The market for ontological security

ABSTRACT

Life in the European Union (EU) has never been as safe as it is today. Nevertheless, EU citizens express widespread anxiety about new risks, such as internal and external migration, transnational crime and terrorism, economic and fiscal uncertainty. One actor which has profited from this development is the security industry. Across Europe there are now nearly as many private security guards employed as public police forces. This article draws on the concept of ontological security to understand the discrepancy between safety and anxiety which underpins the expansion of private security services in Europe. It argues that Private Security Companies (PSCs) are involved in the construction and provision of ontological security through three mechanisms: risk identification, risk profiling and risk management. These mechanisms not only offer physical security, they also reduce existential anxieties by contributing to stable self-identities through personalised risk profiles, commodified lifestyle choices and security routines. Nevertheless, the effects are not only positive. In addition to individualisation and the responsibilization of European citizens for their own physical and ontological security these mechanisms increase societal reliance on commercial expert systems, while reinforcing the perceived failure of the EU as a political and collective security community.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• private security companies
• ontological security
• collective security community
• lifestyle

Introduction

Life in the European Union (EU) has never been as safe as it is today. European integration has led to the elimination of armed conflict among member states after centuries of internecine warfare. The prospect of accession to the EU has facilitated stability, reconciliation and rule of law within the former Yugoslav republics which were torn apart by a violent civil war only one decade ago. EU homicide rates have nearly halved in the new millennium, falling from 8.8 to 4.5 per 100,000 inhabitants (Eurostat 2017).¹

Nevertheless, EU citizens express widespread and deep anxiety about new risks, such as internal and external migration, terrorism and crime (Kinnvall et al. 2018, Mitzen 2018). The terrorist attacks of Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Manchester have engendered a fundamental sense of insecurity. The so-called “refugee crisis”, transnationally operating criminal groups, financial and economic downturns have raised doubts over the advantages of EU membership and integration. Whereas in 1990 a total of 79 percent of Europeans believed that their country’s EU membership was “a good thing”, in 2016 this figure had fallen to 53 percent (Eurobarometer 1991, p. 3, EPRS 2016, p. 7). The lowest point was reached in 2011 when only 47 percent of all respondents answered that EU membership was positive. The EU as a collective security community has been put into question by citizens, radical parties and right-wing governments.

Another actor which has been profiting from this situation is the private security industry, i.e. “providers of manpower-related and other services for the security of persons, tangible objects and assets, infrastructure and environments” (Ecorys 2015, p. 10).² Fear and anxiety as well as distrust in public institutions have corresponded with an enormous expansion in the European market for private security services. Securitas (2017, p. 6), one of the largest Private Security Companies (PSCs) in Europe and the world, observes:

Although some categories of reported crime rates are falling in many countries, there is a widespread perception that crime is increasing, which is increasing the demand for security solutions. One reason for this is the heightened awareness of threats to communities, companies and individuals, including acts of terrorism and increased violence, combined with reduced police presence in public areas.

Security industry growth rates have exceeded those of all other service sectors in the EU during the past decade (Eurostat 2017). Figures collected by the Confederation of European Security Services (CoESS 2011, p. 143) show that the annual turnover of the industry has increased on average by 13,3 percent between 2005 and 2010. In 2013, overall turnover of the European security industry reached a total of € 34.572 billion, and CoESS members expect the market to expand even further.³ Across Europe there are now nearly as many private security guards employed as public police forces (Ecorys 2015, p. 11).

This article seeks to explain the discrepancy between safety and anxiety which underpins the market for private security services in the EU. Why are EU citizens increasingly purchasing security services if physical threats are declining? The following suggests that this puzzle can be resolved if one views the private security industry not only as a provider of physical, but also of ontological security. Specifically, this article proposes that PSCs participate in the construction and production of ontological security through three mechanisms: risk identification, risk profiling and risk management.

