 181). To a certain extent, this limits Buzan et al.’s (1998) analytical and theoretical focus to the ‘power of discourse’ – i.e. the constructive power of discourse within a specific structure (Stritzel, 2012). Stritzel presents this notion of discourse in opposition to the ‘power in discourse’, defined as:

“the sociopolitical resources and power positions of actors, their political struggles and processes of authorization at specific moments in time to create, challenge, change or amend existing meaning structures, potentially establishing new discursive hegemonies in history” (Stritzel, 2012, p. 550).

In his development of a sociological approach to securitisation, Stritzel (2012) offers an approach which valorises both the power of discourse and the power in discourse. This approach combines an analysis of texts and language with an analysis of both external context and individual agency within discourse. As such, a sociological approach to securitisation offers a more comprehensive basis for the study of discursive practices evident in ‘political struggles’ that occur within ‘specific moments in time’ (Stritzel, 2012).

2.3.2. Power Imbalance

Stritzel’s (2012) abovementioned insight into agency provides the foundations for the second definitive feature of a sociological approach to securitisation theory: the effect of an imbalance of power between speaker and listener (Balzacq, 2005). This imbalance manifests itself in a number of ways. For one, an imbalance may manifest at the ‘agent level’ through the speakers (1) power position and personal identity in terms of their beliefs and attributes, (2) their social identity, and (3) the salience of alternative narratives and the ability of the target audience to reject an agent’s claim (Balzacq, 2005). Another way in which an imbalance of power may emerge is through an asymmetry in access to relevant information. This regards the power derived from the knowledge that the speaker may have – “a kind of cultural capital” (Balzacq, 2005, p. 191). Perceiving power relations in this way elevates the sociological approach to securitisation above that of Buzan et al.’s (1998) insofar as it provides a greater variety of dimensions to take into account other than the social and political capital of the speaker. Furthermore, many securitisation scholars have since argued that Buzan et al.’s (1998) ‘actor-centric’ view of power (in relation to authority) fails to account for the role of the actor’s characteristics and the broader context in which they speak

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(Stritzel, 2012). According to Stritzel (2012, p. 553), the analysis of these dimensions of power allows the sociological approach to fully capture the performative power of a discursive act by accounting for the “broader structures of meaning and power”. Thus, by building upon the Copenhagen School’s view of power (in relation to authority), a sociological approach to securitisation is able to provide a more extensive analysis and explanation of the dynamics of power present throughout a process of securitisation.

2.3.3. Audience(s)

The final definitive feature of the sociological approach is that, in order to be effective, a process of securitisation must be audience-centred (Balzacq, 2005). This is because securitisation is a strategic practice in which actors are required to successfully persuade their audience(s) in order to mobilise support for their desired outcome (Balzacq, 2005). Therefore, it is ultimately the audience who determines the success of the securitisation process. This is because, in order to achieve a particular course of action, the speaker must attain the acceptance of the relevant target audience before being able to legitimately pursue such action. The relation between acceptance and legitimate action derives from the establishment of democratic rule and the way in which it transcends into various institutions and practices – including security (Huysmans, 2014). As such, it is up to the audience to either ‘facilitate’ or reject the claim of a speaker and the course of action they aim to achieve. This reveals an essential dynamic at the core of a sociological approach to securitisation. Specifically, the role that an actor’s strategic practices play within processes of securitisation (Balzacq, 2005). Stritzel explicates the way in which such strategic practices can operate through discourse, as:

“in order to understand the social success of particular securitizing moves at a particular point in time in a particular location, it is usually important to also study more closely the particular pragmatics of specific conversational strategies applied in the specific communicative event in which actors typically draw upon various sociolinguistic resources available to create resonance with an audience’s expectations through emotional appeals, historical analogies and/or various forms of symbolic, often culturally highly specific, language” (Stritzel, 2012, p. 555, emphasis in original).

In other words, in order to securitise an issue, it is the securitising actor’s task to engage with their audience on the basis of external context and sociolinguistic resources. Successfully

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executing this task results in the actor attaining the support of their target audience and the legitimate grounds to execute certain policies.

