scholarly journals Crime, insecurity and corruption: Considering the growth of urban private security

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 1111-1120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Garmany ◽  
Ana Paula Galdeano
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Urban Crime ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Private Security Companies ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Global North ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South

We call into question the growing presence of private security companies (PSCs) in cities throughout the world. Though PSCs have grown enormously in recent decades, there exist few academic analyses to consider their broad-reaching effects. Researchers still have much to understand about the relationships between PSCs and changing patterns of urban development, governance and public security. PSCs are prevalent in both the Global North and South, yet their presence is perhaps most intense in emerging countries, where social inequality is high and public security is tenuous. As such, in this article we draw on specific examples from the city of São Paulo, Brazil, where demand is soaring for private security and PSCs operate in complicated networks between the state, private capital and organised crime. Our analysis draws attention to the paradoxes of urban private security, beginning with the fact that public insecurity is in fact good for PSC business. By reflecting on existing published resources – and making connections across several disciplines – our goals in this article are threefold: (1) to highlight the need for more research on PSCs in urban settings; (2) to draw attention to the ways private security is changing urban space, and; (3) to suggest that the growth of PSCs, rather than being representative of increased public security, may in some cases coincide with rising levels of urban crime and insecurity.

Urban borderwork: Ethnographies of policing

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-398
Author(s):  
Maya Mynster Christensen ◽  
Peter Albrecht
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Police Work ◽  
Urban Policing ◽  
Global North ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South

This special issue introduces a conceptual framework for ethnographies of urban policing that foregrounds how defining features of the city produce police work, and in turn, how police work produces the city. To address how the mutually productive relationship of policing and the city shape current transformations in the ordering of urban space, the notions of borders and bordering are invoked. In contemporary cities across the global North and South, borders and bordering practices are reconfigured to address mobilities and flows deemed to threaten social order and have thus become manifestations of fear and anxiety linked to these mobilities and flows. At the core of our framework is the argument that urban policing is principally a practice of bordering. By approaching urban policing as a practice of bordering that is informed by material and imaginary manifestations, tensions between (de)territorializing and (de)stabilization are highlighted as both the vehicle and outcome of bordering practices. These tensions, we propose, can be captured through the concept of trembling. Trembling implies both a physical and emotional response to anxiety, excitement and frailty that is paradoxically built into borders and bordering practices.

scholarly journals Segurança Pública, Violência Urbana e Expansão do Setor de Segurança Privada no Município do Rio de Janeiro

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
José Pedro Guedes Quintella ◽  
José Luis Felicio Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
Private Organization ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The research was guided by the purpose of identifying how, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the lack of public security policies affect the private security sector. The referential theoretical framework embraced the themes of social and economic contextualization of private security, the institutionalization of private security and the problem of public security in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The empirical stage of the study included semi-structured interviews with key informants, three of whom were directors of different medium-sized companies in the private security sector located in the municipality, a high-ranking officer of the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro, and the president of a private organization which provides training services to civilians, military and police forces. The results confirms contradictory aspects of integration and imbalance between the private security sector and the public power, as well as raises unique issues, such as the causal relation between the media role in violence and the growth of the sector, and the antinomy between the amplification of the ostensible presence of the police force on the streets and the increase of the sense of insecurity that causes the growth of the demand for private security.

The Camp

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasser Abourahme
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Global South ◽  
Political Control ◽  
Global North ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
The City

Abstract The figure of the camp towers over our present. Our planners find it indispensable. Our political grammar finds it unavoidable. Our very conceptions of “the city,” and its once stable inside/outside demarcations, find its challenge insuperable. Not only do more people and more categories of people inhabit camps than ever before, from refugees and migrants to the homeless and detainees, but the camp form today proliferates at the heart of urban space and across the global North/global South divide. Camps are no longer temporary sites of emergency management. They are a global logic of government, an enduring colonial technology at the heart of the response to the climate/border crisis. Taking up the example of the Palestinian refugee camp, this article argues that camps no longer teach us anything about legal exceptions; rather they underline the politics of inhabitation. Camps enact the collapse of the separation between life and politics by making the very fact of inhabitation in itself the basis of political control and contestation. If our world is becoming uninhabitable, the camp, the most common defense against racialized bodies moving to find a place to live, becomes the place where the very political stakes of inhabitation come to the fore.