To support this argument, the article is structured into four parts. The first part examines how the International Relations literature has problematised the connection between physical and ontological security. The second part outlines the link between ontological security and the growth in the private security market. Drawing on Giddens, it points out that ontological security derives not only from narratives about self-identity, but also from the commodified lifestyle choices and routines offered by the private security industry. The third part seeks to illustrate empirically how PSCs can contribute to the construction and production of ontological security by means of risk identification, risk profiling and risk management. The final part discusses critically security market responses to ontological insecurity in Europe. Are commodified lifestyle choices a healthier way of identity construction than collective political discourses and practices?

Physical and ontological security in the IR literature

In contrast to physical security which denotes “security as survival”, ontological security refers to “security as being” (Kinnvall and Mitzen 2017, p. 4, Kinnvall et al. 2018). Giddens (1991, p. 92) who developed the concept of ontological security, following Laing (1960), describes it as the “confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments”. This confidence is not only necessary to know one’s place in the world and in relation to others, it is also essential for human agency. Self-identity provides the emotional and cognitive framework which enables actors to define their interests, build communities and act strategically within their social environments. Ontological insecurity arises when developments undermine established self-identities and social relations. It can happen through traumatic events and the “disruption to routines, which invokes instability and a break with what is knowable, consistent and comprehensible to the self” (Agius 2017, p. 111). It can also be the effect of long-term developments, such as the weakening of traditional ways of life and communities through the forces of globalisation and late modernity (Giddens 1991).

While conceptually distinct, physical and ontological security are closely connected. On the one hand, physical traumas, such as being the victim of attacks, natural disasters or violent crime, can disrupt personal and collective identities and trigger ontological insecurity (Hawkins and Maurer 2011, Georgiou 2013). On the other hand, actors often misinterpret the deep anxiety caused by ontological insecurity as a rational response to perceived physical threats which become the target of securitisation (Dirsuweit 2007, Steele 2008, Croft 2012, Browning and Joenniemi 2017). Browning (2018) observes: “existential anxieties about the unknown are frequently refracted onto tangible objects of fear that can be prepared for or countered in some way”. To grasp the differences and connections between physical and ontological security, it is useful to distinguish between fear and anxiety. Whereas “fear is a response to a specific threat and therefore has a definite object”, anxiety “is a generalised state of the emotions of the individual” and a symptom of ontological insecurity, caused by the destabilisation of prior identities and social relations (Giddens 1991, p. 43). Fear can be addressed by eliminating a threat, anxiety cannot. Yet, many people and collectives mistake one for the other.

Two key questions have been the focus of International Relations research at the intersection between physical and ontological security: (1) how can actors maintain or gain ontological security, and (2) which strategies may be considered “healthy” and which “maladaptive” (Mitzen 2006a). Those mechanisms which effectively undermine the physical security of the self or others while seeking ontological security have been considered particularly maladaptive. The discursive construction of individual or collective identities through the othering of outgroups, such as immigrants, Muslims and oriental nations, has received particular attention and criticism (Steele 2008, Croft 2012, Rumelili 2015, Agius 2017, Browning and Joenniemi 2017, Steele 2017, Alkopher 2018). Although pervasive, this strategy is usually considered maladaptive because it frequently leads to securitisation. Securitisation can take the form of (mis)constructing perceived cultural, religious or societal outgroups as physical security threats (Chernobrov 2016, deRaismes Combes 2017). Securitisation can also engender hostile relations between states. Mitzen (2006b), for example, observes that governments embrace the “security dilemma” which views other nations as alien and dangerous because the securitisation of other states contributes to national identity and ontological security. Finally, there is the “securitisation of subjectivity”, a term coined by Kinnvall (2004) to describe the unhealthy fixation of one’s self on a single inflexible identity. The literature has contrasted this fixation with a healthy reflexive self, involving the acknowledgement of the fluidity and multiplicity of individual and collective identities (Kinnvall 2004, Chernobrov 2016, Browning and Joenniemi 2017).

