The missing link in human security research: Dialogue and insecurity in Kosovo

Abstract

The concept of human security continues to defy definitional clarity at the same time as it is being embraced by policy-makers. This article proposes a practice-grounded approach, which focuses on investigative method as a way of linking conceptual understanding of human security to the research process. Probing the actorness of individuals in volatile contexts, a study of insecurity in Kosovo shows how dialogue can be applied as a research tool to access and assess human security in the field. Dialogue allows the recognition of the power of the researched in the construction of knowledge of security, reflecting the conceptual shift represented by human security from states to communities and individuals. In the Kosovo study, dialogic research captured individual agency in the face of pervasive insecurity, revealing its contradictory effects. It led to the identification of a multidirectional security marker as a means to understand experiences of insecurity in relation to strategies to combat it. Three such markers: self-reliance, informality and community solidarity, emerged and are analysed in the case of Kosovo. Simultaneously denoting restrictions on people's security and possibilities for overcoming those very same limitations, the markers express the agential dimension of human security and show how agency and security interact.

Introduction: Below Peace Agreements: Everyday Nationalism or Everyday Peace?

“…The scholarly literature about postwar peacebuilding processes in the aftermath of the wars of Yugoslavia's offers insights informed by bottom–up approaches to peace and reconciliation, but it is limited by its almost exclusive empirical focus on postwar Bosnia–Herzegovina in anthropological studies of societal dynamics (Bougarel, Helms, & Duijzings, ; Helms, ; Hromadžić, , ). Emerging bottom–up perspectives on post‐conflict Kosovo have been informed by post‐liberal peace approaches (Pavlović, Zaharijević, Pudar Draško, & Rigels, ; Richmond, ), a focus on local agency (Randazzo, ) and human security (Kostovicova, Martin & Bojicic‐Dzelilovic, ). The articles in this themed section address a theoretical and empirical gap in the scholarship on Kosovo and Kosovo–Serbia relations by exploring the dynamics of everyday nationalism and everyday peacebuilding in tandem.…”

Growing Up in Post-Conflict Kosovo: Youth’s Insecurities and Their Attitudes Towards Police

“…Either way, the term signifies an alteration in security studies, which traditionally focused on security of the state mainly [15]. Recent research has opted to utilize insights from the field to advance and deepen the concept of human security [16], capturing the (sometimes paradoxical) connection between insecurity and affiliated agency. This way, research can "[open] up processes of knowledge production that allow individual accounts to be constructed, acknowledged and validated has resulted in a collaborative understanding of human security"( [16], p. 581) .…”

“…Recent research has opted to utilize insights from the field to advance and deepen the concept of human security [16], capturing the (sometimes paradoxical) connection between insecurity and affiliated agency. This way, research can "[open] up processes of knowledge production that allow individual accounts to be constructed, acknowledged and validated has resulted in a collaborative understanding of human security"( [16], p. 581) . According to the study by Kostovicova, Martin & Bojicic-Dzelilovic, Kosovars mainly resort to self-reliance, informality and community solidarity to overcome their insecurities, but cannot relieve macro-level insecurities posed by a weak state.…”

Informality, Inequality and Social Reintegration in Post-War Transition

“…In this respect the patterns in Bosnia-Herzegovina resemble the patterns observed in a wider region, and particularly in Kosovo and FYR Macedonia, where the legacy of war and a weak economy combine to restrict the resource base, which, in turn, intensifies the scramble for a right access channel. Inequities in access to jobs, business opportunities and social welfare are a common experience and point of conversation across Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo and FYR Macedonia, too (B&S, 2010;UNDP, 2011;ICG, 2002;Kostovicova, Martin & Bojicic-Dzelilovic, 2012). Looking for a job without prior arrangement with an insider in the tight job market in Bosnia-Herzegovina is almost certain to end in failure and paying the mediator, particularly in the relatively safe, prestigious public sector jobs, is not uncommon.…”

“…These group data on social exclusion disguise the issue that within each category, including that of displaced people, arguably among the most vulnerable of all, informality acts as an additional vector of differentiation with an ambiguous impact. It allows an individual's agency to change her/his predicament and to escape social exclusion (for this argument in a Kosovo case, see: Kostovicova, Martin, & Bojicic-Dzelilovic, 2012). But simultaneously, because such problems may only be temporarily resolved, and because any resolution still stems from an innately unequal relationship, the outcome is what Wood and Gough (2006) call "adverse inclusion" in terms of long term well-being and equity.…”