Drug cartels, American corporations and other things that lurk 
in the dark 
A discourse analysis of Mexican foreign policy and the intersection between security 
and identity 
 
 
 
 
 
Alva Lundqvist 
Gothenburg University, School of Global Studies 
Bachelor’s thesis in Global Studies, 15 credits 
Spring 2022 
Supervisor: Bryan Mabee 
 
 
 
Abstract  
Investigating recent events in Mexican security policy from a poststructuralist perspective, this 
study highlights the role of identity in both security and foreign policies. These developments 
in International Relations (IR) and security studies have proven that sometimes the traditional 
perspective on these types of questions is insufficient and that an alternative perspective can be 
proven useful. This qualitative study provides a discourse analysis of a lawsuit filed by the 
Mexican State against eight American Firearms Corporations, using a theoretical and analytical 
framework based on poststructuralists Lene Hansen, David Campbell and Ole Wæver. The 
results of this study show that the construction of the Firearms Corporations in the lawsuit 
changes the discourse on responsibility in the fight against organised crime and armed violence 
in Mexico, providing the State with legitimate reason for changing their policies regarding the 
War on Crime.  
 
Key words: Mexico, security, identity, foreign policy, discourses of danger, de-securitization, 
global studies, international relations 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
Innehållsförteckning 
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 
1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 4 
2. PURPOSE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................ 7 
3. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................................... 7 
3.1 THE MEXICAN SECURITY IDENTITY ......................................................................................................................... 8 
3.2 SECURITY AND IDENTITY .................................................................................................................................... 10 
4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...................................................................................................................... 13 
4.1 POSTSTRUCTURALISM ....................................................................................................................................... 13 
4.2 DISCOURSES OF DANGER ................................................................................................................................... 14 
4.3 DE-SECURITIZATION .......................................................................................................................................... 16 
4.4 ANALYSING IDENTITY ........................................................................................................................................ 17 
5. METHOD AND METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................. 19 
5.1 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................................... 19 
5.2 METHOD ........................................................................................................................................................ 20 
5.3 MATERIAL ...................................................................................................................................................... 21 
5.4 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ................................................................................................................................. 22 
6. RESULTS .................................................................................................................................................... 23 
6.1 LAWFUL/UNLAWFUL ......................................................................................................................................... 23 
6.2 POTENTIALLY ‘GOOD’ CORPORATIONS .................................................................................................................. 26 
6.3 DANGER: THE VENOM IN THE SNAKES THAT ARE THE DRUG CARTELS ........................................................................... 27 
6.4 THE AMERICAN FIREARMS CORPORATIONS ........................................................................................................... 29 
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7. ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................................................. 30 
8. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 34 
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................. 37 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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1. Introduction  
As the Cold War ended, many of the basic understandings of the world was overthrown and to 
study the concept of security became increasingly popular. When the clarity of the bipolar 
positions between the East and the West disappeared, the world that emerged seemed much less 
comprehensible, more complex, and the traditional perspective of security as focused on the 
military affairs of the state started to feel insufficient in explaining security and foreign policy 
(Lipschutz, 1995). In the budding field of poststructuralist studies of International Relations 
(IR), a perspective of the social world as (re)produced through language and knowledge, 
identity instead became a centrepiece in the disciplinary debate of how these concepts should 
be understood. Identity is by poststructuralists perceived as inseparable from foreign policy 
because identity is elemental in the rationales behind foreign policy, at the same time as it is 
through formulations of foreign policy that identities are (re)produced. Both identity and 
foreign policy is thus understood as performative and as practices (Hansen, 2006, p. 1).  
 
In the meantime, and in the same context of criticising traditional security studies, talks began 
of ‘widening’ the security agenda. Widening meant to move away from the focus on the security 
of the state (national security) toward a focus on the security of people and concepts such as 
‘human security’ and ‘environmental security’ emerged (Wæver, 1996, p. 104). Based on how 
one chose to understand the concept of security this approach can be viewed as problematic. 
Security, according to some scholars, still must be analysed with reference to the traditional 
perspective of security because that is how security is practiced in national and international 
politics. Security is a specific field of practice, according to Ole Wæver (1996, p. 106), with a 
certain way of framing an issue as an existential threat which gives the actor who has labelled 
an issue as a security issue, the right to deal with it by extraordinary means. Wæver thus 
understands security from the inside of the traditional security perspective and argue that 
security should not be widened because treating an issue as a question of security, securitizing 
it, is not always the best way to go. There lies a danger in securitizing issues, according to 
Wæver. All politics should not be handled with extraordinary means and the authority that 
comes with speaking security might be misused. Instead Wæver proposes that many issues 
would be handled more efficient if the aim was not to maximize security but to de-securitize 
those issues and talk about them in terms of “normal politics” instead.  
 
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Taking the practice of security and identity, and de-securitizing as a focus makes the recent 
developments in Mexican foreign policy relevant to study. The Mexican State (the State) and 
the current administration led by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has taken 
a turn away from previous security strategies of handling the escalation of violence and instead 
chosen to “focus on addressing the socioeconomic drivers of violent crime and other novel 
policies” (Seelke & Klein, 2022, p. 5).  
 
For decades status quo in Mexico was based on the so called pax narcotica, a peace between 
the Mexican state and law enforcement, and the drug cartels who operated in the country 
(Morton, 2012, p. 1631). However, due to developments in the drug trade and in the country 
during the 1980’s and 1990’s violence escalated and in 2006 President Felipe Calderón 
launched the War on Crime1, a highly militarised offensive against the drug cartels (Gallaher, 
2016, p. 333-4). In addition to the national security strategy a bilateral initiative between the 
US and Mexico implemented in 2008, the Mérida Initiative, provided Mexico with an 
unprecedent amount of US military and equipment. As of today, US congress has provided 
nearly US$3.1 billion in assistance (Hunt, 2019, p. 1193; Osuna, 2021, p. 13). Since the launch 
of the War on Crime by Calderón, security has been a prioritised political issue by the State. 
President Enrique Peña Nieto, who assumed office in the end of 2012, vowed to diminish the 
violence and criminality in the country and the War on Crime was re-named ‘Mexico at Peace 
Plan’. However, Peña Nieto, despite the name change, continued Calderón’s path and the 
strategy was basically the same; militarised and securitized (Trevino-Rangel, Bejarano-
Romero, Atuesta & Velázquez-Moreno, 2022, p. 570; Osuna, 2021, p. 14). The rationales 
behind securitization in Mexico and the effectiveness of it has recently started to be questioned, 
both by scholars and by politicians as the AMLO administration (Osuna, 2021; Trevino-Rengel 
et al., 2021; Hunt, 2019). AMLO, who assumed office in 2018, went to the polls with, among 
other things, a security strategy focused on fighting poverty and reinforce the rule of law, and 
the key promise to de-militarize the police forces (AMLO, 2018; Seelke & Klein, 2022). In 
2019, the State instituted a civilian force called the National Guard, which was supposed to 
replace the federal police. However, much indicates that the National Guard is not very civilian 
 
1 This security campaign had various names it was and is called, however, la guerra contra el crimen, the War on 
Crime or la guerra contra el narco, the War against the Narcos is the most common ones. In this thesis I will use 
the term War on Crime as it captures the broader scope of the campaign which was not necessarily limited to drug 
trafficking (Guzik, 2013, p. 167). 
 5 
but most of its members belong to the armed forces. Additionally, in 2020, the president signed 
a “decree to allow military involvement in public security to continue for five more years, under 
civilian supervision” (Seelke & Klein, 2022), abandoning the promises from his campaign. 
 
These security policies are enacted simultaneously as AMLO claim the War on Crime is over 
and reject calls for a “war” on the cartels. Efforts are made to reduce civilian casualties in the 
fights between security forces and drug cartels and there are visible changes in the security 
strategy (Seelke & Klein, 2022, p. 5-6). The Mérida Initiative has been terminated since 
October 2021 and the new bilateral cooperation between Mexico and US is supposed to be “a 
more comprehensive approach regarding security, health, and safe communities” (U.S 
Department of State, 2021). Another part of the new security strategy the State has taken on is 
the civil action lawsuit filed on the 4th of August 2021 against American corporations Smith & 
Wesson Brands, inc.; Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, inc.; Beretta U.S.A Corp.,; Beretta 
Holdings S.P.A,; Century International Arms, inc.; Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC; 
Glock, inc.; Glock GES.M.B.H.; Sturm, Ruger & co., inc.; Witmer Public Safety Group, inc. 
D/B/A Interstate Arms (the Firearms Corporations). The purpose of the lawsuit, according to 
the State, is to “put an end to the massive damage that the Defendants cause by actively 
facilitating the unlawful trafficking of their guns to drug cartels and other criminals in Mexico” 
(Mexico v. Smith & Wesson et al., 2021, p. 1) and it is visible how the Firearms Corporations 
are constructed as a threat to the State and its people. However, at the same time as the Firearms 
Corporations are characterized as a threat, security is rarely mentioned, and the focus of the 
lawsuit is centred around the question of responsibility. Still, the lawsuit is expressly a part of 
the state’s security strategy, and the question is why? What is its function in a security context?  
 
