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Should 'security' or 'securitization' be accorded positive or negative value? The Copenhagen School prefers desecuritization (positive value) to securitization (negative value). By examining securitization and desecuritization processes in China's approach to frontier security, the Copenhagen School argues that, in general, a strategy of desecuritization has proved effective. However, that does not mean that desecuritization should be seen as inherently positive; indeed, China's desecuritization strategy still encounters problems. To build conditions for a lasting frontier security, it is necessary to go beyond the current state-centric national security discourse and to give more attention to the societal security of the frontier people, their identity and culture. Thus, it is suggested in this article that frontier security studies should transcend 'positive–negative' debates and focus more on the 'referent object' of security: who and what we really want to secure and the means by which these objectives can be achieved.

This article demonstrates the existence of black families and the presence of children from these families in public schools of Maranhão, in the nineteenth century. Based on a conjectural methodology newspapers ads of the nineteenth century were consulted and also codices relating to records of baptism, marriage, and documentation of the Government Secretary, located in the Public Archives of the State of Maranhão and Public Library Benedito Leite.