Securitisation and Nubian Erasure in Postcolonial Egypt

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the Aswan High Dam (AHD) was securitised in postcolonial Egypt and what this meant for the displacement and silencing of Nubians. While the dam has long been celebrated as a symbol of sovereignty and modernisation, it also submerged forty-five villages and uprooted nearly 50,000 Nubians in Egypt alone. The study asks how discourses of threat, necessity, and erasure legitimised this dispossession and how silences were produced and contested. The research employs a discourse-analytic method, drawing on Egyptian state reports, presidential speeches, Ministry of Social Affairs booklets, UNESCO campaigns, international press, and social science studies preserved in the American University in Cairo archives. These sources are read as securitising acts rather than neutral records, alongside postcolonial critiques of epistemic injustice and silencing. The findings show that securitisation unfolded in three phases. Inception (1947–1960) framed the Nile’s variability as an existential threat, the dam as salvation, and Nubians as logistical obstacles. Implementation (1960s) bureaucratised displacement through ledgers, compensation tables, and resettlement schemes while international heritage campaigns elevated temples as global referents. Aftermath (1970s–1980s) normalised Nubian absence by declaring resettlement complete, even as anthropological accounts recorded hunger, disillusionment, and migration. The thesis contributes theoretically by integrating securitisation studies with postcolonial critique, showing how silencing and heritage discourses determine what counts as “security” and whose claims are erased. Empirically, it reframes Nubian displacement as security history rather than development policy, making visible the structures of erasure underpinning one of Egypt’s most celebrated projects. It concludes that securitisation is best understood not as a single act but as a sustained process that legitimised dispossession while leaving room for persistent, if muted, counter-narratives.