From Social Assistance to Control in Urban Margins: Ambivalent Police Practices in Neoliberal Chile

Luneke, Alejandra; Dammert, Lucía; Zuñiga, Liza

doi:10.4322/dilemas.v15n1.42944

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In such contexts, the provision of urban services (such as water, sewerage, electricity and public lighting) is a critical point of contact between residents and the state (bureaucracy), with implications for state–society relations and securitisation. Debates on securitisation in Argentina (Auyero and Sobering, 2019), Bolivia (Goldstein, 2005), Chile (Luneke et al, 2022) and Brazil (Willis, 2014) acknowledge the relationship between the bureaucracy and citizens, but there is a tendency to focus mainly on bureaucrats pertaining to the security and judicial system – police, prosecutors, judges or the military – and the extent to which they contribute to the (in)security experienced by citizens. To move away from the judiciary-centred approach, Wacquant’s (2009) thesis on the neoliberal state is useful.…”

Section: A Socio-spatial Framework To Explore Urban Securitisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

2023

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In the context of growing concern with violence in Latin American and Caribbean cities this paper offers an analytical synthesis of urban securitisation which involves the construction of issues, spaces and populations as security threats. The synthesis contributes to debates on urban studies and critical security studies, which focus on neoliberalism as the driver of urban securitisation and militarisation as its main expression, by highlighting the embedded, contextualised and historically situated nature of securitisation and its multiple manifestations. The paper proposes a framework for the socio-spatial analysis of securitisation processes focusing on their causes, manifestations and consequences, while capturing their dialectic relation with cities’ spatial characteristics. Bringing together Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the social production of space with Wacquant’s analysis of the penal-assistential state, and using secondary sources complemented by primary data from our research, the paper shows that urban securitisation in this region is contingent to four socio-spatial dimensions common to Latin American and Caribbean cities – segregation, territorial stigmatisation, overlapping insecurities and territorial struggles. Using a multidimensional framework, the paper illustrates how unaddressed legacies of colonialism and notions of state power in the context of struggles with criminal actors have driven urban securitisation and diversified its targets and techniques beyond militarisation. Under a securitising logic, programmes which often appear progressive are also shown to prejudice marginalised groups and undermine democratic values. The paper concludes with a call for further multidisciplinary analyses that account for the socio-spatial and historical particularities of contemporary forms of urban securitisation in this and other regions.

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Section: A Socio-spatial Framework To Explore Urban Securitisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

2023

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“…Thus, our expectations of effective democratic policing through community meetings should remain modest. In addition, these meetings in Chile are imbued with an ambivalence between infiltration as part of the police intelligence services and social assistance, which limits the community-police partnership (Luneke, Dammert, and Zuñiga 2022).…”

Section: Citizen Complaints Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Complaints as an Accountability Mechanism: Uncovering Patterns Using Topic Modeling

Olivos¹,

Saavedra

Dammert

2022

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

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Objectives Citizen complaints are considered by policing researchers as an indicator of police misconduct, and a proxy of police-community relations. Nevertheless, US and EU-based studies tend to focus on sustained complaints as reported by official agencies and officer-based correlates. Using the case of Carabineros, the Chilean militarized police force, this study examines (a) latent topics contained in a large set of complaints against the police on a digital platform, and (b) the change of those topics across time and (c) by complainants’ educational level. Methods We use novel computational natural language processing techniques to identify latent themes across the corpus of complaints ( N = 1,623), hosted on an online forum from 2013 to 2020. Results Our findings show eight latent themes across the corpus. Among others, these themes were related to police effectiveness, police misbehavior, and a master frame of institutional crisis that has significantly grown over the last year. Additionally, differences in the prevalence of topics by complainants’ educational level were also found. Conclusions Thus, the findings contribute to the enterprise of opening the black box of complaints against the police and highlighting opportunities for social accountability in a developing country.

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“…Junto a ello, también el campo policial está configurado a partir de una identidad del ser Carabinero, basado en la representación simbólica del héroe policial, cuya labor queda impregnada en la idea de sacrificio y abnegación que es propia de la cultura del ejército y de las fuerzas armadas. Como destacan Luneke et al (2022), el carabinero concibe su carrera y su función en oposición al otro delincuente, subversivo o terrorista. Las tareas de control, pero también de asistencialismo social se fundan en la idea protección de los vulnerables frente a la acción de los enemigos, que situados dentro de las fronteras del Estado-nación, amenazan la sociedad.…”

Section: La Militarización De Carabineros De Chile Y Su Relación Con ...unclassified

Policía militarizada en Chile: claves para comprender la violencia policial estatal en la relación al conflicto mapuche

Luneke

Risør²,

Martínez³

2022

Anu.conflicte soc

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La decisión de militarizar la Araucanía chilena, esto es, llamar a las fuerzas armadas para el control policial en la zona, ha producido un amplio debate nacional y un escalamiento de la violencia en la zona. Y es que, como muestran distintos estudios, la explicación del llamado «conflicto mapuche» y de la violencia (estatal y aquella ejercida por grupos radicalizados) se ha centrado en el déficit político que ha tenido la solución al problema versus la criminalización de la respuesta por parte del Estado chileno. Una arista poco problematizada en este debate refiere a la estructura institucional y el carácter militar de Carabineros. En este artículo planteamos que la labor policial descansa sobre una tradición militarizada en la institución y esta herencia dificulta una relación protectora con la ciudadanía y también la solución al conflicto desde una perspectiva intercultural.

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From Social Assistance to Control in Urban Margins: Ambivalent Police Practices in Neoliberal Chile

Cited by 5 publications

References 27 publications

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Framing urban threats: A socio-spatial analysis of urban securitisation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Citizen Complaints as an Accountability Mechanism: Uncovering Patterns Using Topic Modeling

Policía militarizada en Chile: claves para comprender la violencia policial estatal en la relación al conflicto mapuche

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