Habits and routines provide another ontological security strategy by anchoring individual and collective identities and providing a framework for agency which counters fundamental anxieties about life (Giddens 1991, p. 98). As Mitzen (2006a, p. 273) writes, “routines help us to bring our threat environment under cognitive control. Routines therefore solve the chaos problem, allowing the actor to maintain a sense of self”. In world politics, such routines range from regularised interaction and meetings at ministerial levels to organisational standard operating procedures (Mitzen 2006a, Steele 2008, 2017). Like narratives, ontological security providing habits and routines can be maladaptive in other respects. Steele (2008, p. 2), for instance, argues that some states “pursue social actions to serve self-identity needs, even when these actions compromise their physical existence”. Flockhart (2016, p. 817) observes that habitual practices can become dysfunctional when they begin to conflict with changing narratives of the self, leading to “an identity crisis and/or narrative crisis”.

Empirically and methodologically, the International Relations literature has so far focussed on the narratives and practices of states and the European Union to understand how ontological security can be maintained or regained (Mitzen 2006a, 2006b, Steele 2008, Croft 2012, Browning and Joenniemi 2013, Della Salla 2017, Agius 2017, Subotic 2018). However, as the introduction to this article has noted, characteristic of the recent European anxieties has been popular disillusionment with and distrust in collective political institutions. During the height of the refugee crisis, trust in the EU dropped from 50 percent in 2007 to a mere 31 percent in 2013 (Eurobarometer 2017, p. 14). Ontological insecurity has emerged exactly because seemingly uncontrollable and unpredictable events such as terrorism and mass migration have “destabilised the idea that governments, institutions, or traditions provide security” (Cherrier 2005, p. 602). In particular, the EU itself has been put into question – both as an identity and a collective security community. Instead, EU citizens have been looking towards other ways of gaining ontological security.

This article draws on Giddens (1991, p. 198) in order to argue that the construction of self-identities through lifestyle choices and consumer markets is one way. However, the role of markets for ontological security has so far been neglected in the field of International Relations. The following analysis attempts to fill this gap. It adds to the preceding literature in three ways. Firstly, this article responds to calls that ontological security studies would “benefit from analysing how subjects become connected to particular identities” (Browning and Joenniemi 2017, p. 32, also Croft and Vaughan-Williams 2017). Instead of conflating the self with identity, this requires an empirical investigation of the diverse actors, strategies and environments in which actors construct their multiple identities. Identities are developed at different levels, including personal lifestyles, social group relations and national communities. The following cuts across these levels, linking and juxtaposing the processes of identity construction by individuals, private security firms and political communities (compare Kinnvall 2017).

Moreover, identities are not only based on a continuous narrative, but also on lifestyles, routines and habit (Giddens 1991, p. 54). By combining their analysis, the article offers additional support to the argument that no strategy can be privileged and that all are intimately connected (Steele 2005, Flockhart 2016). In the case of the private security industry, discursive constructions of risk and uncertainty, combined with an implicit or explicit critique of collective security communities, can serve to heighten ontological insecurity. On the other hand, personalised risk profiling and commercial security services offer narratives and routines which can help re-establish ontological security by linking self-identity to lifestyle choices.

Two caveats are in order at this point. Firstly, the preceding arguments and the following empirical analysis focus exclusively on the ways in which private security firms may contribute to ontological security. They do not and cannot answer the questions of whether the clients of these firms are aware of this or whether they intentionally “buy” ontological rather than physical security. Since ontological security seeking is “for the most part, a largely reflexive, instinctive and somewhat sub/unconscious activity” (Browning 2018), any research programme which seeks to provide empirical answers to these questions will face major difficulties. At best answers can be offered through clues and proxy variables, such as the discrepancy between safety and anxiety, the importance attributed to the security of the “home” and the perception of security services as lifestyle choice and marker of status and identity (see Wozniak 2016). This article can therefore illustrate only the plausibility of conceptualising the private security industry as an ontological security provider.