The sociological approach to securitisation resonates with Buzan et al.’s (1998) theory, in which without the acceptance and facilitation of the target audience, the speaker would be unable to fully establish the securitisation of a particular issue. However, this approach exceeds Buzan et al.’s (1998) conception of an audience as merely compliant: accepting of the threat that has been presented to them by an authoritative actor. Rather, a sociological approach to securitisation encourages a far more critical reading of audience acceptance by highlighting the strategic intentions of securitising actors and the necessary external circumstances that may mediate acceptance. As such, Balzacq (2005) encourages a closer look at the foundations from which the audience’s acceptance is derived.

An awareness of the effect that audience(s) can have is crucial to the sociological approach, although difficult to empirically ground. The lack of empirical clarity and evidence in certain cases (Neal, 2009; Balzacq, 2008) has led some scholars to downplay and even discredit the mediating role of audience(s). However, to disregard the role of audience(s) completely would be detrimental to the study of securitisation, given that each conceptualisation of the theory requires persuasion in order to either permit the use of extraordinary measures (Buzan et al., 1998), incite fear and unease (Bigo, 2002, 2012), or to encourage and achieve a specific course of action (Balzacq, 2005). In order to overcome the empirical limits of an audience-centred approach, an important caveat is necessary here. To include the analysis of ‘the audience’ into a study of securitisation is not to say that the analysis becomes audience-oriented in its scope. Rather, it is to say that the analysis will be aware of the existence of the audience and the role that this mere existence plays in influencing the ‘strategic practices’ of actors.

2.4. Conclusion

This chapter has reviewed both traditional and more recent conceptualisations of securitisation theory in order to explicate the ways in which the latter, specifically the sociological approach, provides a more comprehensive framework for the analysis of modern security issues. This claim was made in relation to the theoretical lens as defined by the three core features offered by a sociological approach. The first of which defined the impact of

external context on the success of a securitising move. With regard to this feature, it was

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external context, it was better equipped to analyse the strategic practices of actors as they work to align with the reality of their audience (Balzacq, 2005). The second feature of a sociological approach’s perspective highlighted the influence of power imbalances on processes of securitisation. This feature built on the Buzan et al.’s (1998) account of power (in relation to authority) in order to focus on the role of the actor’s characteristics and the broader context in which they speak (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012). The final feature of the sociological lens provided a more exhaustive account of the role of audience(s). As opposed to the Copenhagen School’s focus on audience compliance, the sociological approach encourages a closer analysis of which strategies, practices, and external circumstances determine the target audience’s acceptance (Balzacq, 2005).

These three definitive features will provide the theoretical foundations and the guiding framework of this thesis. They will in turn provide a key reference point for the analysis of UK politicians’ attempts to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof) within the Brexit debate. The following chapter will outline the research design and method that will be used in order to make this goal actionable.

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Ch.3: Research Design and Methodology

3.1. Introduction

The last chapter argued that a sociological approach to securitisation provided the most coherent theoretical framework for this thesis. This claim was made in relation to the approach’s more exhaustive account of the role that external context, power imbalances, and audiences play in processes of securitisation. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the choice of research design, methodology and data, the selection of which will be guided with the intention of providing the best foundations to examine whether and how UK politicians attempted to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof).

This chapter is divided into four sections. Firstly, it will describe the research design, a qualitative case study, which will be justified in relation to the ways in which it provides the best fit to the purpose of this research. Secondly, it will present and justify the analytical focus on four UK politicians and the data selection of 13 respective documents. The third section of the analysis will present the chosen method – a two-layered analysis. The final section reflects on the reliability of the research design and method as a whole.

3.2. A Qualitative Case Study

This thesis has chosen to utilise a qualitative research design with regard to a single case study. There are of course advantages and disadvantages of both quantitative and qualitative research designs, however this thesis will not invest its time in the so-called paradigm wars between the interpretivism and positivism camps (Rahman, 2016). Rather, this section will focus on the applicability of a qualitative case study research design with regard to the specific focus of this thesis.

