The aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical understanding of how the discursive construction of risk in relation to the migration/security nexus is entangled with processes of othering. Within the Swedish discourse about unaccompanied refugee minors, and its relation to masculinity, racism, and nationalism, risk framing practices are playing a central role. In the Swedish context the word ‘immigrant’ is frequently discussed in terms of risk, and is often associated with discourses of integration, segregation, and ‘Outsiderhood’, especially for people with an origin in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. This type of discourses act through moral norms; however, the imperative of security measures as a response to risk is carried out in relation to collective subject positions of dangerous ‘others’ and/or (un)precarious lives.
Drawing on Hunt’s argument (2003) about the hybridity of moral discourses and discourses of risk, we argue that morally infused discourses of risk are central in order to understand the migrant/security nexus, used as a means to create difference and distinction. By analysing how risk is intertwined with the processes whereby age, gender and race, are constructed in relation to unaccompanied child refugees our analyses show how logics of risk are intersecting with discourses of the immigrant to produce a particular framing of these children as ‘at risk’ and/or ‘risky’. Unaccompanied refugees (boys) are constructed as potential threats, as terrorists among other things, while unaccompanied girls are seen as at risk of being abused among other things. The migrant/security nexus has specific gendered conceptions that gives rise to particular strategies designed to profile and manage those labelled as ‘risky’ and at risk which also reproduce the racist formations in the Swedish society.