Racialized Securitization, Civil Liberties and Resistance: Sociological Perspectives on Race, Religion, Rights and the State

Across contemporary democracies, the boundaries of citizenship, belonging and civil liberties are being redrawn through expanding security architectures, digital surveillance and shifting state responses to perceived threats. These developments do not affect populations evenly: racialized and minoritized communities, including visible religious minorities (notably Muslim, Jewish and Sikh communities), frequently bear the disproportionate weight of policing, monitoring and exclusionary policy, and face persistent hostility and public scrutiny. Sociological scholarship has shown how racism operates not only through interpersonal encounters but through institutional practices, legal frameworks, media representations and increasingly through algorithmic systems that mediate everyday life. Private and community-based security arrangements further raise questions about racialized, unevenly distributed regimes of protection. At the same time, civil society organizations, grassroots movements and academic networks have produced new conceptual tools for analyzing racialization, contested dominant security paradigms, and advanced rights-based alternatives. Understanding how race, religion, rights and state power intersect remains a pressing task for the social sciences and for evidence-informed policy.This Research Topic seeks to advance sociological understanding of how racialization, securitization and the erosion or defence of civil liberties shape contemporary social life, and to examine the consequences for democratic participation, equality and social justice. Important questions remain open: how do expanding security and surveillance practices reshape the everyday lives of racialized and religious minority communities? In what ways do schools, universities, workplaces, places of worship and online platforms become sites where racialized governance is produced, contested or resisted? How do emerging technologies, including AI-driven decision-making, predictive policing and algorithmic content moderation, entrench or transform racial inequalities? How do uneven state protection and growing private security reshape social cohesion and belonging? And how do social movements, civil society actors and minoritized communities mobilize to defend rights and reimagine security on more inclusive terms? The Topic invites empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions that build on recent advances in critical race studies, political sociology and the sociology of security, and that inform policy debates on tackling racial, ethnic and religious inequalities in line with SDGs 10 and 16.This Research Topic welcomes original empirical research, theoretical contributions, methodological papers, policy analyses, case studies and review articles from across the social sciences, including political sociology, criminology, social policy, education, geography, social psychology, the sociology of religion and cultural studies (where grounded in contemporary issues). Interdisciplinary and comparative work is particularly encouraged. Suggested themes which may be explored in this Research Topic, include, but are not limited to:• Racialization, state power and the production of racial, ethnic and religious inequalities• The human rights and civil liberties implications of contemporary security policy and practice• Surveillance, policing and the everyday protection of racialized and religious minority communities, including Muslim, Jewish and Sikh groups• Private and community-based security: implications for social cohesion and the stratification of protection• Security, democracy and academic freedom in schools, universities and civil society• AI, algorithmic governance and predictive technologies in policing, welfare and law enforcement• Online platforms, content moderation and the racial politics of digital governance• Political participation, activism and social movements among racialized and minoritized groups• The politics of gender, race and religion within anti-racist and human rights movements• Comparative perspectives on state, media and civil society responses to racism and religious hostility• Rights-based and community-led alternatives to dominant security paradigms Topic editors: Narzanin Massoumi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/80734/racialized-securitization-civil-liberties-and-resistance-sociological-perspectives-on-race-religion-rights-and-the-state