The selection of a qualitative research design was made on the basis of its general focus on the role of language and practice in the development of meaning (Bryman, 2012). This focus derives from the alignment of qualitative research within a constructivist ontological position. This implies that social phenomena and meaning are produced through social interaction and are thus in a constant state of revision (Bryman, 2012). In turn, this ontological position allows for an analytical focus on interactions and discourse and the role that discourses can play in the construction of the social world. Accordingly, a qualitative research design will allow this thesis to deconstruct UK politicians’ language and discourse

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in order to gain an understanding of how these actors may have attempted to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof).

In line with this qualitative approach, this thesis will utilise a single case study design as it aims to analyse the specific case of the UK’s EU Referendum. Stake (1995, p. xi) explains that such an approach is useful as it provides the researcher with the necessary focus to highlight “the particularity and complexity of a single case”. Additionally, the idiographic focus implicit in this approach, allows this thesis to delve into the unique dynamics of the case within the specific context in which it emerged (Bryman, 2012). As such, the utilisation of a qualitative case study research design will allow this thesis to highlight the particular discourse, practices, and interactions of UK politicians within the specific and complex context of the EU Referendum.

3.3. Data Selection

This section will outline the process of data collection. This first requires an explanation of why and how four UK politicians were selected for the analysis, an identification of their role in British politics, and an explanation of the selected data. The data will then be presented in Table 1.

The analysis of how UK politicians attempted to securitise EU membership first requires an identification of key politicians within the UK’s EU Referendum. The rationality underpinning the selection of four key actors, rather than an analysis of all of the relevant actors, is informed by the research design. As previously mentioned, the selection of a case study design encourages the researcher to engage substantively with the complexity of the case at hand (Stake, 1995). As such, in order to achieve this level of complexity, it proves necessary to identify the specific actors who were central to the Referendum and to in turn focus in detail on the particularities of their role in the case.

The process of identifying key politicians within the UK’s EU Referendum debate was guided by a report of the media coverage during the Brexit campaign. The report, UK

media coverage of the 2016 EU Referendum, conducted a meta-analysis of online national

news outlets during the official campaign period of the Referendum (Moore & Ramsay, 2017). Crucially, the meta-analysis identified key political actors within the debate. This was calculated on the basis of the number of times each actor was mentioned in British national news outlets. This revealed that the most dominant political voices were David Cameron and George Osborne for the Remain campaign (referenced 5,785 and 2,355 times respectively),

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and Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage for the Leave campaigns (referenced 3,407 and 2,123 respectively) (Moore & Ramsay, 2017). In accordance with the findings of this report, these four actors were identified as key UK politicians within the Brexit debate.

A brief background of each actor and the respective document selected for their analysis is outlined in the following paragraph. It is first important to mention that as this thesis aims to analyse the possible attempts to achieve securitisation within the UK’s EU Referendum debate, data was only selected between the announcement of the Referendum, 20th February 2016, and the day of the vote itself, 23rd June 2016. The specific data was then selected with regards to how best it reflected the central claims and arguments of the four identified UK politicians: Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, and Farage. As such, this informed the identification of data in which the actors either spoke directly, in the form of a speech, or directly publicised their views in news articles, analyses, or statements. The variety of the documents provides an added dimension as they highlight the different mediums through which the actors attempted to communicate with their audiences. The rationale behind this approach was to ensure that the data truly reflected the selected actors’ arguments as opposed to being dramatized or biased by alternative sources.

The first actor, David Cameron, was the Conservative Prime Minister of the UK between May 2010 and July 2016 (Gov.UK, 2018a). In 2013, Cameron pledged that if re-elected in May 2015, his Conservative government would hold an in/out referendum on EU membership (BBC, 2013). This pledge came at a time in which the UK Independence Party (UKIP) was gaining greater prominence, a right-wing political party determined to get the UK out of the EU. Once re-elected, Cameron held his Referendum and was a key proponent of keeping Britain in the EU. As such, he aligned with the ‘Britain Stronger In’ campaign – here referred to as the official Remain Campaign (Stronger In, 2018). Cameron then stepped down as Prime Minister in July 2016 following his defeat in the UK’s EU Referendum. The data selection process (as mentioned above) led to the identification of the following four documents: a transcript of Cameron’s ‘EU Referendum announcement’ 20th February 2016 (Independent, 2016); his ‘PM speech on the UK’s strength and security in the EU’ 9th May 2016 (Gov.UK, 2016a); his interactive debate with an audience broadcasted on the British television channel ITV ‘ITV: Brexit ‘debate’ – questions for David Cameron’ 8th June 2016 (ITV, 2016); and his article published in The Telegraph ‘An abject, self-imposed humiliation awaits if this proud, important country walks away’ 18th June 2016 (Telegraph, 2016a).