The recent developments in Mexican security policy and the filing of the lawsuit against the 
American Firearms Corporations show how contradictory and complex security policies can 
be. As I mentioned earlier, taking a different approach than the traditional security perspective 
is a reasonable choice studying these kinds of questions and I will do so with the aim to continue 
to advance the scientific discussion surrounding foreign and security policies. Especially since 
the subject of security/identity is not particularly developed in a Mexican context and taking 
this poststructuralist approach can illuminate things about Mexican security policy which have 
not been examined before.   
 6 
2. Purpose and research questions  
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate recent developments in Mexican security policy and 
the intersection between foreign policy, security, and identity. This will be done by analysing 
the construction of state identity and how the Mexican State, with the lawsuit against the US 
firearms corporations, is shifting the discourse around the War on Crime, from centred around 
security towards a more de- securitized discussion of responsibility. By applying a 
poststructuralist perspective this thesis will highlight security and identity as political practice 
as well as the use of discourses of danger (Campbell) in foreign policy and aim to contribute to 
the understanding of foreign policies and the rationales behind them. To fulfil the purpose of 
the study, a discourse analysis of the complaint will be done, and the following research 
questions will act as a guide:  
• How are the US firearms corporations constructed as a threat to the Mexican state 
in the lawsuit against them? 	
• What role does the construction of the US firearms corporations as a threat play in 
the Mexican security identity?	
Answering these questions, this study will show how state actors, by adopting different 
discourses and thus different constructions of identity, can legitimate different policies. 
3. Literature review 	
This thesis is situated in the academic fields of IR and Global Studies as it concerns itself with 
questions of foreign policy and security and wishes to further our understanding of the 
underlying structures of international politics. To motivate this thesis’s academic relevance, the 
following section will outline previous research done on this subject and situate the thesis in 
relation to this. The purpose is to show that there is a gap in the research on security/identity in 
a Mexican context and therefore can this thesis contribute to filling that gap. First, I will give 
an account for how security in Mexico has been studied previously and then move on to discuss 
how identity has been studied in security studies in general. 	
 7 
3.1 The Mexican security identity  
When reviewing the occurrences of Mexico as the research subject in security studies it is 
visible that the research has a tendency to fall into either of these categories: the War on Crime 
and the security crisis of the Mexican state (see Morton, 2012; Hochmüller & Müller, 2014; 
Correa-Cabrera, Keck & Nava, 2015) or the Mexican-U.S relationship and security cooperation 
(see Schaefer, Bahney & Riley, 2009; Hunt, 2019; Santa Cruz, 2014; Gallaher, 2016). These 
two categories are intertwined, and it is almost impossible to discuss one of the issues without 
touching upon the other. The research often moves in the field of trying to explain the War on 
Crime, how it should be understood and why the violence has escalated since the beginning of 
this century, focusing on causes and effects of the deteriorating security situation (Hunt, 2019; 
Correa-Cabrera, Keck & Nava, 2015; Morton, 2012). However, analyses of identity in relation 
to security in a Mexican context is scarce. The literature on security/identity has largely been 
limited to actors in the Global North such as the EU, NATO, Japan, and Finland (Poopuu, 2015; 
McDonagh, 2015; Pomarède & Schjødt, 2015; Oros, 2015; Aunesluoma & Rainio-Niemi, 
2016) however, I will here give an account of my findings of research connected to 
understanding security and identity in Mexico.  
 
Mexican security policies and perspectives on security are widely influenced by the Mexican 
state’s political development. Abelardo Rodríguez Sumano (2019) discusses the Mexican 
national security from a politico-historical perspective and concludes that up until 2019, Mexico 
has not been able to establish a coherent national security strategy. Mexico has been 
independent for almost 200 years, but we can only talk of it as a democracy during the last 22 
years. Therefore, the author argues, drawing on the works of Barry Buzan (1983), because 
Mexico had an authoritarian regime for so long, the realist understanding of national security 
is not applicable on the Mexican case. Security during the 20th century and the authoritarian 
rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) should instead be understood as ‘regime 
security’. In regime security, it is not a nation or a state that is the referent object, “but a political 
elite who can be authoritarian or democratic” (Rodríguez Sumano, 2019, p. 210) and internal 
security is prioritized because it is remaining in power that is the objective, making the own 
population possible to be a threat. Because of the authoritarian regime, national security was 
thus not practiced and later, when the state transitioned into democracy during the 2000’s, the 
administration still failed to fully develop a democratic national security strategy (Rodríguez 
Sumano, 2019, p. 214). Rodríguez Sumano (2019, p. 226) claim that Mexico still has a system 
 8 
of regime security, that corruption and impunity has been allowed to prevail to such a great 
extent that it has created a security structure outside of democratic and legal frames. This 
security structure still works for the political elite, fails to demand responsibility for the 
escalating violence and fails to provide security for its people.  
 
While Rodríguez Sumano argues against there being a traditional national security strategy 
Arturo Santa Cruz (2014) studies the Mexican security relationship with U.S and claim that the 
Mexican national security identity for a long time was built upon Revolutionary Nationalism, 
a post-revolutionary understanding of sovereignty and scepticism towards their neighbour. 
However, this state identity, much as Rodríguez Sumano argues, was an inward-facing identity 
concerned with domestic security issues and Mexico kept a “nationalist discourse, a formally 
democratic regime, and a mostly independent foreign policy” (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 91), not 
bothering that much with international security issues. During the latter part of the 20th century 
Mexico’s role in the transfer of drugs changed. In the decline of the authoritarian rule of the 
PRI, who had been in political power since after the Mexican revolution (1911-20), the former 
status quo of a peaceful understanding between state authority and the drug cartels began to 
break down. PRI was losing their grip on state power and doing so, the drug cartels no longer 
faced reprisal from the party when they acted outside of this understanding. This made the drug 
cartels free to both seize total control over their areas of influence and begin competing over 
new areas (Gallaher, 2016, p. 333).  
 
Another development at the time was that the routes for trafficking drugs changed in the early 
1980’s. The Colombian cocaine traffickers had previously used Caribbean routes but as they 
were closed Mexico became the new drug corridor (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 96). With pressure 
from the US who was becoming concerned with the escalation of the drug trade, the Mexican 
State in 1987 defined the drug trafficking a ‘state matter’ and a national security threat for the 
first time (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 97-8). This development continued during the 1990’s and as the 
US became more involved in the fight against the drug trafficking it shows, according to Santa 
Cruz, that “the revolutionary nationalism as state identity was on its way out” (Santa Cruz, 
2014, p. 99) With the transfer to democracy in 2000 came a sharp discursive break with this 
identity, Santa Cruz says, and simultaneously as Mexico moved away from their nationalist 
discourse, the drug trafficking came to represent a serious threat to the nation. He does not try 
to explain what identity construction replaced the revolutionary nationalistic state identity but 
 9 
Santa Cruz notes that “a more open, plural and democratic” Mexico was emerging (Santa Cruz, 
2014, p. 104).  
 
Keith Guzik (2013), on the other hand, studies how security issues were handled during the 
administration of Felipe Calderón and argues that the War on Crime possessed elements of 
security governance, “a general framework for reorganizing public and private authorities, 
regulatory agencies, and resources to manage persons, things, and processes that are deemed 
dangerous” (Guzik, 2013, p. 178). The practices of the War on Crime in many ways resemble 
how security governance have been operated in the Global North: militarizing the police, 
legislating in a way that gives legal authorities more obscure ways to play the field, increased 
international cooperation between national governments, etcetera. However, one thing that 
Guzik (2013, p. 178) highlights is how, in contrast to how it is often done, the threat articulated 
and the Other constructed in the War on Crime is linked to the Mexican nation itself. Political 
corruption, smuggling and the romanticization of death and banditry is constituting the Mexican 
society, according to Guzik (2013, p. 179), and instead of wanting to protect the society and 
preserve its identity, which often is the referent object security practices, the War on Crime 
“represents an effort, not to preserve the social order, but to transform it” (Guzik, 2013, p. 179).  
 
When adding these understandings of how security has been handled in Mexico up, I am 
identifying two things that can be said about the Mexican security identity. Firstly, lack of 
democratic tradition has made the articulation of a national security identity weak. The identity 
shaping has rather been in relation to cultural identity and the securities strategies have a history 
of focusing inwards, both during the authoritarian rule and during the War on Crime. Secondly, 
there has been two Others constructed traditionally in Mexico: the US and their hegemony, and 
the drug cartels as a security threat, enabled by the inherent toxicity of Mexican tradition of 
corruption and impunity. Identifying these two radically different constructions of Other, also 
makes it possible to identify two basic discourses in Mexican foreign policy: the Revolutionary 
Nationalist discourse and the War on Crime discourse (Hansen, 2006, p. 84).  
3.2 Security and identity  
The focus on identity in security studies can be connected to changes in IR and security studies 
in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, as mentioned in the Introduction (Lipschutz, 1995). A critic 
had begun to develop towards the realist/neorealist paradigm and its materialistic and 
 10 
individualistic view on the international system which had trouble explaining the end of the 
Cold War (Wendt, 2006, p. 4). The tendency to take the social world as a given and see the 
state as a static referent object subjected to objective external threats was according to some 
scholars limited and a more social and idealistic approach was needed (McDonagh, 2015, p. 
628; Wendt, 2006, p. 4). A poststructuralist view on IR and security emerged, influenced by 
philosophers as Foucault and Derrida and the understanding of the social world as (re)produced 
through language and knowledge (Hansen, 2006, p. 2-3). Security studies to these poststructural 
scholars became more about what the referent of security is, how security is practiced, and the 
role security practices has in the construction of the communities that they claim to be defending 
(McDonagh, 2015, p. 628; Huysmans, 2006, p. xii). So, the security scholars who are inspired 
by poststructuralist, are challenging the realist foundational myth of modern sovereignty by 
bringing attention to “the politics of language, interpretation and representation in the 
construction of notions of danger, threat and identity in international security” (Peoples & 
Vaughan-Williams, 2014, p. 76).  
 