Japanese Gentrification from a Local Community Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 618-637
Author(s):  
Meriç Kırmızı
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Global North ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South ◽  
City Centres

Japanese urban change after the 1990s, studied mostly under the name of reurbanization or “return to the city centres,” was little understood abroad. To locate Japan in the literature on gentrification, the Horie neighborhood in Osaka's Nishi Ward was studied as an example of post–bubble neighborhood change. The aim of this study was to account for Horie's present situation after Tachibana Street's revitalization from the perspectives of different social groups. The research, based on a three–year long qualitative field study, found that the attitudes of these various social groups to revitalization were connected to the type and intensity of their relationships with the area. Furthermore, Horie's lack of irresolvable social tensions over revitalization indicated a major difference between Japanese post–industrial urban change and other gentrification models of the Global North and South. The study concludes by suggesting we should think out of the revitalization construct to protect the local neighborhood culture.

scholarly journals SEGURANÇA PÚBLICA, MUNICÍPIOS E SOCIEDADE: UMA REFLEXÃO SOBRE RESPONSABILIBADES

Revista LEVS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Roberto ROSAS JR ◽  
Arlindo S. de Albergaria H. d SILVA JR ◽  
Celi LANGHI
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Space Management ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Informational Capitalism ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Resumo: Segurança pública, municípios e sociedade trata-se de um ensaio sobre a reponsabilidade das Administrações municipais e dos cidadãos sobre as questões de segurança pública. A abordagem é iniciada a partir da discussão sobre a relação entre o estabelecimento das redes globais do capitalismo informacional e o processo de desigualdade e exclusão social. Trata-se das atribuições legais dos municípios em relação à segurança pública e sobre os conceitos de “poder de polícia” e “poder da polícia”. Abordam-se, ainda, as questões relacionadas à participação dos cidadãos nas políticas de segurança pública e da chamada segurança cidadã. Exploram-se as possibilidades de uso do poder de polícia do município para prevenção e enfrentamento dos problemas de segurança pública, que vão além da atuação das guardas municipais. Conclui-se que, como ente público mais próximo do cidadão, o município tem um papel importante na promoção de políticas públicas de prevenção e enfrentamento dos problemas de segurança pública. Essas políticas devem ter amplo aspecto, pois muitos problemas de segurança pública estão relacionados a deficiências de infraestrutura, ordenamento do espaço urbano e promoção de direitos básicos dos cidadãos. Conclui-se também que a eficácia e eficiência das políticas de segurança pública estão relacionadas com o nível de envolvimento e participação dos cidadãos com essas políticas, devendo essa participação ser estimulada pela Administração Municipal. Palavras-chave: Segurança Pública. Segurança Cidadã. Municípios. Poder de Polícia. Gestão de Cidades. Abstract: Public Security, city and society is an article about the responsibility of municipal administrations and citizens on matters regarding public security.  The approach starts from the discussion about the relationship between establishing global networks of informational capitalism and the process of inequity and social exclusion. It is about the legal allocation of municipalities concerning public security about the concepts of “The police power” and “The power of the police”. It also addresses matters related to the participation of citizens in public security policies and the so-called citizen security. It explores the possibilities of using the police power of the city on preventing and confronting public security issues, which goes beyond the function of city guards. It has been concluded as the citizen’s closest party, the municipality has an important role in promoting public policies on preventing and confronting public security issues. These policies must have a wide aspect since many problems of public security are related to infrastructure shortcoming, urban space management, and promoting citizens’ basic rights. It has been also concluded that effectiveness and efficiency of public policies are related to the level of commitment and participation of the citizen with these policies, and this participation has to be promoted by the city administration. Keywords: Public Security. City. Power of Police. Municipal administration.

Transnational Habitus and Sociability in the City: Zimbabwean Migrants’ Experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khangelani Moyo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Transnational Migrants ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
The City

Drawing on field research and a survey of 150 Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, this paper explores the dimensions of migrants’ transnational experiences in the urban space. I discuss the use of communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook as well as other means such as telephone calls in fostering the embedding of transnational migrants within both the Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean socio-economic environments. I engage this migrant-embedding using Bourdieusian concepts of “transnational habitus” and “transnational social field,” which are migration specific variations of Bourdieu’s original concepts of “habitus” and “social field.” In deploying these Bourdieusian conceptual tools, I observe that the dynamics of South–South migration as observed in the Zimbabwean migrants are different to those in the South–North migration streams and it is important to move away from using the same lens in interpreting different realities. For Johannesburg-based migrants to operate within the socio-economic networks produced in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, they need to actively acquire a transnational habitus. I argue that migrants’ cultivation of networks in Johannesburg is instrumental, purposive, and geared towards achieving specific and immediate goals, and latently leads to the development and sustenance of flexible forms of permanency in the transnational urban space.

Ukraina Wschodnia jako przestrzeń symboliczna w prozie Serhija Żadana – na podstawie powieści Woroszyłowgrad i Mezopotamia

2020 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Marta Zambrzycka ◽  
Paulina Olechowska
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
City Space ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City

The subject of the article is an analysis of the three aspects of depicting urban space of Eastern Ukraine, focusing specifi cally on the Donbass region and the city of Kharkov as depicted in the novels Voroshilovgrad (2010) and Mesopotamia (2014) by Serhiy Zhadan. The urban space of Eastern Ukraine overlaps with the most important values that shape a person’s personality and aff ect her or his self-identifi cation. The city space is also a “place of memory” and experiences of generations that infl uence current events. In addition to the historical and axiological dimension, the imaginative aspect of space is also important. This approach is used by the author to describe the urban space as a functioning imagination or stereotypes associated with it as opposed to its realistic depiction.

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