Unwanted dead or alive? Gender, citizenship, and the afterlife of security in media representations of deceased ISIS members

Abstract This article undertakes a gendered analysis of media representations of deceased ISIS-affiliated citizens in Australia, the United Kingdom, and France to examine how death functions differently for men and women within contemporary counterterrorism governance. It argues that the governance of ISIS affiliation does not end at death. Instead, death becomes a mechanism through which states manage citizenship, security, and national cohesion by resolving the politically fraught problem of return. Across all three cases, death forecloses questions of legal responsibility, reintegration, and future risk that repatriation would otherwise force into view. Drawing on a comparative qualitative analysis of 287 media articles, the study shows that states rely on distinct governance strategies to translate death into security closure, and that these strategies operate in gendered but context-specific ways. While gender matters across cases, it operates as not simply a moral lens but also a structuring mechanism for how death resolves governance dilemmas. The article contributes to security studies by showing that death should be understood as not a terminal event but rather an active component of security governance in the management of citizenship and national cohesion after conflict.