La extensión del sentimiento de inseguridad en América Latina: Relatos, acciones y políticas en el caso Argentino

Abstract

Concern with crime has spread throughout Latin America. In addition to presenting the results of research carried out in Argentina using quantitative and qualitative methods, this article seeks to contribute to comparative work on similar processes in other countries of the region. Our central idea is that increasing feelings of lack of safety produce consequences at the level of the social imaginary - which we will refer to here as narratives of unsafeness - and, at the levels of social practice, management of such fears and concerns. This leads to a change in the exclusive association of fear and authoritarianism, forged at a time when lack of safety was a minority concern. The central paradoxes of this field of study in the Anglo-Saxon world, that is, the enigma of why those groups who are less subjected to crime are apparently the most fearful, are examined, in the light of the Argentinean case.