Making Europe through infrastructures of (in)security

Am 12. und 13.11.2020 nehmen Roger von Laufenberg und Stefanie Brottrager mit dem Draftpaper »The Grätzlpolizist as an infrastructure of security in Europe” am interdisziplinären Workshop “Making Europe through infrastructures of (in)security” der Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften der Uni Wien teil.

Abstract

In the last decades, nationwide and international responses towards actual and assumed security threats have been largely technological in nature, often in combination with a successive restriction of individual and societal freedom. Particularly since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, multiple interconnecting infrastructures of security have been installed and were extended with every “security crisis”, from actual physical threats such as terrorist attacks to imagined threats such as the increased migration movements. All the while, alternative concepts of security infrastructures have seen little attention, nor implementation. Yet, examples of such alternative concepts are promising, such as the model of community policing, which can be regarded as a counter measure to security cultures which increasingly widen what counts as (in-)security and what does not (Daase et al., 2012). 

So far, community policing has largely remained a marginal aspect within security infrastructures in Europe, despite its potential of tackling aspects of insecurity on a much wider basis – including threats to ontological security (Giddens, 1990). Based on the example of the “Grätzlpolizist” – the Viennese version of community policing – we want to discuss how community policing can be seen as an alternative infrastructure of security. One that is largely human and conceptual, but nonetheless embedded within existing security infrastructures. We argue that on the one hand, the “Grätzelpolizei” has the advantage of providing a level of security that is closer to the actual insecurities of the citizens, including the ontological ones. However, on the other hand, it is a security infrastructure that suffers from marginalization also within the police, as the community policing approach is seen as incompatible with the traditional objectives of law enFORCEment. Finally, we want to discuss what role community policing in general and the “Grätzlpolizei” in particular can have, designing a European concept of security shifting from technological to societal factors.

Daase, Christopher / Offermann, Philipp / Rauer, Valentin (Hg.) (2012): Sicherheitskultur. Soziale und politische Praktiken der Gefahrenabwehr. Frankfurt/New York: Campus.

Giddens, Anthony (1990): The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford University Press, Stanford.