The security-threat-community

Bibliographic Data

ID8082008
AuthorsDavid Coyles (0000-0002-7734-2223, University of Ulster, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume21
Issue6
Pages699-723
Publication date2017-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-4813 • E-ISSN: 1470-3629
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13604813.2017.1412598
OpenAlexW2489683967
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited64

At the height of ‘the Troubles’ in 1976 social-housing in Belfast was in a crisis situation as communities consolidated along ethnic boundaries, often with violent consequences, with some communities becoming drastically overcrowded and others falling into abject dereliction. Using declassified government documentation this paper examines how these events legitimised an emergent confluence of housing and security policy which brought into being the security-threat-community; a socio-material construct where every person is a potential insurgent and every dwelling a potential security-threat. Crucially, the paper problematises the complex entanglement of political, military, paramilitary, economic and ideological forces which shaped its formation. The discussion traces a descent through contingent events within a wider dispositif and reveals the formation of the Standing Committee on the Security Implications of Housing, a confidential government body which assessed the viability of social-housing procurement within communities in terms of the security-threat it might present rather than the housing-need that it would address. As a complement to post-9-11 discourses concerning increasingly ‘globalised conflicts’ the security-threat-community reinforces the complexities of local discursivities. The paper makes visible the sophisticated socio-material effects of these operations and illustrates how they remain embedded within contemporary community structures. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this permits conflict-era forces to remain active, but largely unacknowledged, within the post-conflict era. Ultimately the paper argues for a ‘revaluing of the value’ of this conflict-architecture within post-conflict policy frameworks

Ethnic group · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Homelessness and Social Issues · Irish and British Studies · Law · Urban Planning and Governance

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