Secondly, since there are more than 44,811 PSCs in Europe (CoESS 2017) it is impossible to look at them all. The following empirical analysis takes the three largest security companies working in the EU (and the world) – G4S, Securitas and Prosegur – as examples. Together these PSCs account for more than 53% of security contracts awarded in Europe. Moreover, the EU is the single largest market for all three companies with 36, 44 and 39 percent of their global sales, respectively (G4S 2017, Prosegur 2017, Securitas 2017). Unlike the mostly small, local companies which make up the remaining market, G4S, Securitas and Prosegur cover the whole range of private security services available in the civil security industry, including risk analysis and intelligence, consulting, security technologies, monitoring and surveillance, manned and mobile protection. In short, G4S, Securitas and Prosegur act as market leaders in terms of their client base and their influence on how security risks are discursively constructed and practically managed across the EU. By analysing these companies’ websites and reports the following empirical analysis suggests that strategies linked to ontological security play a major role in how PSCs attract new clients and retain existing customers. The next part outlines these strategies by returning to Giddens’ seminal work on self-identity and ontological security.

Lifestyle and the market for (Ontological) security

“Crises (have) become more or less endemic, both on an individual and collective level” in the industrialized world (Giddens 1991, p. 183). This does not mean that life has become more dangerous. Rather there is a heightened awareness of risks linked to globalization and modernisation, such as the migrant and financial “crises”, which give rise to increased anxiety (Giddens 1991, p. 182). In Europe, these anxieties fall onto fertile ground because the de-traditionalisation of life has led to a weakening of social ties and trust in established communities and institutions which previously provided stable identities and rules for action, and thus innoculated indidivuals against existential uncertainties. “Anxiety in a certain sense comes with human liberty” according to Giddens (1991, p. 47).

Instead of finding ontological security in the proscribed identities and routines of established communities and traditions, individuals now have the freedom but also the burden to reflexively construct their own self-identities. They can and must choose who they are and want to be, how they should act and to whom they should relate. Although social structures and restrictions have not fully disappeared, post-traditional societies allow greater flexibility in answering the question “who am I”. As a consequence, the construction of self-identity enters “into the voluntaristic realm of taste, choice and preference” (Cherrier 2005, p. 601). Lifestyle choices become an important way of definining self-identity. According to Giddens (1991, p. 81), “a lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity”. Lifestyles differentiate the self from others, while simultaneously offering routines that anchor the self in a predictable environment. Lifestyle habits include ways of dressing and eating as well as “modes of acting and favoured milieus for encountering others” (Giddens 1991, p. 81). Consumption is central, but not identical to lifestyle (Jensen 2007, p. 65). The ability to consume specific objects and services permits the individual to associate with commodified lifestyles and identities. The market for goods and services fundamentally shapes these identities through its narratives and practices, including advertisements and patterned consumption. In addition, the market makes available professionals and “expert systems” which assist in making life predictable and manageable (Giddens 1991, pp. 18–19, Croft and Vaughan-Williams 2017, p. 15). Since individuals no longer hold all the knowledge and skills necessary for conducting their everyday lives in modern societies where traditions and relationships are in flux, abstract trust in expert systems increasingly replaces personalised trust as a basis for establishing identities and routines.

While commodified lifestyle choices are by no means the only way of asserting individual identity and ontological security, they offer an important addition or alternative to collective political identities. According to Jensen (2007, pp. 70–71, citing Rojek 2001), post-traditional world risk societies “no longer believe in party politics (they are all responsible for the risks) and therefore replace them with life politics, that is, “a syncretic, non-party form of social and cultural orientation focusing on issues of lifestyle, environment, and globalisation”.” Colic-Peisker et al. (2015, p. 178) describe this as a shift from “people-based” to “things-based” ontological security. To the extent that political communities and social ties have been put into question as sources of identity and ontological security, “assets, income and consumption have become more prominent in defining who we are and how we feel” (Ibid., also Cherrier 2005, Dirsuweit 2007, Kent 2016).

