This project investigates the rise of individual-based tactics in the fight against terrorism, more specifically the post-9/11 use of targeted killings. In concrete, it evaluates how and why the individual has become the target of international security concern and the recipient of coercive measures. In parallel, the project inquires how and why these practices are increasingly seen as legitimate by some liberal democracies, focusing on the most extreme of them: targeted killings via drones.

For this purpose, two main concepts are being introduced. Firstly, the project will investigate the phenomenon labeled the individualization of insecurity, i.e., the identification of individual persons as the main sources of insecurity instead of states, and the correspondent target of punishment. The individualization of insecurity points to a gradual, although not exhaustive, shift away from seeing security threats and risk primarily rising from states or other political collectives, towards focusing on individual persons as the main source of insecurity.

Secondly, this research investigates the normalization of exceptionalism, i.e. the process through which measures that until recently were seen as exceptional and last-resort options become normalized and institutionalized, and treated as a normal instrument in addressing identified security challenges.

Project manager: Bruno Oliveira Martins