ABSTRACT
In recent times, young British Muslims have become objects of the official discursive construction of ‘vulnerability to radicalisation’ within UK counterterrorism law, policy and practice. This chapter critiques and contests the assumptions and arguments within vulnerability to radicalisation discourse that give legitimacy to pre-emptive practices of state surveillance and intervention in the lives of British Muslim children and young people, purportedly in their best interests, but which effectively serve to pathologise and delegitimise youthful political dissent. Implications for the political rights of young British Muslims are of central concern, along with the implications for social workers expected to deploy these governance practices on behalf of the state.