One of the pioneering writings in poststructuralists studies of security and identity is David 
Campbell’s Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (1998). 
Many of the scholars covering the issue of security and identity draw upon Campbell’s work 
and I will therefore try to cover this to a greater extent. In his book Campbell (1998) investigates 
how American foreign policy has a history of articulating danger and the role this narrative has 
in constituting the identity of the American state. Campbell’s notion of ‘discourses of danger’ 
will be covered in the chapter Discourses of danger so here I will only give an account of his 
understanding of the identity of the state. Campbell (1998) has a poststructuralist understanding 
of identity (see chapter 4.1). It is not something that is given but is constructed through language 
and practice and therefore must be constantly produced in order to exists (Campbell, 1998, p. 
9). Identities are understood by Campbell not as primary nor stable and those that are viewed 
as such by most, for example the state, are performatively constituted, they are fiction. This 
implies an understanding of identity that varies from the realist one. Traditionally identity is 
viewed as the basis for the legitimacy of the state and its practices, and that the nation and the 
identity of its people precedes the state. Campbell contests this and argues that often, the state 
precedes the nation and “nationalism is a construct of the state in pursuit of its legitimacy” 
(Campbell, 1998, p. 11). This makes states paradoxical entities. They do not possess a stable 
identity but is reliant on their identity constantly being articulated through a process of 
repetition that never will or can be finished. Their performative nature cannot be revealed 
 11 
because that would contest their discourse of a primary and stable identity and reveal the state’s 
lack of prediscursive foundation (Campbell, 1998, p. 12). Security is here understood as one of 
the discursive practices that are constituting a state’s identity, it is not legitimated by the subject 
it is supposed to secure but is creating it and thus keeping it afloat. In this context Campbell 
situates the US government’s foreign policy and shows how the constant articulation of a 
pathological, evil Other that is threatening the rational, civilized self is needed to (re)construct 
the American identity. Campbell also shows that sometimes this need of demarcating the 
boundaries of an identity is more important than actual objective threats (McDonagh, 2014, p. 
629).  
 
While the understanding of state identity and the role of security in the construction of state 
identity is useful in this study, Campbell’s conceptualization of the Other is somewhat 
problematic. While the Other always is constructed as dangerous, it does not have to be 
radically different to the Self. Lene Hansen draw much of her work both from Campbell and 
the Copenhagen School in her book Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian 
War and develop this contesting understanding of the Other there (Hansen, 2006, p. 16). The 
book, which apart from being a solid discussion of how foreign policy and security should be 
studied from a poststructuralist perspective, provides an analytical framework for doing 
discourse analysis which will be used in this thesis and therefore discussed further down.  
 
The contributions Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan and others from the Copenhagen School (see Buzan 
& Hansen, 2009; Buzan, Wæver, Wilde, 1998) have made to security research is one of the 
most significant during the recent decades; Buzan’s People, States and Fear (1983) was one of 
the important works that pushed security studies to widen the research beyond only military 
threats and develop security studies as a new, separate area of research (Huysmans, 2006, p. 
18). I would here like to highlight Ole Wæver’s research, both on de-securitization, which will 
be used in my theoretical framework, and some aspects of his research on security/identity 
which is relevant to how security/identity are being understood in contemporary security 
research. In one of his earlier works, the chapter Securitization and Desecuritization in the book 
On Security edited by Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Wæver (1995) warn against dismissing the 
traditional perspective of security and further on, in his article European Security Identities 
(1996), he argues that “the meaning of a concept is in its usage, and not something we can 
define analytically according to what would be ‘best’” (Wæver, 1996, p. 106). The conservative 
approach to security is elemental to how international and national politics are logically 
 12 
organised which makes the classical critical approach to security insufficient if we want to 
understand how security is used by actors (Wæver, 1995, p. 56). Wæver (1996) instead speaks 
of securitization and de-securitization and security as a practice. Within security discourse an 
issue is dramatized to have absolute priority, it is framed as an existential threat and if you do 
not deal with it, nothing else will matter. Actors can thus, to have legitimate means of dealing 
with an issue with extraordinary means, securitize it. Wæver argues that in critical security 
studies, scholars tend to fall victim to securitization, framing everything as a potential security 
issue and risk to securitize an issue that would be much better treated if it was not in terms of 
life and death.  
 
Further on, in his article European Security Identities (1996) Wæver analyse Europe, an area 
consisting of “a complex web of political subjectivities” and show how a security identity can 
be tied not only to a nation-state but that the referent object for security can be much more 
complex and thus also, as the two are connected, the construction of the Other (Wæver, 1996, 
p. 125). Also, in contrast with Campbell’s construction of the radical, territorial Other, Wæver 
argues that the Other may be temporal as in the case of EU where he identifies the Other as 
constructed as Europe’s own violent past (Wæver, 1996, p. 128).  
4. Theoretical framework  
In this section I will present the theoretical framework used in this thesis and explain how these 
theories has been used in the analysis. I start off with giving an account for poststructuralism 
and how identity is understood from that perspective. Following that, I will return to Campbell’s 
work and his work on discourses on danger, a theory used to explain why danger is an integral  
part of foreign policy. Thirdly, de-securitization will be presented as a way of understanding 
the rationales behind the lawsuit and view it from a longer time-perspective. Lastly, I will 
present Lene Hansen’s analytical framework which is focusing on analysing the construction 
of identity in discourse and explain how discourses of danger and de-securitization will fit 
together with this.  
4.1 Poststructuralism  
This study is built upon the poststructuralist assumptions that both security and identity are 
constructions and that they are performatively constituted. I will therefore here give a more 
detailed description of these ontological assumptions which work as a foundation for this thesis. 
 13 
Within poststructuralism ‘things’—objects, subjects, states, living beings, and material 
structures—does not have an essential meaning but is constructed and given meaning through 
language (Bergström & Boréus, 2018, p. 28; Hansen, 2006, p. 16). Consequently, language is 
understood as something you do, a field of social and political practice. It is social because it is 
dependent on a web of ‘signs’ that has to be understood by others and political because it is “a 
site for the production and reproduction of particular subjectivities and identities while others 
are simultaneously excluded” (Hansen, 2006, p. 16). ‘Sign’ is here understood as a combination 
of what it expresses, both the signifier and the signified, the actual word and the concept behind 
the word. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary; a concept can 
have another signifier, for example in another language, and there is no logical connection 
between the sound that is uttered and the concept it is referring to (Bergström & Boréus, 2018, 
p. 20-1). So, as language is productive in its nature and made up of arbitrary signs it is also an 
unstable system. Meaning is established not by the essence of a thing itself, because this does 
not exist, but through situating two elements next to each other to compare or contrast the two, 
valuing one element over the opposite. To describe this, scholars use the term ‘juxtaposition’ 
(Hansen, 2006, p. 17). Identities are therefore also viewed as constructions, instable and 
changeable, not given, or existing ‘out there’. They can be shaped in a certain discourse and 
should in discourse analysis be understood as processes where a fusion of self-image and other 
people’s image forms the basis. Therefore, the specific identity is not possible without it being 
put in opposition to what it is not, making distinction as ‘we’ and ‘them’ a common interest 
point in discourse analysis as well as how a creation of ‘we’ always occur in relation to a 
creation of ‘them’ (Bergström & Ekström, 2018, p. 256-7). Because of the poststructuralist 
view on language, policy discourses become important as they simultaneously construct 
objects, subjects and problem, and the policies that are articulated to address them. Identity, 
constructed by discourse, is here understood as a political practice making policy and identity 
ontologically linked; identity is used as a rationale for a certain policy to be enacted at the same 
time as identity is (re)produced through the very policy discourse it is used to motivate (Hansen, 
2006, p. 19).  
4.2 Discourses of danger  
David Campbell (1998, p. 1), being a scholar inspired by poststructuralism, argues that danger 
is not something objective or a thing that exists independently but a construction where the 
perception of danger is based on the subject. Campbell illustrates this with how the insurance 
 14 
industry assess danger, or risk in their case, not as an event or something that happens but a 
particular way of treating a certain event that might happen to a group. Consequently, there is 
no risk in reality because nothing can be a risk in itself, however, everything has the potential 
to be a risk. As Campbell puts it: “In these terms, danger is an effect of interpretation” 
(Campbell, 1998, p. 2). Campbell does not, however, deny that there are ‘real’ dangers in world, 
diseases for example, but he adds that all dangers are not equal and not all risks are perceived 
as dangers. One example of this, which also is an example of how the interpretation of a danger 
does not have to be founded on logic or truth, is the perception of HIV infection to be America’s 
major public health issue in the 1980’s while “pneumonia and influenza, diabetes, suicide, and 
chronic liver disease were all (in 1987) individually responsible for many more deaths” 
(Campbell, 1998, p. 2). Discourses of danger is thus here understood as a certain way of 
constructing a risk as a threat, similar to the way Wæver understands security as a certain way 
of constructing a political issue as an existential threat.  
 
