Borderization and Public Security in Argentina

GRIMSON ALEJANDRO; BRÍGIDA RENOLDI

Irlanda

Workshop; 'Spaces of Security: Local, National, Global'; 2016

Maynooth University

What is security? In Latin America it is ?obvious? for the mass media: crime and drugs are devastating our personal security. Anyone can be a victim of a crime at any time. Media help to widely disseminate a broad perception of ?insecurity.? When you see a victim, you see a crime. So you see insecurity. Insecurity is something that everybody sees all the time.Bars, alarms, armored cars, private schools and gated communities construct a sense of security. What do these things have in common? They have borders. A border that the Other cannot cross. When you are sure than you can regulate which types of people can and cannot cross a border, you can feel different. In contrast, when you cannot manage the movement of people and things, fear arises.Insecurity, as a defining feature of our time, presents itself as something new or at least qualitatively different. We would note relevant antecedents of ?insecurity? in Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area and in border areas between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Both have the same feature: the redefinition of security paradigm linked to the ?global threat of drugs?. And in the case of the Tri-Border Area, the threat of ?global terrorism?. These elements define securization building in a specific historical context.As a counterpart of insecurity, security becomes that we have right to. Therefore, it becomes merchandise. We will discuss certain events historically, in order to understand what we mean when we say security, especially public security in Argentina, and particularly at the borders. We will identify specific features that are present even today in the way we limit or face problems. We will also work with the concept of borderization, a tool that allows us to elicit the formation of limits and differentiations, even if alike, in wide, not only international, geo-political spaces.