Friday, July 14, 2017
East Quad Lecture Theatre (University of Glasgow)
Abstract: The project of European integration started its journey in turmoil and then headed for peaceful development. This grandiose objective, nevertheless, is recently highly challenged. In fact, the Union project has never been free from difficulties and challenges during its long course of integration undertaking. Particularly, terrorism is increasingly sweeping across Europe. It is not only rampant, but also diversified in many respects, threatening and challenging European regional social security. The article, with 9/11 as a watershed, develops a close analysis of terrorism in terms of attack types, target groups, casualties and so on based on the terror data analysis between 1990 and 2014 (new data to be updated) so as to have an in-depth understanding of terrorist symptoms, representations and motivation, inquires into the causes of terrorism and the sustainability of European social security, and at the policy-level observes the nuances of European security policies and counter-terrorism measures. The author argues that terror menace and its destructive power go up while the number of terrorist attacks is slowly decreasing, which also indicates that terrorists mobilize its members and engage in terror in a more strategic approach; that the Union’s anti-terror strategies, including so-called soft policies, needs further thinking and the sustainability of social security is highly tested; and that equal attention should be paid to a micro point of view, such as psychological state and personal social relationship, though terrorism is a macro issue at the global level.
Keywords: Terror Attacks; Sustainability; European Social Security
