How civil aviation threatens national security

Privatizing national carriers, allowing foreign investors to purchase airports, carrying citizens who want to train with foreign militias, and transporting gold and drugs for criminal gangs are just some of the civil aviation-related issues that are regularly claimed to threaten national security. By linking an issue with national security, as identified in securitization literature, issues can become elevated to the status of national emergencies with all the attention that these receive. This paper uses quantitative methods to examine the discursive securitization technique in which claims are made that civil aviation issues threaten national security. It identifies the types of claimed threats, the propensity of different actors to make such claims, and how often explanations of the link between the claimed threat and national security are provided.