Furthermore, because the construction of danger is connected to how the subject perceive 
danger, the way this danger is presented tend to assume a pattern which often reflect what the 
subject perceives as negative character traits (Campbell 1998, p. 2–3). Constructing the danger 
in terms that a community already view as negative gives an interpretation of danger extra 
substance. In this context, it is noteworthy that it does not have to be an event that forms the 
basis for danger to be constructed. Simply the fact that there is an alternative to the subject 
identity can be enough to produce an interpretation of danger, which in turn explains why some 
issues, as mentioned before, become more important even though they might not be a ‘real’ 
threat (Campbell 1998, p. 3).  
 
As Campbell investigated American foreign policy he noticed how interpretations of danger, a 
discourse of danger, seemed to be constant. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the great enemy 
of the US, dangers kept popping up, represented in ways that did not differ dramatically from 
the way Soviet was. This made it evident to Campbell that discourses of danger have importance 
to the US foreign policy but to understand why, he had to deconstruct the US identity 
(Campbell, 1998, p. 8). So, it is by studying what identity a state is constructing we can begin 
to understand why certain risks are perceived as dangers, in this case why the US Firearms 
Corporations are constructed as a threat. Representations of danger is an integral part of foreign 
policy as the boundaries of a state’s identity are secured by those representations of dangers 
(Campbell, 1998, p. 3). Jef Huysmans (2000, p. 757) develops this understanding of discourses 
 15 
of danger and insecurity further and points to how security policy communicate a sense of 
belonging. By characterizing a mode of being as something bad and dangerous, it also implies 
what is considered to be good, what is considered desirable and reinforces through that the state 
identity (Huysmans 2000, p. 757).  
4.3 De-securitization  
As mentioned in the Introduction, Ole Wæver (1995) understands security as a field of practice 
and that the label “security” has become, because of how it has traditionally been used, the 
indicator of a specific problem. Because of this, he suggests that an important question to ask 
in security studies is what makes an issue a security problem. Answering this question himself, 
Wæver suggests that “security problems are developments that threaten the sovereignty or 
independence of a state in a particularly rapid or dramatic fashion, and deprive it of the capacity 
to manage by itself” and that threat, because it undercuts the political order, must be handled 
with maximum effort (Wæver, 1995, p. 54). According to Wæver, security is defined by the 
“state” and its elites, because they are the only ones who could use these extraordinary measures 
supposedly needed. However, this also means that those in power always can use securitization 
in self-interest, for example to remain in power. So, security is something state representatives 
do, it is an act. When an actor calls something a security issue they move that issue into the 
specific field of practice “and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means are 
necessary to block it” (Wæver, 1995. p. 55).  
 
Another important aspect in understanding security, which Wæver (1996) points out, is that 
security and insecurity are not binary oppositions. Security is when a security problem is taken 
care of, and insecurity is when there is a security problem which is not taken care of. Both 
conditions share the same problem and if there is no security problem, we will not label it 
“security”. Consequently, there is no such thing as total security or complete security because 
if you have that you will not label it “security”. To move an issue beyond security, you cannot 
talk of it in terms of security, but you must minimize security. The issue must be de-securitized. 
De-securitizing an issue means that by narrowing the field to which the security act can be 
applied and Wæver (1995) exemplifies this with the European détente policies of the 1970’s 
and 1980’s:  
 
 16 
The clearest illustration of this phenomenon [security as a speech act] (...) occurred 
in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, where “order” was clearly, 
systematically, and institutionally linked to the survival of the system and its elites. 
Thinking about change in East-West relations and/or in Eastern Europe throughout 
this period meant, therefore, trying to bring about change without generating a 
“securitization” response by elites, which would have provided the pre-text for 
acting against those who had overstepped the boundaries of the permitted. 
Consequently, to ensure that this mechanism would not be triggered, actors had to 
keep their challenges below a certain threshold and/or through the political process 
– whether national or international – have the threshold negotiated upwards (Wæver, 
1995, p. 55).  
 
What the détente policies consisted of was turning threats into challenges and instead of treating 
the issues elites in the East thought of as existential threats they moved these issues to a more 
normalized, politicised field where these issues could be treated with ordinary means as politics, 
economy, or culture instead (Wæver, 1995). I will in this study use de-securitization as a way 
of explaining how the Mexican foreign policy and the lawsuit can be understood by putting the 
lawsuit in a longer time perspective. With de-securitization I aim to show how unusual this 
lawsuit is in a Mexican context where so many aspects of politics have been securitised.  
4.4 Analysing identity  
To analyse my empirical results, I have in this study used Lene Hansen’s (2006) analytical 
framework for analysing complex identities, a four-part process addressing both methods to do 
empirical analyse and methodological issues. Firstly, Hansen (2006, p. 34) address that the 
construction of the Other in the construction of identity does not have to be radically different 
to the Self, as Campbell suggests. Foreign policy can draw from more ambiguous and complex 
constructions of difference than the one of the evil rouge state which threatens the territory of 
the good, civilized state.  
 
The second part is to study the process of linking and the process of differentiation to 
deconstruct the discourse. Identity is conceptualized in relational terms and built along two 
dimensions: what it is, positive identity, and what it is not, negative identity. Meaning and 
identity are constructed both through signs that are linked to each other in a positive way and 
through the differentiation to other signs, signifying what it is not. The two processes can be 
 17 
analysed separately; however, it is noteworthy that in the process of identity construction 
linking and differentiation happens at the same time and are integral (Hansen, 2006, p. 37). 
Another important aspect to note according to Hansen (2006) is that this part is done by studying 
what is explicitly articulated.  
 
The third part is to consider how an identity is spatially, temporally, and ethically situated. 
However, this is seldom explicitly articulated but must be approached as analytical lenses. The 
three dimensions are equally worth and in a foreign policy discourse the goal is to take all three 
into consideration in a way that make them reinforce and support each other, although, one 
dimension can be more prominent than the others in a text (Hansen, 2006, p. 42). Identity as 
spatially constructed will be analysed by studying how boundaries are drawn around an identity, 
is it only spatially constructed around Mexico and Mexicans or is the subject political as well 
(Hansen, 2006, p. 42)? The construction of a temporal identity instead addresses themes as 
change and development. It analyses whether an identity in a discourse is constructed as 
changeable or not (Hansen, 2006, p. 43). The ethical dimension of discourse analysis surrounds 
the discursive construction of ethics, morality, and responsibility in foreign policy discourse. 
An articulation of responsibility is always present in foreign policy discourse and studying the 
ethical dimension is to study who is assigned responsibility in the discourse (Hansen, 2006, p. 
44-5).  
 
The last part Hansen (2006) brings up is that of basic discourses and how to identify how an 
individual text, a foreign policy is a part of a bigger discursive and political field. According to 
Hansen (2006), you could argue that every individual text is a discourse in itself because no 
text is constructing identity exactly like the other. However, as language is taken as social and 
structured in its nature and foreign policy is supposedly located in a larger discursive and 
political field, foreign policy debates should be understood as constituted of individual texts 
that: 
“converge around common themes, around certain constructions of identity and sets 
of policies considered viable, desirable or necessary; foreign policy debates are as a 
consequence bound together by a smaller number of discourses.” (Hansen, 2006, p. 
46).  
 
Basic discourses are an analytical tool offering ‘ideal-type’ constructions of the spatial, 
temporal, and ethical dimensions of identity and enables a structured analysis of how discourses 
 18 
are formed and interact with each other within a foreign policy debate (Hansen, 2006, p. 84). 
Basic discourses are normally based on a large number of texts, however, in this thesis, because 
of the time limit, I have used other scholars’ readings of texts to identify two basic discourses 
which have historically steered Mexican foreign policy: Revolutionary Nationalism and the 
War on Crime. It is by this contextualising the lawsuit can be understood as a de-securitizing 
move. 
 
By analysing how identity is discursively constructed, I will also show how discourses of 
danger and identity are ontologically linked. Campbell argues that it is through studying the 
identity of the subject constructing the threat we can understand why certain risks are perceived 
as dangerous, however, I suggest, in line with Huysmans, that this goes the other way around 
as well. Discourses of danger can, and will in this thesis, be understood as a process of 
differentiation between the subject constructing the danger and the thing or actor constructed 
as dangerous. So, by investigating the construction of danger it can tell us something about the 
identity of the subject.  
5. Method and methodology  
This thesis is a qualitative study, and I will in this section present the methods that have been 
used as well as the methodological assumptions I have taken to gather and analyse my material. 
The material will also be presented in this section. I will motivate my choice of method and 
approach to this subject and how I proceeded in conducting this thesis, as well as highlight 
some of the issues that has come with it. I will also reflect on my role as a researcher and how 
I might have affected the results of this study.  
5.1 Methodology  
This study is conducted through a poststructuralist discourse analysis, a qualitative 
methodology based on the poststructuralist ontological assumption of language as 
performative. The assumption of language as performative implies that there is a perspective 
on policy discourse as relying on the construction of identities, problems, and subjectivities, at 
the same time as it is trough discourse these identities, problems and subjectivities are 
constructed in the first place (Hansen, 2006, p. 15). This ontological perspective has 
epistemological consequences. I have chosen to take a discursive epistemology which implies 
that, in line with the poststructural emphasis on language, the practical focus in this study will 
 19 
be on how identities and policies are articulated (Hansen, 2006, p. 20). In this study I therefore 
do not try to argue whether the discourse of the State is valid or ‘true’ but rather investigate 
how it is constructed.  
5.2 Method  
In this thesis, I have mapped out discourses by taking a focus on the constructions of identities. 
To be able to do a discourse analysis of the Mexican lawsuit against the Firearms Corporations 
I first had to do a structural interpretation of the material. This was done by first doing an overall 
structuring of the text by identifying recurrent themes (Bergström & Ekström, 2018, p. 291). 
Initially, this process began when I read the text the first time and I, through my preconceptions 
based on security studies and poststructuralism, identified the text as using a discourse of danger 
as well as connected it to have a focus on responsibility. From there I developed my research 
problem and adopted a theoretical perspective that have steered my interpretation of the text. 
Based on the themes I had identified, I then picked out phrases and signs, or keywords, that I 
have interpreted as important to the construction of the Mexican security identity and to the 
discourse. These phrases and signs were identified by being semantically reproductive, used 
more frequently and being dependent on the context (Bergström & Seiler Brylla, 2018, p. 323).  
 
