Everyday (In)Security in Contexts of Hybrid Governance: Lessons from Medellin and San Salvador

Crime and insecurity in cities in the global South, where levels of violence are elevated, have become a major concern for citizens, academics, and the media. Security provision in these places is also a priority area for policy makers, governments and development agencies. This is particularly the case in Latin America and the Caribbean where in the search for ways to reduce or contain urban violence, different tiers of government have attempted strategies that particularly target marginalised communities.
Security responses in some of the most affected cities often attempt to establish state’s presence, intervention and territorial control, in what are regarded as problematic areas where different types of illegal armed groups have the capacity to exercise violence and different forms of control over residents. Security responses involving various combinations of hard-fisted measures, community policing models, negotiations with local armed actors, preventive programmes and improved service delivery, are making interactions between state institutions, illegal armed actors and citizens ever more complex on the ground.
This briefing paper presents preliminary findings from an empirical study carried out in Medellin and San Salvador, which explored the way residents of marginalised areas experience security and justice provision in contexts where governance reconfigurations are occurring as a result of different security strategies, as well as what type of informal and formal practices are deployed to deal with people’s daily security needs in these contexts characterised by the coexistence of state institutions and other coercive actors. The briefing also explains what can be learnt from people’s daily experiences and practices of (in)security in urban communities of these two cities.