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The second actor, George Osborne, worked under Cameron as the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer within the same time frame, May 2010 until July 2016 (Gov.UK, 2018b). Osborne also supported the official Remain Campaign, working closely with Cameron from the onset of the Referendums announcement. The data selection process identified the following three documents: Osborne’s ‘2016 Budget speech’ 16th March 2016 (Gov.UK, 2016b); his ‘HM Treasury analysis: the immediate impact of leaving the EU’ 23rd May 2016 (Gov,UK, 2016c); and his speech ‘Chancellor explains the immediate economic impact of leaving the EU’ delivered at the British ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) business, ‘B&Q’, on 23rd May 2016 (Gov.UK, 2016d). There is some over lap between the two documents produced on 23rd May 2016 as Osborne’s speech draws on his ‘HM Treasury Analysis’. Nonetheless, these documents were selected in order to enhance the quality of the data, as there were no other available documents in which Osborne relayed his position directly.

The third actor, Boris Johnson, was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in May 2015 and was appointed as the Foreign Secretary on 13th July 2016 (Gov.UK, 2018c), following Cameron’s resignation as the Conservative party leader. Despite being a member of Cameron’s Cabinet, Johnson chose to be a core member of the official ‘Vote Leave’ Campaign Committee – here referred to as Vote Leave (Vote Leave, 2018). Johnson was also the Mayor of London between 2008 and 2016 (London Gov, 2018b), making him a key socio-political, financial, and cultural figure in the UK generally, and in London specifically. Three documents were selected for the analysis of Johnson’s argumentation: his article published in The Telegraph ‘There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU’ 6th March 2016 (Telegraph, 2016b); his speech ‘The liberal cosmopolitan case to Vote Leave’ 9th May 2016 (Vote Leave, 2016a); and his statement published on 26th May 2016, ‘The only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave on 23rd June’ (Vote Leave, 2016b).

The fourth actor, Nigel Farage, was the leader of UKIP between 2006 and 2009 and again in 2014 until 2016 (BBC, 2016b). In 2016 (the year of the Referendum), UKIP only retained one seat in British Parliament (Parliament, 2018), pitting Farage as an outsider to the UK’s central government. Farage was also elected into the European Parliament in 1999 and now continues to chair the Eurosceptic party, ‘Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group’ (European Parliament, 2018). Farage was at the forefront of the unofficial leave campaign, Leave.EU, alongside Arron Banks (Leave.EU, 2018). Farage’s political affiliation with UKIP and Leave.EU meant that he and Johnson (a Conservative member of the official

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Vote Leave campaign) did not converge with one another (officially2_{) throughout the}

campaign. Farage stood down as the leader of UKIP in 2016 following Britain’s vote to leave the EU, as his “political ambition ha[d] been achieved” (BBC, 2016c). The data selection process led to the identification of the following three documents: his interactive debate as broadcasted on ITV ‘ITV: Brexit ‘debate’ – questions for Nigel Farage’ 8th June 2016; his article published in The Telegraph ‘Don’t let David Cameron and George Osborne fool you: here’s what my vision of Britain really looks like’ 10th_{June 2016; and his article published in}

The Express ‘Why we must vote LEAVE in the EU referendum’ 21st June 2016 (Express, 2016).

The selected data is presented below in Table 1 in order to provide a clear point of reference for the analysis in the forthcoming chapter. Included in this table is the type of data (speech, article, statement, or analysis), where it was delivered or publicised, the documents’ official name and reference as provided in the bibliography, and the date the document was delivered.

2_{Farage and Johnson’s coordination throughout the campaign has since come under criticism}

due to their apparent affiliation with the Cambridge Analytica scandal (Guardian, 2018a). However, this dynamic will not be analysed further within the scope of this thesis.

