International Studies Review (2018) 0, 1–26 ANALYTICAL ESSAY Van Gennep Meets Ontological (In)Security: A Processual Approach to Ontological Security in Migration O RIT G AZIT Hebrew University of Jerusalem This article utilizes van Gennep’s neglected theory of territorial passages to answer two key questions in the study of ontological security (OS) in migration. First, why do the members of the receiving society lose their perceived sense of OS in face of a mass of strangers arriving at their gates? Second, how, if at all, do they attempt to reconstitute it while incorpo- rating the strangers into their world? Following the recent call within OS studies in international relations (IR) to spell out the social mechanisms that facilitate the anxiety and uncertainty of the agents, I use the case of the German societal response to the 2015 refugee crisis to demonstrate that van Gennep’s classical approach, far from being structural and func- tionalist, offers an advanced, power-informed, and processual perspective for uncovering a possible sociosymbolic mechanism behind the perceived “losing” and “re-finding” of OS in migratory encounters. The article delin- eates the principles of a “thick” approach to OS in migration, explains how van Gennep’s theory adds to this approach, and highlights the ultimate unattainability of OS as an essentialist category that is either “present” or “absent” throughout the migratory encounter. It concludes by discussing the added value of van Gennep’s theory to the study of OS in the contem- porary global milieu of the “age of migration.” Keywords: German refugee crisis, guardians of the threshold, migration, ontological security, sanctity, territorial passage, the stranger, transition, Van Gennep Introduction In the summer of 2015, an unprecedented number of asylum-seekers crossed the Balkans to the eastern outposts of Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone. The ma- jority of these asylum-seekers had arrived from Syria, escaping the violent civil war that has been waging in their country since 2011, while others fled war-torn coun- tries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as developing areas in West Africa. Ger- many, more than any other European country, faced the immediate consequences of this exceptional influx, with an approximate one million asylum-seekers enter- ing the country by the end of 2015. The German federal government soon found itself in the midst of one of the most acute crises since its unification a quarter Gazit, Orit. (2018) Van Gennep Meets Ontological (In)Security: A Processual Approach to Ontological Security in Migration. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1093/isr/viy049 © The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isr/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/isr/viy049/5042156 by Hebrew University of Jerusalem user on 21 June 2018