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Abstract
This article introduces and lays out a conflict assemblage framework for understanding the political geography of globalized civil wars. It suggests the utility of conceptualizing Turkey's Kurdish conflict as an assemblage in which networked actors use multi-scalar strategies as part of their overall conflict strategy. Insurgent organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) operate at various scales beyond the national—including local, regional, transnational, and global—and in so doing utilize political opportunities and mobilize resources that are embedded in different locales. In the Kurdish case, disparate sites such as Diyarbakir, Marseille, Istanbul, London, New York, and Kobane become tied together within a single conflict assemblage that transcends geographical boundaries. An assemblage approach to violent conflict is a form of ontological theorizing that highlights this spatial and political complexity. By treating violent conflicts as assemblages with their own symbolic boundaries, political dynamics, internal governance structures, and strategic logics, we gain a better understanding of the contours and dynamics of globalized civil wars.

AbstractThis article examines the management and instrumentalisation of migration and mobility as an area of contested governance in civil wars. Building on work in migration studies and rebel governance, it shows how migration and mobility regimes form part of the structure of violent armed conflicts, as both states and non-state actors seek to control processes and consequences of mobility and migration to their advantage. Governance of migration during conflict involves the strategic use of mechanisms of migration governance for the purposes of achieving conflict aims. This article develops a framework for understanding how migration governance is instrumentalised in civil war as a means of managing and controlling populations. The framework is then applied to the case of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey and beyond through an analysis of three areas of migration governance that have played significant roles in this extended regional conflict: forced migration and refugee governance; border management; and diaspora engagement. The analysis provides a challenge to dominant state-centric, securitisation and humanitarian approaches to migration and security by pointing to the political and spatial complexity of contested migration governance in situations of protracted conflict.

AbstractThis essay reflects on the approaches to inclusion and exclusion put forward in this special issue and suggests a more radical alternative: the project of "decolonizing" the field of security studies. Drawing on work in decolonial thought and critical security studies, I discuss systemic-level structures of inclusion and exclusion such as global racial hierarchies, imperial and colonial legacies, and North-South inequities. Such structures both shape the material reality of the global security order, and affect knowledge production in the field of security studies itself, including the definition of what is and is not viewed as a legitimate "security issue." I conclude by asking what a "decolonized" security studies might look like.

AbstractDiaspora politics has been celebrated as a form of transnationalism that can potentially challenge authoritarian regimes. Arguably, opposition groups and political activists can mobilize beyond the territorial limits of the state, thus bypassing some of the constraints to political organization found in authoritarian states. The literature on transnational and extraterritorial repression complicates this model, for it shows that states can use strategies of 'long‐distance authoritarianism' to monitor, intimidate and harass diasporic populations abroad. Yet, non‐state actors in the diaspora also sometimes use such repressive strategies to mobilize internally, gain hegemony within the diaspora, and marginalize or eliminate internal rivals. This raises the question of whether such activities can be understood as non‐state forms of authoritarianism. Cases of diasporic politics pertaining to Turkey and Sri Lanka are briefly explored with a view to examining how state and non‐state forms of transnational repression can, under some conditions, result in the dynamics of competitive authoritarianism within a diaspora. In such cases, 'ordinary' members of the diaspora may become caught between multiple forms of transnational repression in addition to potentially experiencing marginalization and securitization in their new home.

The multiple politics and identities of many contemporary diasporic configurations raise a number of important conceptual issues for the study of diaspora politics, including what counts as a "diaspora," how do particular "diasporas" emerge, and what shapes their politics? This article discusses conceptual and substantive splits in the burgeoning social science literature on diasporas and suggests the value of analyzing the politics and policies of sending states as crucial factors in both "diaspora-shaping" and "diaspora-generating" processes. It presents an extended case study of the emergence of diaspora groups connected with contemporary Turkey, situating Turkey's "New Diaspora Policy" in its historical context. The article concludes by suggesting that the proposed framework allows for a deeper theorization of the relationship between identity categories and political action, thus shedding light on the conceptual puzzle of what constitutes a diaspora.

[D]iaspora politics can be viewed as not only enhancing or challenging state power in particular cases, but also contributing to new forms of global identity politics that transcend state institutions.

The changing political and social meanings of space under conditions of advanced globalization point to the need to analyze security – or the deployment and management of violence -- as a socio-spatial practice. This article draws attention to the "methodological nationalist" bias that has traditionally characterized mainstream security studies, and discusses its effect on how security issues are studied and conceptualized. Building on insights from political geography and sociology, the article makes the case for a "spatial turn" in the field. It discusses how a socio-spatial approach can help make sense of evolving state security practices, and presents examples of non-national spaces of security -- including cities, cyberspace and the global polity. Such spaces are increasingly objects of security practices, but the implications of this remain largely under-theorized in security studies.

International migration has moved to the top of the international security agenda, due in part to concerns that migration flows provide conduits for the spread of international terrorism. Although such concerns are not entirely unfounded, they must be placed within the broader context of the range of impacts—both positive and negative—that international migration flows have on states' core national security interests. Migration flows affect at least three dimensions of national security: state capacity and autonomy, the balance of power, and the nature of violent conflict. Overall, migration management presents a far greater security challenge to weak and failing states than to advanced postindustrial states. States that are able to formulate and implement migration policies that harness the power of international migration will be more secure, rather than less secure, in the new globalized security environment.