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Speaker Type & Location of _Delivery Document Name & Date Reference

David Cameron

Speech - delivered and broadcasted outside of government

“EU referendum date

announcement” – 20th_February 2016

Independent, 2016

Speech - delivered at the British Museum

“PM speech on the UK’s strength and security in the EU” – 9th_May 2016

Gov.UK, 2016a Answering audience

questions - delivered and broadcasted on ITV

“ITV: The Brexit “debate” – questions for David Cameron” – 8th June 2016

ITV, 2016

Article - published in The Telegraph

“An abject, self-imposed humiliation awaits if this proud, important country walks away” – 18th_{June 2016} Telegraph, 2016a George Osborne Speech - delivered in Parliament

“The 2016 Budge speech” – 16th

March 2016 Gov.UK, 2016b

Analysis - published on Gov.UK website

“HM Treasury analysis: the immediate economic impact of leaving the EU” – 23rd May 2016

Gov.UK, 2016c

Speech - delivered at a British Business

“Chancellor explains the immediate economic impact of leaving the

EU” – 23rd_{May 2016} Gov.UK, 2016d

Boris Johnson

Article - published on The Telegraph

“There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the

EU” – 6th_{March 2016} Telegraph, 2016b Speech - delivered at Vote

Leave rally

“The liberal cosmopolitan case to

Vote Leave” – 9th_{May 2016} Vote Leave, 2016a ‘Key statement’ -

published on Vote Leave website

“The only way to take back control of immigration is to Vote Leave on

23rd_{June” – 26}th_{May 2016} Vote Leave, 2016b

Nigel Farage

Answering audience questions - delivered and broadcasted on ITV

“ITV: The Brexit “debate” – questions for Nigel Farage” – 8th June 2016

ITV, 2016

Article - published on The Telegraph

“Don’t let David Cameron and George Osborne fool you: here’s what my vision of Britain really looks like” – 10th June 2016

Telegraph, 2016c

Article - published on The Express

“Why we must vote LEAVE in the

EU referendum” – 21st_{June 2016} Express, 2016 Table 1: Presenting the actor, selected data, date type, its name, and date.

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3.4. A Two-Layered Analysis

This section will present the two-layered methodological approach used in this thesis in order to conduct its analysis. The first layer of analysis will assess whether the four actors attempted to securitise EU membership. This essentially requires reviewing the actors’ respective documents in order to identify whether their claims follow the structure provided by a sociological approach to securitisation (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012). As explained in Chapter One, in order to successfully securitise an issue, an actor must (1) relate their claims to the external reality, (2) evoke a power imbalance (between themselves and the audience or alternative voices) with regard to their power position, social identity, or relative capabilities, and (3) engage with their audience on the basis of emotive appeals, historical analogies and sociolinguistic resources (Balzacq, 2005; Stritzel, 2012). This level of analysis is therefore utilised in order to identify specific discursive features in each actor’s documents that can collectively support the claim that there is evidence of an actor (or actors) explicitly seeking to use security threats in an attempt to securitise EU membership.

The identification of the three core features of securitisation will then be followed by the second level of analysis – a deconstruction of the actors’ discourse in order to understand

how they attempted to securitise EU membership. This analysis utilises the methodology set

out by ADA, the methodological structure of which is described below along with an explanation of the accompanying tool set.

ADA, as developed by Hajer (2006, p. 66), is the examination of narrative structures and story lines “in documents and other written or spoken statements as well as the practices through which these utterances are made”. The core tenet underpinning ADA is that discourse has the capacity to construct reality and therefore requires a detailed analysis in order to identify the ways in which political struggles may influence meaning. In order to identify these ‘struggles’ over meaning, ADA provides an analytical perspective aware of the strategic dynamics of language and discourse (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005). The ‘strategic dynamic’ evident throughout political argumentation reveals the central role actors play – as it is the actors themselves that “actively try to influence the definition of the problem” (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005, p. 177). Within such a perspective, narratives, story lines, metaphors, discourse-coalitions, and discursive affinities are pinpointed as key mediums through which meaning is conveyed and interpreted in processes of political contestation (Hajer, 2006). The following will outline these key mediums through which the utilisation of ADA will structure the second-layer of analysis.