After the first structuring of the text, I used Lene Hansen’s analytical framework to map out the 
identity the State through discourse is constructing in the text, this is presented in chapter 6, 
Results. I already identified the Other in the text when I decided to use this text as my empirical 
material and noticed that the way the Firearms Corporations was portrayed felt strange and 
hostile. Therefore, I began with looking at how this construction of the Firearms Corporations 
was done more specifically by categorizing the phrases and keywords I discovered into the two 
dimensions of relations in the construction of identity: the process of linking and the process of 
differentiation. To do this in a structured manner, I followed three questions: which signs are 
articulated, how are the signs coupled to achieve discursive stability and where do instabilities 
or slips between these constructions occur. Following these questions allowed for a structured 
and systemic analysis of the discourse of the Mexican state and created an understanding of 
how identity is constructed through foreign policy. Moving on to the analysis, I looked at the 
identities created both in the lawsuit and in the basic discourses I have identified, the 
Revolutionary Nationalist discourse and the War on Crime discourse, and how their spatial, 
temporal, and ethical constructions create different policies.  
 20 
5.3 Material  
The empirical material for this thesis is a civil action lawsuit filed by the State of Mexico and 
is filed as a part of the official strategy against organized crime and armed violence in Mexico 
(Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021). The lawsuit thus represents the official opinions 
and narrative of the State and choosing this text as my empirical text provides a primary source 
of this. Picking out this particular text was done through an initial search on the internet after I 
heard the news about the lawsuit happening, with the purpose of finding out more about the 
issue. The lawsuit had been published together with an article on the subject and when I read 
the lawsuit, I decided that I wanted to use it in my thesis because I found it interesting and a bit 
strange.  
 
The lawsuit was filed by the State on the 4th of August 2021 against seven firearms 
manufacturers and one wholesaler of guns: Smith & Wesson Brands, inc.; Barrett Firearms 
Manufacturing, inc.; Beretta U.S.A Corp.,; Beretta Holdings S.P.A,; Century International 
Arms, inc.; Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC; Glock, inc.; Glock GES.M.B.H.; Sturm, 
Ruger & co., inc.; Witmer Public Safety Group, inc. D/B/A Interstate Arms. The Firearms 
Corporations are referred to as the Defendants in the lawsuit. The lawsuit is 135 pages and is 
filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts as many of “the Defendants 
reside in this district, each Defendant regularly transacts business in this district, and a 
substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred in this district.” 
(Mexico v. Smith & Wesson et al., 2021, p. 14). The lawsuit was submitted by American 
lawyers from the law firm Hilliard Shadowen and Brady: United Against Gun Violence, a non-
governmental organization that advocates for gun control and against gun violence (Hilliard 
Shadowen, 2020; Brady, 2019). Even though these actors might have an agenda in filing the 
lawsuit and affecting the content, the lawsuit is still taken as official policy of the State. The 
lawsuit is filed with the State as plaintiff, and as I mentioned earlier the lawsuit is also used as 
a part of the official security strategy of the State. 
 
An option to analysing the lawsuit would be to analyse the official statements connected to the 
lawsuit, for example the press brief that was published when the lawsuit was filed or the 
Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico’s statement in an open debate regarding the question of 
small arms in the Security Council (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2021; U.N. SCOR, 
November 22, 2021). However, almost all official statements from the Mexican State are 
 21 
written in Spanish and even though I could have translated them, the time available for this 
thesis was limited and so because of practical reasons I chose not to. Also, as stated previously, 
the lawsuit is a primary source and using that is therefore a reliable option. 
5.4 Ethical considerations  
In this thesis, it has not been necessary to take privacy or anonymization in consideration. It is 
not statements of individuals that is the subject of study but published and publicly available 
material which also is official policy of a governing body of a state. Therefore, my 
responsibility has instead been to make sure that the material is treated respectfully, that I am 
transparent in the way the research has been conducted and which choices I have made, and 
how I as a researcher might have affected the results. I will in this section discuss the problems 
that may arise within discourse analysis in particular and in social sciences in general, and how 
I in this study have worked with validity and reliability to counteract these problems.  
 
A study which has a high validity, measure what it is intended to measure, and the result of the 
study fulfil and answer its purpose (Bergström & Boreus, 2018, p. 38-9). Because the empirical 
result and analysis are to a great extent built upon my interpretation of the text, it is important 
to consider how my preconceptions might have affected the results of the study. Both the works 
used in this thesis written by other scholars and my position when interpreting the primary 
source, has been considered and partly dealt with using trustworthy sources; peer reviewed 
articles and books by authors who are well renowned or seem trustworthy and academic. 
Another part that seems necessary to mention in connection to the validity of the study is how 
my own position have affected the study. Following the foundation of discourse analysis, the 
person doing the discourse analysis is as much constructed by the discourse as the subject that 
is analysed which can complicate an independent position, outside of the discourses (Bergström 
& Ekström, 2018, p. 293). I am not Mexican, but my interest in this subject is steered from my 
position as a student of security studies and IR. This has both had an impact on my choice of 
subject, viewing Mexico as an interesting case because of the security situation in the country, 
and my choice of method. Furthermore, my perception of security and gun laws is also coloured 
by my Swedish background and how these issues are generally viewed here, for example in 
Sweden we have restrictive gun laws and while gun violence is increasing, it is not as common 
as it is in Mexico or the US (BRÅ, 2022; Gramlich, 2022; Mexico v. Smith & Wesson et al., 
2021, p. 4). To counteract these preconceptions, I have made sure to be transparent in how I 
 22 
conduct my interpretation of the text, I have let direct quotations take a prominent place in the 
analysis and when I presented my result, I have been careful that it should be completely 
anchored in my empirical material. I have also chosen to separate my results from my analysis 
to make this even more clear.  
 
Reliability has to do with how trustworthy a study is, a quality best achieved through 
transparency and a systematic approach. The goal is for the reader to be able to reconstruct 
every step of the research, the researcher has taken to come to his or her conclusions (Bergström 
& Boreus, 2018, p. 40-1). In this thesis I have been transparent and explicit with what choices 
I have made, and I have worked towards being particular in how I have structured and 
interpreted my material, this to try to show that I have a high level of transparency in my study. 
Also, by following the analytical method chosen in this thesis, Hansen’s discourse analysis, 
there are good conditions for achieving high validity and reliability because the method was 
developed with the importance of these question in mind (Hansen, 2006). However, to be able 
to take advantage of the benefits Hansen’s method provides, I have first had to address two 
problems that often arise within discourse analysis: the tools of the chosen discourse analytical 
method are too vaguely described or there are deficiencies in the handling of said tools 
(Bergström & Ekström, 2018, p. 294). The fact that I have been aware that these problems are 
common has led me to be careful on these two points and simply put, I have worked towards 
doing the opposite. I have tried to be as precise as possible throughout the thesis, both in 
describing my methods and theories and how I am going to use it in the analysis.  
6. Results  
I will in this section present the results from the first part of my discourse analysis, the mapping 
of how the identities through processes of linking and differentiation are constructed. The 
section is divided in four parts based on four recurrent constructions: ‘unlawful’, ‘potentially 
good’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘American’. I will here use the abbreviation (M v. S &W) when 
referencing to the lawsuit (Mexico v. Smith & Wesson et al., 2021).  
6.1 Lawful/unlawful  
One of basic constructions in the lawsuit is the negative articulation of the Firearms 
Corporations as ‘unlawful’; they have no respect for neither US nor Mexican laws and are 
engaging in wrongful actions. The linking between unlawfulness and the Firearms Corporations 
 23 
is a premise for the lawsuit to be filed at all and is inherently understood as something bad, 
based on the basic principles of rule of law. The sign, ‘unlawful’ is used throughout the text 
and is often linked together with signs as ‘reckless’ or ‘dangerous’, emphasising the negative 
connotation of not following the law (M v. S & W, pp. 19; 20; 62; 67; 84; 85; 112; 129; 131). 
In the introduction of the lawsuit, it says that “[a]ll of the Defendants wrongful actions described 
in this complaint are a part of, and in furtherance of, the unlawful conduct alleged herein [...]” 
and by saying so setting the premise of how the Firearms Corporations should be understood 
(M v. S & W, p. 14). The State says that “Defendants continually violate and actively undermine 
these laws”, referring to the gun and import laws of US and Mexico and thus describing how 
the Firearms Corporations are failing their duties as law-abiding citizens (M v. S & W, p. 15).  
 
