Rethinking ‘protection’ in international relations: a collection of interventions

These intervention pieces seek to question protection, a concept within International Relations (IR) that is everywhere, yet rarely explicitly discussed. The field of IR is founded upon the central tenets of state, power and security. Protection is implicit within these concepts. It is both the outcome and the promise of security–it is inbetween. But what is protection? Practices of protection are not only under-theorised but also uphold unjust hierarchies by placing value only on particular kinds of life in particular kinds of ways. Protection is a fundamental part of how the world is imagined and enacted, and yet the concept of protection itself continues to evade sustained interrogation. Through this short series of reflections, we invite researchers who have grappled with the concept of protection within their work, to interrogate and problematise protection and how it is used in research and also experienced, in order to lay the foundations for a comprehensive research agenda.