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Hajer (2006, p. 67) defines discourse as “an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to social and physical phenomena, and which is produced and reproduced through an identifiable set of practices”. The analysis of discourse illuminates discursive structures within language – i.e. narratives, story lines, and metaphors. In turn, ADA often illuminates the concepts, ideas, and categories “in terms of which [an issue] is discussed” (Hajer, 2006, p. 67, emphasis in original). Narratives can be understood as an ordering principle, a way of constructing a problem. Story lines “are the medium through which actors try to impose their view of reality on others, suggest certain social positions and practices, and criticise alternative social arrangements” (Hajer, 2006, p. 71). Actors use story lines as short cues, either often assuming that the listener is aware of the larger construct, or to encourage the listener to associate this story line with a broader narrative. An example of which, within the case of this thesis, could be a UK politician simplifying the complexity of the EU Referendum into a matter of economic prosperity. The structure of this story line would be: leaving the EU threatens the UK’s economy. Therefore,

a vote to leave the EU is a vote for a recession. As demonstrated in this example, actors can

also use metaphors in the construction of their story lines in order to bring about a conceptual shift in how an issue is both understood and addressed (Hajer, 2006). A metaphor encourages the listener to understand and experience an issue in terms of something else altogether (Hajer, 2006).

One way in which these discursive structures then plays out is through

discourse-coalitions, which Hajer (2006, p. 70) defines as “a group of actors that, in the context of an identifiable set of practices, shares the usage of a particular set of story lines over a particular

period of time” (emphasis in original). Practices here are defined as the embedded routines, rules, and norms within a specific discipline – i.e. a politician entering a debate or giving a speech within Parliament encourages a different set of practices than when that same politician is speaking directly with their citizenry. This definition derives from Hajer’s (2006) valorisation of the context and broader socio-historical background in which discourse emerges. With regard to the case of the UK’s EU Referendum, a discourse-coalition would be expected among actors in the same Campaign, such as Cameron and Osborne, as in an

identifiable set of practices (speeches, articles, analyses), they aim to convey a similar

message by utilising the same underlying story lines as they communicate with their audience.

Another way of understanding the way in which discursive structures play out and retain coherence between various actors’ arguments, is through the formation of discursive

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affinities. Discursive affinities occur when arguments vary in origin but maintain a similar

conceptualisation of the world (Hajer, 2006). This often results in different actors or groups arriving at a similar conclusion. Within the case at hand, this could be expected between Johnson and Farage, as they both campaign to leave the EU, yet belong to different and disassociated campaigns.

Before going forward, it is crucial to outline how this two-layered analysis was executed in practice. This occurred in two stages. It was first necessary to review the 13 selected documents using the software tool ATLAS.ti. This enabled the exploration and coding of the 13 selected documents. The coding process aims to identify instances in which Cameron, Osborne, Johnson and Farage indicate an attempt to securitise EU membership (or a lack thereof). Given that two actors support Remain (Cameron and Osborne) and two support Leave (Johnson and Farage), the coding system grouped the actors’ attempts to securitise EU membership on the basis of their campaign perspective – i.e. Remain or Leave. Once all 13 documents were coded on this basis, ATLAS.ti calculated the frequency of the codes to reveal which are the most dominant. In turn, this allowed for the identification of the most dominant threats posed to the British public by the Remain and the Leave actors.

The analysis of these threats will be executed over the following two chapters. The first chapter will focus on the documents of the Remain actors (Chapter Four) and the second on the documents of the Leave actors (Chapter Five). The rationale for this division is purely practical as it provides the clearest structure from which to further deconstruct the identified threats. In order to do this, each chapter will be divided in to two sections based on the identified threats. The two-layered analysis will then be applied to each section. As previously mentioned, the first layer entails assessing the extent to which a threat is constructed in accordance with the three critical features of a sociological approach to securitisation. Subsequently, the second layer uses ADA in order to identify and examine the story lines through which each threat is articulated.

3.5. Reliability of Research Design and Method

As with any research, there are of course some limitations with the selected design and methodology. This section will briefly address these and offer actionable solutions. The first limitation is that it is often difficult to achieve full internal validity with a qualitative approach (such as ADA) as the researcher bases their analysis on their own interpretation of

Attempting to securitise EU membership : a discourse analysis of the UK's EU referendum