The Firearms Corporations are also, throughout the text, characterized as being deliberately 
unlawful. As the last quote illustrated, this process of linking is strengthened by descriptions of 
how the Firearms Corporations are not breaking the law by mistake or simply breaking the law, 
but they ‘violate’ the law and are doing this ‘actively’. The Firearms Corporations “are not 
accidental or unintentional players in this tragedy; they are deliberate and willing participants” 
(M v. S & W, p. 5). To stabilize this characterization, their practices and the alleged results 
from their practices are described as something that is not inevitable nor natural but a 
“foreseeable result of Defendants’ deliberate and knowing decision” (M v. S & W, p. 14). The 
process of differentiation is reinforced by describing how the flow of guns from “Defendants’  
U.S manufacturing plants and stores” to Mexico is not like the migration of monarch butterflies, 
a natural phenomenon where a large amount of monarch butterflies migrates from their summer 
resident in the Eastern North America to their winter resident in Mexico (M v. S & W, p. 14; 
U.S Forest Service, n.d). According to the State do the Firearms Corporations know about how 
their actions are affecting this flow of arms but chose not to change their conduct and are 
represented as being ‘willfully blind’ to both their responsibilities as law-abiding citizens and 
to the, according to the State, proven dangers of their “chosen business practices” (M v. S & 
W, pp. 27-29). If the Firearms Corporations wanted to fully comply with and enforce the law, 
they would not stick with their business practices, but they are using a ”head-in-the-sand 
approach to deny responsibility” (M v. S & W, pp. 50; 2). The gun industry, which the Firearms 
Corporations are a part of is also said to be actively working against the enforcing of law, 
reinforcing the process of linking the Firearms Corporations to ‘unlawful’ and ‘willfully blind’. 
The State describes it as despite the knowledge the Firearms Corporations have about their 
conduct being unlawful, they continue doing what they do, they even strengthen their 
 24 
commitment to their practices, and they “fight law enforcement efforts to stop the trafficking” 
(M v. S & W, pp. 29; 36).  
 
The Firearms Corporations are described as engaging in unlawful behaviour but is also linked 
to the unlawful behaviour of others. This is done through thorough descriptions of how the 
Firearms Corporations are facilitating other actors unlawful conduct, such as illicit arms 
traffickers and the Mexican drug cartels (M v. S & W, p. 29; 51-55).  
 
A manufacturer of a dangerous product is an accessory or co-conspirator to illicit 
conduct by downstream actors where it continues to supply, support, or assist the 
downstream parties and has knowledge—actual or constructive—of the illicit 
conduct. “Willful blindness” to clear indicators of unlawful conduct constitutes 
constructive knowledge of that conduct. (M v. S & W, p. 28)  
 
The Firearms Corporations are thus constructed as “culpable and intentional participant[s]” and 
as liable and “willful accessories” to the unlawful distribution of guns in Mexico (M v. S & W, 
pp. 32; 55; 58; 62). Just as the Firearms Corporations own unlawfulness is linked together with 
‘deliberate’, so is the facilitating of other actors’ unlawfulness. Throughout the lawsuit a lot of 
emphasis is put on the construction of how much knowledge the Firearms Corporation have of  
what their conduct is resulting in, and how they still continue to act the same way (M v. S & 
W, p. 56).  
 
The unlawfulness of the Firearms Corporations is also reinforced by a differentiation to how 
the State, on the other hand, is doing all that it can to be ‘lawful’ and enforce their domestic 
laws. While the Firearms Corporations are constructed as working against the US and Mexican 
laws, the State is described as having strict gun laws and that Mexico “remains an insignificant 
player in the manufacturing and production of guns” (M v. S & W, pp. 98; 113). The Mexican 
State is in the lawsuit characterized as taking responsibility, it is taking “reasonable measures 
to try to protect itself from Defendants’ unlawful conduct” and is doing, and will continue to 
do, all that it can (M v. S & W, pp. 98; 107). Another differentiation made in the lawsuit is the 
one made between Mexican citizens (M v. S & W, pp. 5; 61; 62; 88; 117; 130) and 
“unauthorized and irresponsible persons” in Mexico, which instead are linked to the Firearms 
Corporations (M v. S & W, pp. 58; 61; 63; 69; 94). This process of both linking and 
 25 
differentiation while reinforcing the Mexican State as lawful also creates a more complex 
understanding of the Mexican identity.  
 
6.2 Potentially ‘good’ corporations  
In the lawsuit, the State describes in depth how the Firearms Corporations should act if they 
wanted to be lawful, that “the statutes, regulations, and law identified above reflect a standard 
of conduct and care below which reasonably prudent manufacturers and distributors may not 
lawfully fall” (M v. S & W, p. 27). The Firearms Corporations are thus not only differentiated 
from the State but also to a ‘reasonable prudent’, ‘responsible, law-abiding’ actor (M v. S & W, 
p. 95). It is described which ‘duties’ the Firearms Corporations have and that they could 
“implement appropriate and prudent distribution practices”, however, they choose not to do 
their duties but to “violate” them and choose deliberate business practices that “routinely arm 
the cartels in Mexico with massive and lethal arsenals” (M v. S & W, pp. 94; 29).  
 
The Firearms Corporations are also constructed through a process of linking them to be profit- 
seeking above all, with a “conscious disregard for the rights and safety of other persons” (M v. 
S & W, p. 134). One of the chapters in the lawsuit is dedicated to describing how the Firearms 
Corporations choses to keep facilitating other actors’ unlawful behaviour because they profit 
from it (M v. S & W, pp. 94-98). It is described that from the perspective of the Firearms 
Corporations, their practices are a “huge success”, and they are maintaining their supply chain 
to the criminal market in Mexico and the cartels because it is “a feature, not a bug” (M v. S & 
W, p. 95). It is also described how the US authorities is struggling with gun control and that the 
Firearms Corporations “exploit this lack of adequate enforcement to supply and profit from the 
criminal market” (M v. S & W, p. 33). That the Firearms Corporations are profit-seeking is also 
linked to them being wilfully blind. If it only made them money to be responsible and law- 
abiding, they would act accordingly but even though they know that their practices are harmful 
they do not (M v. S & W, p. 95). The whole purpose of their “wrongful conduct” is to increase 
their sales and profits, according to the State, described as a “unjust enrichment” made at the 
State’s expense (M v. S & W, pp. 130-1). The process of linking the Firearms Corporations as 
profit-seeking is also stabilized by the descriptions of how the Mexican State is losing 
economically due to the Firearms Corporations behaviour (M v. S & W, pp. 113; 116-8; 125-
34). 
 26 
 
While the Firearms Corporations are linked to signs as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘imprudent’, they 
are also linked to signs which constructs them as capable, that they have a “specialized and 
sophisticated knowledge, information, skill and understanding to prevent the diversion of their 
guns into Mexico” (M v. S & W, p. 28). It is the Firearms Corporations who are holding the 
key to the solution, but they chose not to use it. The State describes that it has done all it can 
and that it is now up to the Firearms Corporations to do their part:  
 
These efforts and many more—those of the Government and of the U.S. 
authorities—have been unable to stem the flood of guns resulting from Defendants’ 
persistent, deliberate, and continual conduct. The Defendants, not the Government, 
have the authority to structure and monitor Defendants’ distribution chains. The 
Defendants, not the Government, have the ability to use real-time sales data and 
other indicia to detect sales patterns reflecting suspect sales. The Defendants, not the 
Government, have the authority to discipline distributors and dealers that sell to 
straw purchasers and otherwise supply traffickers. The Government will continue to 
do all that it can. But the Defendants must act on the information and authority that 
only they have. (M v. S & W, p. 107).  
 
Also viable in this quote is how the State is constructing the question of agency. The State says 
that there is an authority only the Firearms Corporations have. Following that, is not the State 
nor the US government which are responsible for the alleged damages in Mexico, but the 
Firearms Corporations (M v. S & W, p. 7; 98). The State is portrayed as a ‘victim’, they should 
be treated as such and be compensated but as it is emphasised above, there are just some things 
the State cannot do anything about (M v. S & W, p. 1; 88; 116).  
6.3 Danger: the venom in the snakes that are the drug cartels  
Throughout the lawsuit, the Firearms Corporations are constructed as ‘dangerous’. This is done 
by directly linking them to signs as ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’, ‘negligent’ and ‘malicious’ and the 
State write that they “wreak havoc in Mexican society” (M v. S & W, pp. 1; 7; 8; 20; 58; 67; 
84; 112; 126; 127; 129; 130; 131). The Firearms Corporations are also constructed as dangerous 
through a linking to the damage they are causing the State and the Mexican people:  
 
 27 
The nature and magnitude of Defendants’ unlawful conduct has inevitably inflicted 
massive injury on the Government. (M v. S & W, p. 112)  
 
Even beyond all of these losses, Defendants’ unlawful conduct has substantially 
reduced the overall quality of life in Mexico. Living with the fear of fire from 
Defendants’ guns, and hearing and experiencing that gun violence, diminishes 
countless aspects of Mexican life— psychological, educational, social, and cultural, 
as well as economic. (M v. S & W, p. 118)  
 
Defendants’ wrongful conduct also ends lives, extraordinary and wonderful lives of 
Mexicans from every walk of life, as illustrated by a small sampling of the tens of 
thousands of lives lost as a result of Defendants’ deliberate conduct. (M v. S & W, 
p. 119)  
 
These quotes, among others in the lawsuit, illustrates how the State is drawing a straight line 
between the Firearms Corporations and damages in Mexico. This process of linking is 
reinforced and emphasised as deliberate through the description of a ‘conscious disregard’ both 
for the rights and safety of other persons, for the Firearms Corporations own actions, for “the 
peace, tranquillity, and economic well-being of the Mexican public” and for human life at large 
(M v. S & W, pp. 126; 130; 134). Furthermore, the Firearms Corporations is constructed as 
dangerous and harmful through a differentiation to the State and its citizens both as ‘victims’ 
of the Firearms Corporations’ practices but also as “extraordinary and wonderful” as it is 
described in the quotes above (M v. S & W, pp. 1; 88). Another reinforcement of the dangers 
of the Firearms Corporation is how it is, in the lawsuit, emphasised how dangerous the weapons 
they are producing are. The weapons are characterized as “exceedingly dangerous products”, 
“defective and unreasonably dangerous” and “a deadly flood of military-style and other lethal 
guns” (M v. S & W, pp. 86; 92; 126; 127-8).  
 
