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152: The Urban Dimension of Violence and (In)Security: A View from European Cities
Time:
Thursday, 11/Sept/2025:
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Session Chair: Dr. Josefa Maria Stiegler
Session Abstract
(In)Security and violence have become pressing issues in big and small cities across the globe; safety issues are put at the top of the political agenda and are recognized by urban planners and the market alike, as military expenditures are skyrocketing even in times of peace. Culminating in a new military urbanism, cities are not merely the backdrop for this development, but they increasingly function as laboratories for contemporary (urban) security governance. Security measures are usually based on a notion of security as a good or condition that is achievable through adequate means; most often, surveillance, police presence, access control, the privatization of security services and, put simply, the restriction of democratic freedoms in exchange for a promise of security.
While in the prevalent urban security discourse, there is usually a demand for "more security", there is in fact little knowledge about the mundane, long-term effects of security measures and how groups of people are affected differently by security practices. Particularly feminist researchers from the fields of urban studies and security studies have problematized narrow and simplifying definitions of security because they fail to account for the complexity and ambiguity of how security “works” in everyday urban spaces. Complicating urban security knowledge, critical and feminist research centers on how (in)security is experienced and constructed in the everyday lives of urban dwellers who are affected or targeted by security measures. What happens, for instance, when security efforts do not curb violence, but instead lead to a simultaneity of violence and security measures that neighborhoods and their residents are confronted with? What kind of security is implemented in what kind of spaces? How are spaces of violence, (in)security and peace dynamically intertwined and exist next to each other?
In addition to addressing these questions, possible themes for this session include:
• Empirical studies of different European contexts, e.g., French banlieues, Swedish suburbs or the recent far-right riots in the UK
• Community-based security initiatives and bottom-up security
• Innovative methodological approaches to studying long-term effects of urban violence and (in)security
• Theoretical frameworks for studying urban violence and (in)security particularly in European cities
• Interdisciplinary contributions
Presentations
Beyond caring mythical mothers: memorialising women on the walls of Belfast
Marie Migeon
University of Basel, Switzerland
In Belfast, murals and street art have permanently inscribed the conflict on the walls. Traditionally, and especially from the 1980s onward, mural painting has been used by different communities to claim spaces and lay a particular narrative and memory of the conflict into public space. Usually, these representations tend to invisibilise women, or show them in stereotypical roles as supporters, innocent victims, or (mythical) mothers. However, following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and the rise of street art in the city centre over the past decade, painters have been putting forward new narratives of Belfast, conflict, and peace, and of women in Belfast, conflict, and peace.
Based on the visual analysis of 637 murals and on 18 interviews conducted with politically active women in Belfast, this paper looks into the changing visual memorialisation of women in Belfast. I especially explore how murals shape space, and how they change public spaces of violence. Indeed, I argue that murals both produce and reproduce violent narratives by serving as visual reminders of the conflict and of the exclusion of women. On the other hand, I highlight the evolutions of these visual representations, and their nuanced representations of violence, peace, and gender. To understand these changing visual and spatial narratives, I specifically look at the way women have been visually included or excluded from political representations – including by women themselves – to broadcast narratives about the conflict and the peace process. In this, I particularly look at the links between certain spaces of the city and certain types of representations, focusing on the West Belfast neighbourhood of Ballymurphy and the city centre.
This paper highlights how representations of women have evolved in many murals of the city, but also how they show the remaining spatial differences between neighbourhoods, which do not remember the same violence, the same women, and do not remember them in the same way. Twenty-seven years after the peace agreement, the spatial division of Belfast remains in its walls and in its visual memories.
