ABSTRACT
Securitization scholarship has focused on the acts and agents that generate processes of securitization in light of a threat – military, political, societal, and so on. At the same time, literature has spoken of securitization as a dynamic process that is equally likely to be reversed, particularly in the context of reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts involving groups in conflict. Desecuritization can be understood as the de-escalation of perceived threats and, within the context of intergroup conflict, desecuritization can be effectively linked to social psychology concepts of prejudice reduction through intergroup contact (Contact Hypothesis) and group re-categorization. The study moves beyond the methodological approach of discourse analysis in an attempt to look beyond speech acts and delve further into the social psychological parameters that make audiences receptive, or not, of securitizing speech acts. Within the framework of the Cyprus conflict and through an auto-ethnographic research design, this study attends to the audience of local peacebuilders and discusses how intergroup contact between Greek and Turkish Cypriot peacebuilders has acted as a tool of de-securitization.