The Firearms Corporations are continuously linked together with the Mexican drug cartels, 
especially through their products. As described above, the Firearms Corporations are 
characterized as facilitators of the cartels’ actions. In the introduction of the lawsuit, it says that 
“Defendant’s guns are the venom in the snakes that are the drug cartels; without those guns, 
they could be controlled and stopped”, illustrating how the Firearms Corporations are viewed 
as a part of the same threat as the drug cartels (M v. S & W, p. 5). The linking between the 
cartels and the Firearms Corporations is further reinforced through descriptions of how the 
 28 
weapons produced by the Firearms Corporations are preferred by the cartels and that the 
Firearms Corporations are maintaining and feeding into this. It is described how one of the 
Firearms Corporations are producing weapons that are status symbols to the cartels because 
they are designed in a way that specifically targets the Mexican market (M v. S & W, p. 53).  
The Firearms Corporations are also accused of marketing their weapons as “weapons of war” 
and producing military-style weapons which they then distribute to a “civilian market”. This is 
problematic according to the State because the Firearms Corporations know that these kinds of 
weapons are “particularly sought after by the drug cartels who use them to devastating effect in 
Mexico” (M v. S & W, p. 56).  
6.4 The American Firearms Corporations  
Another process of linking which takes place in the lawsuit is the labelling of the Firearms 
Corporations as ‘American’. Not all the Firearms Corporations are originated in the US, 
however they are in the lawsuit linked together with the US nevertheless (M v. S & W, pp. 5; 
7; 14; 15; 113). “A relatively small number of crime guns come from outside the U.S.” 
according to the State (M v. S & W, p. 107). This linking is stabilised through descriptions and 
citations from reports from Mexico in which a narrative of American guns is conducted.  
 
Defendants’ guns are prominent players in this two-way private gun violence. In an 
interview, one Mexican man involved in the violence pointed to the words stamped 
on the barrel of a Colt Match Target assault rifle slung across the chest of a teenage 
fighter: “HARTFORD, CONN, U.S.A,” and told the reporter, “We kill each other, 
and you send the bullets.” Kate Linthicum, “Mexicans are killing each other at record 
rates. The U.S. provides the guns.,” Los Angeles Times (Oct. 6, 2019). (M v. S & 
W, p. 55).  
 
Ioan Grillo [...] wrote that “[i]t was a cruel irony: An American gun embellished with 
an image of a Mexican freedom fighter was used to silence Mexico's freedom of 
speech.” Ioan Grillo, “Slow the Iron River of Guns to Mexico,” New York Times 
(2021). (M v. S & W, p. 53).  
 
The characterization of the Firearms Corporation as American is also linked to constructions of 
danger. The State describe how US-origin guns are used to kill and harm Mexican military, 
they are used in destruction of property and that “[i]n 2019 more than 3.9 million crimes in 
 29 
Mexico were committed with a U.S.-origin gun” (M v. S & W, p. 115-6). It is also argued by 
the State that the number of homicides in Mexico is directly linked to the number of weapons 
manufactured in the US and that an American gun is more likely to kill a Mexican citizen than 
an American citizen (M v. S & W, p. 110; 114; 113). The link between Firearms Corporations 
and ‘American’ is also stabilized through a process of linking the Firearms Corporations to both 
danger and to US laws. The State say that the increase of weapons, and the increase in 
homicides in Mexico, is connected to the expiration of the US assault-weapons ban in 2005, 
however, while simultaneously saying that the trafficking of US-origin guns is not a necessary 
consequence of US gun laws (M v. S & W, p. 110; p. 14). The State is emphasising how the 
lawsuit is not contesting US law or policy, nor the Second Amendment right of US citizens, 
they are however, differentiating the US from Mexico saying that:  
 
The United States is, of course, free to choose its social policy reflecting a balance 
between the financial interests of the gun industry and the rights of victims within 
its jurisdiction. By the same token, however, the Government of Mexico is entitled 
to choose a different social policy that reflects a different balance between the 
interests of victims in Mexico and the interests of gun manufacturers that foreseeably 
and deliberately cause trafficking of their guns into Mexico. (M v. S & W, p. 6).  
 
As described previously, the Firearms Corporations are linked together with ‘unlawful’, a 
linking which is further reinforced through the process of differentiation between Mexico and 
the US. The State return to this throughout the text, that many of the weapons manufactured in 
the US which are later trafficked to Mexico are not legal according to Mexican law (M v. S & 
W, p. 2; 16; 37; 81; 108). Amongst a number of laws, Ley Federal de Armas de Fuego y 
Explosivos (LFAFE) Artículo 2° (LFAFE) is mentioned, a Mexican federal law limiting “the 
private possession of guns, prohibiting, for example, semi-automatic pistols with a caliber 
greater than .380 and all guns using the .223 caliber round, commonly used in AR-style rifles” 
(M v. S &W, p. 98-9).  
7. Analysis  
The aim of this study has been to investigate the recent developments in Mexican security 
policy and what the rationales behind them might be. Following the poststructuralist assumption 
that the social world is (re)produced through language and the articulation of identity is an 
essential part of statehood, the best way to do this is by mapping out how identities are 
 30 
discursively constructed. The articulations of identity in the lawsuit are presented in the 
previous chapter and I will here, by lifting both basic discourses and the discourse created in 
the lawsuit, the Corporate Responsibility discourse, analyse how different constructions of 
spatial, temporal, and ethical identity creates different policies.  
 
The two basic discourses, the Revolutionary Nationalist discourse, and the War on Crime 
discourse, enunciate different constructions of spatial, temporal, and ethical identity. The 
Revolutionary Nationalist discourse is largely built upon an identity that is directly linked to 
the Mexican Revolution 1910-20. The revolution created a new sense of sovereignty which 
resulted in an attitude towards the US as a threat to this (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 85). The Other 
constructed in this discourse is not a radical Other, it is not viewed as evil and cooperation 
between the US and Mexico is not unthinkable. Although, the distinction towards the northern 
neighbour is of utmost importance to the Mexican state and constructing US hegemony as 
dangerous reinforces the differentiation between the US and Mexico. The construction of 
danger also reflects the importance of the nationalist element in the Mexican identity in the 
Revolutionary Nationalist discourse. The spatial and temporal construction of the US as the 
Other is that of a neighbour who thought itself to have authority over the entire Western 
hemisphere and with a history of threating Mexican sovereignty, both culturally and 
territorially. It also constructed the Mexican State as ultimately responsible for the security of 
Mexico: “Mexico for the Mexicans” (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 89). The policies following the 
Revolutionary Nationalist discourse was therefore political independence on the international 
arena and “largely introspective grand strategy and national security doctrines” with the aim of 
protecting and strengthen the Mexican State and sovereignty (Santa Cruz, 2014, p. 90).  
 
During the late 20th century, a competing discourse emerged, destabilizing the Revolutionary 
Nationalist discourse. As the drug trafficking in the country spiralled and pressure from the US 
increased, the drug cartels became more frequently constructed as the nation’s biggest security 
threat and with the transfer to democracy in 2000 the Revolutionary Nationalist discourse was 
almost eradicated. The Other that is constructed in the War on Crime discourse is vastly 
different from the one in the Revolutionary Nationalist discourse. The Other was no longer 
constructed as American but as a Mexican, inherent toxicity which made the drug trafficking 
possible (Guzik, 2013). The discourse emerged at a time when the State’s legitimacy was in 
question so the construction of identity in the War on Crime focuses on the ethical dimension 
and the responsibility of the State to deal with the existential threat (Guzik, 2013, p. 180). 
 31 
Constructing the drug cartels as a danger and consequently as a security threat reinforced the 
State identity and gave it legitimacy to adopt highly securitized policies and policies that would 
not be accepted within the previous discourse, such as cooperation with US.  
 
If we situate the lawsuit in a bigger political and discursive field, where the State have turned 
away from previous security policies and advocates a more comprehensive approach regarding 
security, the lawsuit can be understood as a third discourse, the Corporate Responsibility 
discourse. As it is shown in the Results chapter the Other that is constructed in this discourse is 
the Firearms Corporations. The Corporate Responsibility discourse has a similar way of 
spatially articulating the identity of the threat to the Mexican State as the Revolutionary 
Nationalist discourse, however a more complex understanding of the spatial identities has 
evolved in the Corporate Responsibility discourse. In the lawsuit, the Mexican State is 
constructing itself as Mexican, linking itself to its citizens resembling the Revolutionary 
Nationalist discourse of “Mexico for the Mexicans”. Simultaneously, the Firearms 
Corporations are constructed as ‘American’ through a dual process of linking and 
differentiation. They are differentiated to the Mexican State at the same time as they are also 
linked to the Mexican drug cartels. However, the Mexican State draw a boundary between their 
citizens and those “unauthorized and irresponsible” persons who the Firearms Corporations are 
arming, the drug cartels. This is a sharp distinction towards the War on Crime discourse, where 
the threat and danger constructed through a process of linking a Mexican inherent culture to the 
drug cartels. The notion of danger is located different in the Corporate Responsibility discourse 
so instead of reinforcing a construction of Mexican society as dangerous, consequently bad and 
in need of change, the construction of the Firearms Corporations as the Other is doing the 
opposite. Not only the State, but also the Mexicans, the citizens, are described as victims to the 
dangers of the Firearms Corporations, which conveys a bond between the State and its citizens 
that were lacking in the War on Crime discourse (Huysmans, 2000). The way the State is 
constructing the Other implies that the State consider the Mexican society to be good. 
 
