Assemblages of security?–A study about starting school and feeling safe and secure at school

Abstract

To explore issues of safety and security at school the research reported here investigated the way a sense of security was created in school, how security was linked to different locations and situations, and the influences that acted on pupils’ sense of security. Pupils in year 1 in Sweden took photographs associated with insecurity and security, and these were used as starting points for small-group discussions. Analysis makes use of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theoretical concepts including assemblage, affect, rhizome and desire. This article provides an insight into the vulnerability of little bodies, in which materiality and thing-power played a large part. Security was created in assemblages, in the interplay between locations, things and pupils. It varied between different points in time and also increased or decreased depending on the risks the pupils dared expose themselves to. Happiness, freedom, self-assertiveness, status, and self-preservation were examples of desires arising in the assemblage and influencing the sense of security. The article provides examples of how the sense of security may be affected and follows a molecular rhizome of understanding the appearance of emotions of security in school.