VERNACULAR SECURITIES AND THEIR STUDY

Lee Jarvis, Swansea Universityl.jarvis@swansea.ac.uk

22 January 2013

Overview Focus:

Research on public conceptions of ‘security’

Overview: Project outline Trends in contemporary security studies Project design and methodology ‘Vernacular securities’ and their importance Conclusion:

Academic, political and policy relevance of ‘vernacular security’ studies

Anti-terrorism, citizenship and security in the UK

2009-2011 project in England and Wales http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-000-2

2-3765/read

Research questions: Public views of anti-terrorism (AT) powers Public conceptions of security and citizenship Connections between public conceptions of AT,

security and citizenship Pertinence of experiential, demographic, and

other factors Discursive logics, resources and strategies

Security: referents and realities

People as referents Security as constructionHuman security and Critical Security Studies (Welsh School)

- Individual insecurities as starting point for scholarship- Ontological, empirical and normative justifications

Constructivism, Copenhagen School, and Poststructuralist

literature

- Security as discursive or constructed phenomenon

- Performativity: what does security do?

‘Vernacular Security’ studies (Bubandt, 2005)a. Mitigates constructivist emphasis on structurally privileged ‘elites’

b. Addresses propensity of (critical) security studies to speak for rather than to ‘ordinary’ people and their (in)securities

Project design

Fourteen focus groups: Residence: Metropolitan/Non-metropolitan Self-designated ethnicity: Black/White/Asian Purposive sampling:

Organisation sampling, snowballing, targeted advertising

Variable selection: Overwhelming focus on religious (esp. Muslim)

identities in the context of anti-terrorism policy

Group design

Open-ended questions On security:

What kinds of security threat do people in this country face? What are the main issues or threats to your own security? How have threats to security changed over time? What does security mean to you? Who do you think is responsible for providing security?

Validity Claims to statistical representativeness, clearly, untenable But, focus group method does permit analysis of:

‘Lay’ understandings and articulations of (in)security Group dynamics within conversation, and rigidity of conceptions Significance of particular sources of knowledge

Security Examples

Survival “Security means like to protect your life.”

“…there are objective standards…Everybody should have [a] basic standard of water supply, and food supply…of healthcare and housing”

Belonging

“…the ability to feel comfortable where you are”

“Security means feeling happy where you are, feeling that, you know, there’s no one to threaten you…you’re not feeling like, oh I can’t [go] there…I don’t belong there”

“Security is like…I would really like to belong somewhere, you know, like my house or my town or my country and be accepted and that sort of thing…I’ve been here for forty years…I don’t have the security of belonging”

Hospitality

“I think if we feel welcome we’d probably feel more secure”

“They said why are you here in Swansea? ...We all have names. Either you’re asylum seeker, either you’re a refugee, either you’re a student. That’s all you can live in Swansea”

Security Examples

Equality “You are secure if you are treated the way others are treated”“Security is equality, to have all the same rights…There shouldn’t be any difference between the black, white, foreigner…This is the meaning of security.”

Freedom

“I equate it…to freedom, really; to feeling that you can do what you want and be where you want within the confines of the law…without fear”“I think liberty and freedom is an essential component of actually feeling secure. I am quite wary now, especially with the sort of hype on Muslims per se. …I’m kind of quite outspoken in a sense, but then I again I have to sort of [limit] what I say because of the possible repercussions”

Insecurity

“Well, that’s security to me, it’s an affiliation with military, martial law. That’s instantly what I believe [when] they say we’re going to increase security. I think of martial law”“What concerns me with security is it gives a government that’s in trouble all sorts of open-handed or closed-handed ways…to fight [opponents]”

CCTV cameras and (in)securitization

Participant 1: But you guys, don’t you think it’s more safe and secure, they’re doing that. I mean, it’s our housing, isn’t it?

Participant 2: No, it’s an invasion of privacy.

Participant 1: It’s an invasion of privacy, but there is some sense of security, because there are some loonies out there.

Participant 2: It’s not for our security though, it’s for others

Security to securities Considerable heterogeneity across the UK:

Recurrence of limited relevance, but none restricted to one group

Participants also frequently moved between conceptions

Geography & ethnic identity: limited explanatory purchase: Personal experiences and encounters far more useful Greater purchase in other areas of the project (e.g. attitudes

toward citizenship)

Resonance of contemporary scholarship: Basic needs, communities, emancipation, securitization And, yet, sheds light on additional ‘adjacent concepts’ (Buzan

& Hansen, 2009), e.g. equality

Security and positionality Security as a mechanism for locating the self:

Articulating one’s place within external worlds: material, social, and political

For example: Survival: corporeal subject with basic somatic and

extra-somatic needs Belonging: ontological security – stable and rooted

sense of identity Hospitality: locates the self socially – responsibilities Equality, freedom and insecurity: political – support for

or opposition to values, projects and their consequences

Security and empathy Discussing security, often sparked reflection on others’ insecurity:

“I do understand…our town 30 or 40 years ago was mostly English, wasn’t it, and now there are more and more other families and the children are growing up, and then they feel a bit threatened by too many foreigners”

“I think if you were doing a survey, you know, in the middle of a huge city centre housing estate you would get a different perception of, you know, what frightens people, what people are concerned about”

“I’m a black person, but gosh, if I was a Muslim, I think…I’d be even more nervous about travelling, even if I was an innocent person”

Typically, one of two reasons: Recognition of security’s complexity, and therefore potential plurality. Or, consideration of contemporary security practices and technologies.

‘Security’ may have potential for forms of encounter or political imagination removed from the scepticism of contemporary debate.

Conclusion Speaking on the security of others should involve speaking

with others. Even in ‘progressive’ or ‘critical’ projects

Intellectual relevance: Bridging contemporary literatures on security Assessing the resonance of academic developments

Policy relevance: Contemporary emphasis on public perceptions of (in)security Integration of publics into security projects

Political relevance: ‘Security’ as contested terrain In public usage, at least, not straightforward, objective or calculable

Thank you for your time