While the spatial construction of the Other in the Corporate Responsibility discourse echoes of 
the Revolutionary Nationalist discourse, the temporal identities are not as similar. In the 
Revolutionary Nationalist discourse the Other, American hegemony, is constructed as a 
pervading threat and as unchangeable, legitimizing the Mexican State’s protectionist foreign 
policies of keeping the US at arm’s length. The temporal constructions in the Corporate 
Responsibility are different and the Firearms Corporations are unlike the American hegemony 
 32 
constructed as changeable. That the Firearms Corporation have the possibility to change is a 
construction permeating the lawsuit. The State emphasises that it is not naturally but by choice 
of business practices that the Firearms Corporations constitute a threat to the State. They are 
linked to signs as ‘willfully blind’, ‘deliberate’ and are constructed as conscious of what their 
practices leads to. The Firearms Corporations are constructed as unwilling but nevertheless 
changeable.  
 
The third and final dimension, the construction of ethics and responsibility, is both constructed 
separately in the lawsuit through processes of linking and differentiation and a consequence of 
how the identities are spatially and temporally constructed in the Corporate Responsibility 
discourse. First off, the construction of ethics is the dimension I have interpreted as most 
important in this discourse, accordingly I made the choice to call the discourse ‘Corporate 
Responsibility’. In the lawsuit responsibility is constructed through two different processes of 
linking. The first is through the construction of the Firearms Corporations as liable of the 
damages made in Mexico. This is done by linking the Firearms Corporations to the Mexican 
drug cartels and through the construction of the Firearms Corporations as dangerous. The 
discourse of danger is here also used to stabilize the linking between the Firearms Corporations 
and the Mexican drug cartels, differentiating them to the State. The other process taking place 
is the linking of the Firearms Corporations to the construction of agency. Characterized as the 
only ones with the possibility to do something about the situation, responsibility falls on the 
Firearms Corporations. It is said explicitly that there is some authority only the Firearms 
Corporations have. This is furthered reinforced by the process of differentiating the Firearms 
Corporations to how they should behave, to good corporations who conduct their business 
responsibly. Because of the way the identities are spatially, and temporal constructed, the 
responsibility of the Firearms Corporations is even further reinforced. The spatial construction 
of the Other as American, physically moves the responsibility away from Mexico and by 
choosing to situate the issue in a legal framework, not trying to convince the American 
politicians to enforce or change the laws but going directly to the Firearms Corporations, the 
responsibility is pushed down from the state level. The temporal identity of the Firearms 
Corporations also situates responsibility in the hands of the Firearms Corporations. Unwilling, 
but changeable implies that it is up to the Firearms Corporations now. The State has done what 
they can, they have even filed this lawsuit, but if the Firearms Corporations does not want to 
change, there is not much the State can do, except claim damages. 
 
 33 
The Corporate Responsibility discourse is spatially, temporal and ethically constructed in a way 
that enables de-securitizing policies and a reason for handling issues that have been securitised 
not as security issues (Wæver, 1995). The threat is moved from Mexico, from Mexican 
responsibility and towards an American context where Mexico is constructed as without 
agency. However, simultaneously, the State is not constructing the threat as existential or as 
threatening the sovereignty of Mexico but is constructing it as an issue of responsibility. 
Because of this the option of talking of this in terms of security is not very feasible. 
Furthermore, by filing a lawsuit the State de-securitizes the fight against the drug cartels, not 
arguing for extraordinary measures but simply arguing that the Firearms Corporations should 
do their part in handling the drug cartels and pay damages. The measures are not extraordinary 
because it is framed in a way that suggests that it is all about following the law, as you should. 
The policies enabled through this discourse is vastly different from the War on Crime discourse 
and is more of a retraction towards the Revolutionary Nationalist discourse where the threat is 
American and differentiated to Mexico. However, it is not the US state that is characterized as 
a threat but American private corporations. Constructing the Firearms Corporations as 
dangerous instead of the US state reflects the shift in the discourse towards socio-economic 
solutions instead of securitization, moving away from the traditional security discourse.  
8. Conclusion  
This study adds to the ideas about Mexican national security identity and show how we can 
understand it as a political practice that changes throughout history. Previous research has 
discussed the Mexican national security identity and noticed that historically, up until the recent 
presidential administration, there has not been much of a national security identity, but rather 
a regime security identity. Through this study, however, we can see how this might be changing 
and that there are different ways of understanding national security in Mexico, confirming, and 
building on the existing literature. 
 
The construction of identities in the Corporate Responsibility discourse focus on the 
construction of the Other, the Firearms Corporations, as ‘unlawful’, ‘potentially good’, 
‘dangerous’ and ‘American’. The continuous construction of the Firearms Corporations as 
‘dangerous’ is especially noteworthy as danger, which Campbell and Huysmans emphasise, is 
a powerful tool in the construction of identity because it sets up the boundaries of the identities 
as well as it provides a sense of belonging. Additionally, the Firearms Corporations are linked 
 34 
together with the Mexican drug cartels who in turn are separated from the Mexican State and 
citizens thus drawing boundaries around the security subject in a manner which moves away 
from the traditional regime security. Based on Hansen’s theory we can understand this way of 
constructing the identities as a way of providing the reasons for a de-securitised approach to 
the drug cartels. Changing the field to which the security act can be applied, the State is thus 
trying to change or, if we are to follow the argument that there has not been one, create the 
national security identity. By studying how identities are constructed in the lawsuit we can see 
how the State is not only seeking retribution for the damages, but also using the space to assume 
a new position in the international field. The Mexican position towards the US has previously 
been one where the Mexican State has resigned to the power of the neighbour and either tried 
to keep it at arm’s length or accepting US involvement in domestic politics. With this new 
national security identity, the State is changing this, saying that there is an American 
responsibility that needs to be taken. Although, the way the threat is constructed the American 
state cannot take this responsibility, it is the Firearms Corporations that must do it, and by 
constructing it this way they are preventing US involvement in Mexican domestic politics. 
Identifying the policies assumed by the State as a de-securitizing move is an interpretation made 
on a more speculative basis in this thesis. Based on Wæver’s theories about minimizing 
security, we can interpret the discursive move made in the lawsuit as de-securitization but to 
prove this altogether, a more thorough empirical study of this process would be needed, for 
which we do not have space here. The focus of this thesis has been to investigate the 
construction and use of threat and danger in foreign policy, but further studies of de-
securitization in Mexico would be useful to expand our understanding of Mexican foreign 
policy. 
 
The Corporate Responsibility discourse has not completely replaced the securitised War on 
Crime discourse, but the discourses are competing against each other. As mentioned in the 
Introduction, the State quite recently signed a decree allowing continued military involvement 
in public security showing that even though it is getting harder to enforce securitised policies, 
the possibility is still there.  
 
Furthermore, this study also builds on what has already been said about security/identity in 
general. As mentioned previously, this investigation of the construction of the Firearms 
Corporations as the Other not only highlights the importance of discourses of danger in foreign 
policy but it also shows that studying identity through danger is as useful as studying danger 
 35 
through identity. Danger is an effect of the subject’s interpretation, however, as an integral part 
of security policy, danger is also a part of the (re)production of the identity. By investigating 
how the Firearms Corporations are constructed as ‘dangerous’, which signs ‘dangerous’ is 
linked to, it tells us what the State identifies with and what it does not. We can also in this study 
see that a construction of danger does not necessary call for the securitization of an issue. In 
each discourse, danger is an integral part, however as the Other shifts so do the notion of danger 
and thus also the policies. In the Corporate Responsibility discourse responsibility is not 
assigned on a state level but within the business world, because the threat is not constructed as 
the US state’s ability to control its citizens but as deliberately dangerous corporations, and a 
traditional security approach is not an adequate response because of that.  
 
Additionally, this study confirms Hansen’s (2006) understanding of identity as a political 
practice and the importance of studying security and foreign policy through identity. The 
discourse analysis in this study shows that identity help shape policy and that politicians 
therefore use the construction of identity as a political tool. The Mexican State is, by 
constructing the identities of the Firearms Corporations and itself in a certain way, creating the 
rationales for their policies while at the same time reinforcing the identities through these very 
policies. 
 
Conclusively, by studying security/identity continuously, both in general and in a Mexican 
context, further understanding of rationales behind foreign policy can be created. In the 
Mexican context it would be useful to follow up on the proceedings of the lawsuit, how the 
issue develops and what statements that might be made in response to the outcome of the court 
proceedings. This to confirm or deny whether the Corporate Responsibility discourse is a 
prevailing part of the Mexican foreign policy. It would also be useful to do a more extensive 
study of the security policies of the current presidential administration. This study has pointed 
out how the lawsuit is an example of an articulation of the Corporate Responsibility discourse 
but taking more texts into account would give a more extensive picture of the discourse. 
 
 
 
 36 
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