The private security industry in Europe has benefitted from these developments. Although the threat of physical harm through inter- and intrastate conflicts, violent crimes and even terrorist attacks is decreasing or insignificant, the recent financial and refugee crises have fuelled deep anxiety. Social and economic instability has disrupted existing identities, routines and ways of life in the EU. Massive youth unemployment in countries and regions, such as Spain (56%), Greece (59%), Italy (38%), and Portugal (38%), suggest that there is an entire generation with little prospect of managing its own future (European Commission 2013). The EU’s failure to deal with these crises has weakened its ability to sustain a common identity through narratives of community, solidarity and collective sovereignty (Mitzen 2006a, Della Salla 2017). In this situation, private security services offer a psychological anchor, promising personal control, safety and stability, while simultaneously providing a seemingly rational response to perceived physical threats from terrorists, immigrants and transnational crime.

Private clients are responsible for awarding nearly 80 percent of security contracts in Europe (CoESS 2013, p. 251). Notable are also the types of security services bought by these clients. According to a study authorised by the EU Commission, manned guarding (24 percent of annual turnover) and security consulting (21 percent) were the services most in demand (Ecorys 2015, p. 19). These services respond most directly to the psychological need for authoritative guidance and routine. Securitas (2017, p. 6, italics added), for example, observes:

The rapid transformation of the security industry is continuing, driven by extensive technological advances. But in many markets, growth is also the result of higher demand for manned guarding. The main global demand driver at present is the real and perceived risk of crime and other incidents.

Today, the number of private security guards in many European countries approximates or even exceeds that of public police forces (Ecorys 2015, p. 11). The private security industry offers an answer to the weakening trust in public institutions such as police forces and the European security community. All three market leaders thus emphasise that their business offers benefits “not only for our customers, but for society as a whole” (Securitas-UK 2017; see also G4S 2017, p. 3, Prosegur 2017, p. 7). But how exactly can the private security industry contribute to ontological security? The following part addresses this question by looking at three mechanisms: risk identification, risk profiling and risk management.

Selling ontological security

According to Giddens (1991, p. 111), “the notion of risk becomes central in a society which is taking leave of the past, of traditional ways of doing things, and which is opening itself up to a problematic future”. Only by reflexively calculating and controlling risks can individuals, societies and states in late modernity contain the resulting deep anxieties and hope to maintain continuous self-identities and ways of life – in short, gain ontological security. The private security industry can assist in this process by means of risk identification, risk profiling and risk management. As G4S-Austria (2018) notes, people need a framework to have the necessary emotional security (“emotionale Sicherheit”) for taking decisions within their everyday working and social environments.

Risk identification and fundamental uncertainty

To investigate how the private security industry’s discourse of risk can influence the construction of ontological insecurity and security, it is first necessary to define the concept of risk and its consequences for popular understandings of uncertainty. In the academic literature, risk is typically defined as a measure of the level of insecurity, calculated by the probability of a hazard multiplied by its impact (Adams 1995, p. 69). However, it is impossible to estimate the probability and likely impact of the unknown, but potentially high-consequence risks, which are “a source of unspecific anxieties” for many people in the world risk society (Giddens 1991, p. 182). Political and industry parlance has, therefore, begun to distinguish between three types of risk on a continuum of frequency, calculability and familiarity: known risks, unknown risks, and unknown-unknown risks (see also Mälksoo 2018). Each has a different impact on the construction of ontological (in)security.

Known risks denote dangers affecting peoples’ lives on a permanent or regular basis. They are known and familiar to a significant number of people, either through personal experience or public discourse. Before the rise of the concept of risk in the jargon of security experts and the general public, known risks used to be referred to as threats. Threats denote dangers which exist in the present rather than the future (Mythen and Walklate 2006, Rasmussen 2006, Aradau et al. 2008). As Giddens (1991, p. 43) argues, threats may cause fear, but they do not trigger the deep anxiety constituent of ontological insecurity. In fact, known dangers or enemies may sustain feelings of ontological security because they assert familiar identities, relations and behavioural patters (Mitzen 2006b, Steele 2008).

