Securitisation and the mega‐event: an editorial introduction

Abstract

I n August 2011 organisers of the London 2012 Olympics staged rehearsals for the Opening Ceremony due to commence exactly one year hence. Meanwhile, other parts of the city were experiencing rioting and looting on a scale not seen for 30 years. Whilst these two events were largely distinct, their simultaneous occurrence underscored an important point. For all the attention to the enclosure, artificial urbanism and contrived spaces that hosting sporting mega events create, they are accommodated in complex and often contested urban settings. Two years later, the links between the politics of the street and the sporting mega-event spectacle became cemented elsewhere. Echoing protests against Mexico City’s profligate Olympic spending at a time of austerity in 1968, June 2013 saw more than a million people take to the streets across 100 Brazilian cities. Although activist causes were manifold they unmistakably coalesced around the social and pecuniary impacts of Brazil’s staging of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. As mega-event spectacles, replete with promises of ‘regeneration’ and ‘legacy’, continue to encroach further into the urban realm, so different levels of action, activism, governance and policy necessarily become drawn together. For sporting mega-events, it is in the realm of security practice where the heat generated by internationally focused agendas abrading with local practices, processes and priorities is greatest. Here, the promise of stringent security guarantees is a precondition for hosts who operate under a constant risk of catastrophic reputational damage should they not be met. Of course, it is rare that, in such a broad sense, ‘security’ can ever be guaranteed and, for planners, its pursuit results in dwindling levels of acceptable risk. When applied to the complex, dynamic and unpredictable realm of the global city, the contemporary stage for sporting mega events, such promises are even harder to keep. The result is uneasy coalitions of international, national, regional and local security practice; a merger of civil, military and criminal justice techniques and technologies of social control; and a proliferation of security priorities. Yet whilst some of these measures may be exceptional for the cities that host them, they often represent very familiar elements of mega-event security programmes.