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Abstract
How "critical" is mapping as a method in international relations (IR)? Critical approaches have fundamentally changed the practices of mapmaking in IR. They have replaced geopolitical representations of a world divided into territorial states with notions of fields, networks, flows, rhizomes, and assemblages. This shift is both conceptual and methodological: It has led to the introduction of new methods of representation, such as multiple correspondence analysis and network analysis. These new methods have, however, been subjected to a strong critique. They are accused of reproducing the very logics of power that they aim to question, and flatten the knowledge they aim to represent. There would be, as the argument goes, an inescapable theoretical and political bias embedded in these methods. This article engages with this debate, which is ultimately about the ontological and epistemological status of mathematical methods of visual representation and, more broadly, about the role of "making" in IR. It argues that practices of mapmaking can still be designed to function as critical tools. To illustrate this argument, this article draws on ongoing research on biometric mass surveillance as part of the Security Vision project.

While social and security policies have always overlapped in complex ways, recent developments in counter-terrorism policy suggest that Western European states, and the United Kingdom more specifically, are accelerating what can be termed the 'securitisation of social policy'1– namely, the increased submission of social policy actors and their practices to the logics of security and social control. With the PREVENT programme remaining highly controversial, what are the effects of these state practices? Has David Cameron's project of 'muscular liberalism', aimed at integration and community cohesion, been enforced through counter-radicalisation policies? This themed issue examines preventative counter-terrorism policies in the UK and the politics of religion, ethnicity and race they enact. The relation between social policy and critical security studies is explored by an interdisciplinary group of scholars.

Les attentats qui ont touché les villes occidentales au cours des douze dernières années (Madrid, Londres, Oslo, Boston, Toulouse, Bruxelles, Copenhague et maintenant Paris) nous effraient d'autant plus que leurs auteur.e.s ne viennent pas de l'étranger mais sont issu.e.s de nos propres sociétés. À cette peur s'en ajoute une autre pour un nombre croissant de parents, qui craignent que leur fils ou leur fille ne disparaisse un jour pour réapparaître en Syrie où 5000 à 6000 combattants européens ont, d'après les estimations, rejoint les rangs d'un groupe armé. Enfin, la peur d'être rejeté se diffuse au sein des minorités musulmanes confrontées à la suspicion du groupe majoritaire et, de façon croissante, à la stigmatisation et aux discriminations de la part d'institutions telles que les médias, l'école ou la police qui sont censées garantir leur information, leur éducation et leur sécurité. Répondant à ces peurs, les gouvernements européens ont renforcé et durci l'arsenal de la lutte contre le terrorisme : extension de la surveillance, pénalisation d'un nombre croissant d'activités (dont les déplacements vers la Syrie) intégrées dans une définition élargie du terrorisme, renforcement des contrôles aux frontières, instauration de mesures d'exception dans le droit pénal, etc. 1 . La politique antiterroriste ne se réduit cependant pas à ce volet répressif. S'y ajoute un volet préventif, souvent qualifié de « lutte contre la radicalisation », que Francesco Ragazzi interroge ici : quels sont les fondements de cette forme soft d'antiterrorisme qui se déploie depuis une dizaine d'années un peu partout en Europe ? Les mesures mises en œuvre ont-elles produit les effets recherchés ? Leurs effets pervers ne devraient-ils pas conduire à envisager d'autres approches ?

A key aspect of diaspora research in international relations should be on the ontological politics of naming migrants, travelers, nomads, guest workers, minorities, their relations, and their politics "diasporic." Academic debates about the definitions of diaspora are endless; not only is this quest largely a waste of time, but it marginalizes a more important issuenamely, the politicality of defining a population or a set of relations as "diasporic." I draw here on the notion of "ontological politics," as developed within actor network theory by John Law and Annemarie Mol (Mol 1999). In her work on clinical practices, Mol demonstrates that a disease such as anemia is not a single reality. It is performed in at least two different ways that depend on the methods through which it is diagnosed and therefore "made real": (i) the analysis of external symptoms by a doctor and (ii) the analysis of hemoglobin levels in a laboratory. What Mol shows is that these are not just different ways at getting at the same preexisting phenomenon but rather that the two methods produce two broadly similar yet distinct realities. Adapted from the source document.