Spaces of contestation: Challenges, actors and expertise in the management of urban security in Greece
| Author | Leonidas K. Cheliotis,Sappho Xenakis |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370812473534 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Criminology
10(3) 297 –313
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370812473534
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Spaces of contestation:
Challenges, actors and
expertise in the management
of urban security in Greece
Sappho Xenakis
Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP)/Université de Versailles
Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France
Leonidas K. Cheliotis
University of Edinburgh, UK
Abstract
Urban security has emerged as one of the key priorities in political and public life in Greece over
recent years, and especially since the country fell into financial crisis in 2009. This article offers an
unprecedented overview of the challenges, actors and expertise in the management of urban security
in Greece, drawing attention to the political tensions that envelop them. The first section focuses
on the phenomena considered to constitute core challenges for urban security in the country: from
common crime, immigration and urban poverty and degradation, to social unrest, policing, far-
right militias and vigilantism. The various state and non-state actors engaged in the management of
urban security are then outlined, and the relationship between expertise and official policy-making is
critically assessed. Objective and subjective forms of insecurity are shown to be highly contentious,
responses to such insecurities are found to produce insecurities in their own right, and constraints
upon non-technical expertise are identified as limiting the scope of pertinent state policy.
Keywords
Expertise and policy-making, far-right militias, immigration, policing, urban poverty and degradation
Unlike in Western Europe, urbanization in Greece has been shaped by the country’s
belated and partial experience of industrialization and its weak tradition of state welfare
provision. Socioeconomic and spatial polarization have been affected by the fact that
Greece has retained proportionally one of the largest self-employed sectors in the
Corresponding author:
Sappho Xenakis, CESDIP, 43 Boulevard Vauban, 78280 Guyancourt, France.
Email: sappho.xenakis@cesdip.fr
473534EUC10310.1177/1477370812473534European Journal of CriminologyXenakis and Cheliotis
2013
Article
298 European Journal of Criminology 10(3)
European Union, and that it has maintained one of the highest levels of poverty and
inequality in the region, with one of the worst records for reducing poverty through
social transfers (Cheliotis and Xenakis, 2010). Residential mobility has been limited by
high levels of home ownership and the necessity of family-based welfare, which, along-
side the comparatively scant provision of public housing, has served to inhibit the crea-
tion of ghettos. Even in Athens, where, since the 1990s, the presence of immigrants
experiencing deprivation has been most concentrated, patterns of self-employment and
limited flexibility in housing stock led to lower levels of segregation than experienced
by immigrants elsewhere in Europe (Maloutas, 2009; Arapoglou and Maloutas, 2011).
The mixed composition of the urban environment, however, has not prevented
stigmatization or social conflict. Instead, the very visibility of marginalized groups
within urban centres has become a focal point for political securitization and public
insecurity as socioeconomic tensions have increased. Rising rates of unemployment
and household indebtedness, and the impact of financial crisis and austerity measures
since 2009, have heightened socioeconomic polarization and brought about an inten-
sified political and public focus on the management of urban security challenges.
Such concerns have primarily concerned Athens: the Greek capital is the centre of
political power and a convergence point for public strikes and demonstrations, as well
as being the symbolic heart of the nation, home to monuments such as the Acropolis
that are possibly the most emblematic of Greek national identity. At the same time,
socioeconomic tensions within the metropolis have become starker, with professional
and managerial classes converging in north-eastern municipalities, clerks and sales-
persons heading to southern districts, and immigrant service workers moving into
central, southern and northern districts (Arapoglou and Sayas, 2009). Despite the fact
that trends of suburbanization, socioeconomic polarization in the city centre and asso-
ciated concerns about urban degradation and crime all pre-dated the mass immigra-
tion of the 1990s, those middle classes unable or unwilling to relocate from the inner
city have increasingly struggled with the stigmatization and insecurity attached to
living alongside immigrants (Kandylis and Kavoulakos, 2011).
In this article we review the phenomena considered to constitute core challenges for
urban security in Greece – common crime, immigration, urban poverty and degradation,
social unrest, policing, and far-right militias and vigilantism – as these are conceived by
different constituencies within the country, and we pay particular attention to the Athenian
context in so doing. We move on to outline the spectrum of key state and non-state agents
engaged in the management of urban security in Greece, and offer an unprecedented
account of the relationship between expertise and official policy-making in this area.
Objective and subjective forms of insecurity are found to be highly contentious, responses
to such insecurities are seen to produce insecurities in their own right, and constraints
upon non-technical expertise are identified as limiting the scope of pertinent state policy.
Challenges to urban security in Greece
Common crime
Greece has ranked amongst the most crime-fearing nations in Europe and beyond ever
since its inclusion in pertinent international comparative analyses in the early 2000s. In
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