Everyday human (in)security: Rescaling for the Southern city

Abstract

While human security approaches emphasize top-down security concerns and strategies, urban dwellers in the global South experience (in)security in much more immediate and tangible forms, grounded, for example, in citizens’ perceptions and fears related to the security of their lifestyles and cultures, as well as their physical, financial and tenure security. Thus, while human security research and policy focuses on security concerns that occur at the global scale, are linked to spectacular events, and result in security strategies that concentrate on collective human needs and state-led responses, citizens’ security experiences take place primarily at the local scale, in terms of everyday practices and individual subjectivities, resulting in citizen-led mitigation strategies. The ‘gap’ between the security agenda’s global scale and urban citizens’ local scale is the primary focus of this article, which uses empirical examples from the global South to highlight the ways in which urban citizens from diverse socioeconomic groups demonstrate scales of human (in)security that are under-addressed by the conceptual or policy framework. The article concludes with a call to rescale the human security agenda within the context of the Southern city – to consider the local alongside the global.