Mexico: Analysing Securitisation in the Global South

Abstract

Looking at Mexico, this chapter finds a less widespread securitisation than in the other cases, not least due to a politicisation of climate change as an issue of global justice and economic opportunity. Nonetheless, climate security discourses were not inconsequential and gained in importance from the mid-2000s. While no discourse dominated, disciplinary and governmental representations and the argumentation of climate change as an overarching risk to Mexico’s population were most common. Apart from influencing climate policies, this helped to integrate climate change into civil protection and insurance schemes and avoided a short-sighted focus on symptoms. In general, this chapter highlights peculiarities of securitisation in the Global South, for example, a lack of domestic securitising actors, a scepticism towards ‘Western’ representations and the role of ‘counter-securitisations’.