Surveillance, safeguarding and beyond: the prevent duty and resilient citizenship

ABSTRACT

The Prevent Duty mandates education providers to address young people both as vulnerable to radicalisation and as (potentially) resilient. This paper argues that interventions designed to address vulnerability are problematic, as they tend to adopt the logic of safeguarding – a familiar mindset for professionals working with young people – while also extending practices of surveillance. As well as this safeguarding/surveillance nexus, however, the Duty offers openings for resilience-focused school-based interventions, which can assist young people’s development into active citizenship. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s distinction between “agonism” and “antagonism”, I will argue that the Duty endorses interventions to build resilience grounded in the effective capacity for citizenship, understood as enabling individuals both to take sides in (“agonistic”) political debate and to engage with the criteria for excluding certain (“antagonistic”) positions from political legitimacy. Supporting this argument, findings from mixed-methods research conducted in secondary schools suggest that training delivered under the Duty can offer significant gains in self-confidence and political engagement, and hence in effective citizenship and resilience to extremist messaging.

KEYWORDS:

• Prevent
• resilience
• safeguarding
• agonism
• antagonism

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Gavin Bailey and Kevin Wong of Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as Fatima Ahdash, Christos Boukalas, Tarek Younis and the participants and organisers of the 2018 European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference on International Relations, and three anonymous reviewers. The merits of this paper have many parents, the failings only one.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Home Office Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) as part of the project [OSCT/1718/010] Evaluation of Local Projects That Aim to Increase Individuals’ Understanding of Radicalisation.

Notes on contributors

Phil Edwards

Phil Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of “More work! Less pay!” Rebellion and repression in Italy, 1972-7 (Manchester University Press) and of multiple papers on political violence, radicalisation, counter-terrorism, the rule of law and restorative justice. He is currently working on a book about the contested existence of international law. He blogs at http://gapingsilence.wordpress.com and tweets @DrPhilEdwards.