Welfare Policing and the Safety–Security Nexus in Urban Governance: 'The expanded cohesion agenda in Malmö'

Abstract

Based on a study of policy frames in Malmö, this article discusses the safety–security nexus in urban governance. It argues that perceived safety is constituted as an index of order and that security politics becomes a means to this end. Security forms part and parcel of an expanded cohesion agenda that links criminal justice, immigration control, and integration as a chain. This multi-levelled policy chain, which includes police collaboration with governmental as well as non-governmental actors, opens up for expanded policing – termed welfare policing – in immigrant-dense areas of the city. The expansive security politics conflates welfare provision with crime prevention in specific urban districts, thus rendering entire sub-populations legible as ‘dangerous’ others against which society, or the city, must be defended. In conclusion, the article argues that the inherited structures and institutions of the welfare state seem to offer favourable conditions for expanded policing in urban space.

Keywords

• urban governance
• welfare policing
• safety–security nexus
• cohesion agenda• partnerships