Urban security: Whose security? Everyday responses to urban fears

Abstract

This chapter draws on recent empirical research, conducted with 20 young The research included young people aged between 14 and 25. Rather than taking ‘youth’ as a universal category, we recognise that it is a sociocultural construct (see Daiute and Fine 2003; Wyn and White 1997). In focusing on this age bracket, we are interested in the transitions that are taking place at this time in people’s lives and how young people navigate these changes in the contexts we describe in this chapter. We take an intersectional approach to age, which recognises that social status, gender and ability are also important in understanding the diverse meanings of being young in North East England. people living in a disadvantaged We use the term disadvantaged as a process, both social and spatial, which works to limit an individual’s participation in social activities, their access to material resources and the well-being enjoyed by the majority of citizens within a society. While accepting that this is a controversial term, the paper aims to demonstrate that there is a range of very real and context-specific exclusions at work at certain times and spaces within the area studied here. part of North East England. The research focused on issues of urban fear in terms of exclusion, identity, safety and belonging as they are experienced by different groups of young people living in the local area. Relatively little is known about how everyday securities actually play out on the ground. The chapter gives voice and credence to these understudied fearful experience, often neglected practices of everyday life. As such, the chapter finds that a more inclusive, bottom-up conception of urban security is required. New understandings that draw on people’s own perspectives and everyday life experiences are required to move us towards innovative and more spatially nuanced ways of thinking about security and securitization. We conclude that such possibilities pose a considerable challenge both to the theorisations and the politics of urban security.