Unknown risks are dangers which can be calculated in terms of their probability and impact based on past records. They are differentiated from known risks by the fact that is unknown where exactly and with what consequences they will occur next. While threats will lead to harm under certain conditions, unknown risks can lead to harm at any time. Due to their calculability, however, unknown risks rarely cause fundamental anxiety either. Thus, Mitzen (2006b, p. 45, italics added) notes that ontological security “is the condition that obtains when an individual has confident expectations, even if probabilistic, about the means-ends relationships that govern her social life”. In short, as long as unknown risks are seemingly predictable, the self is not faced with the ontological insecurity of what to be and how to behave.

It is with reference to so-called unknown-unknown risks that generalised anxieties are most likely. Unknown-unknown risks concern dangers where the probability is unknown because there are no previous experiences of such hazards. They are incalculable, future dangers and beyond individual or collective experience. This does not prevent professional security experts from identifying unknown-unknown risks on the basis of imagination and speculation (Furedi 2006, p. xi). Moreover, despite a low probability, unknown-unknown risks can be the object of great anxiety due to their, equally speculative, devastating consequences. These imagined consequences gain credibility through “worst-case narratives and disaster rehearsals” (De Goede 2008, p. 156). Since these “novel or infrequent events are simply impossible to know in advance” they involve the fundamental uncertainties which are the basis of existential anxieties and ontological insecurity (Mitzen 2006b, p. 346). Not knowing them undermines individual and collective abilities to decide on how to act (Mitzen 2006b, p. 345).

The preceding discursive distinctions have two main consequences for the marketisation of ontological security by private security firms. Firstly, the narrative of unknown-unknown risk allows PSCs to create or exacerbate ontological insecurity. It shifts the focus of risk identification from personally known threats and calculable unknown risks to potential risks that exists only in our imagination but are therefore even more worrisome. Whereas threats can be personally experienced and unknown risks can be statistically assessed, unknown-unknown risks are beyond individual knowledge and evaluation. The concept of risk, thus, permits and legitimises the inflation of risk perception in the name of precaution (Aradau and van Munster 2007).

Secondly, since unknown and unknown-unknown risks are outside personal experience, these risks lead to a dependence on experts for their identification, analysis and assessment. The security industry functions as an “expert system” which, according to Giddens (1991, p. 137), has a deskilling, alienating and fragmenting effect on the self by undermining “pre-existing forms of local control”. There is no way of challenging the risk assessment of professional security experts who inform us of unknown and unknown-unknown risks. Due to the speculative nature of unknown and unknown-unknown risks, it is impossible to prove them wrong even by the absence of actual accidents. Expert systems are the new abstract authorities in which people (must) place their trust. The motto of Prosegur (2017, p. 1) is thus simply: “Security you can trust”.

The websites and annual reports of the three leading security firms in Europe, G4S, Securitas and Prosegur, support the preceding observations. Typically employed at the first stage of a risk consultation and offered by some companies as a free service, commercial risk identification promises to uncover unknown and unknown-unknown risks. The industry’s emphasis is on the multiplicity, volatility and unpredictability of future events and crises. G4S (2018) keeps its narrative ominously vague when it observes that “In today’s uncertain world, industry and other organisations face a myriad of risks and challenges”. At the centre of the security industry’s discourse stands the “expertise” and “specialised knowledge” of its risk professionals regarding unknown and unknown-unknown risks rather than the individual’s personal experience of known dangers. “We are experts at assessing risks,” asserts Securitas (2017, p. 2). The explicit aim of commercial risk identification is to inform clients about potential and future risks which may be unknown to them. “Data is gathered and used to understand the past, the present and the future – guiding our actions” (Securitas 2017, p. 1; also G4S-UK 2008).

By reference to the shifting nature of risks and individual needs, PSCs also stress the reflexivity of risk identification. Even calculable risks such as terrorism and crime are presented as moving targets which adapt to and actively seek to overcome established routines. In the discourse of the industry, today’s risks are always “new”, “emerging” or “evolving” (G4S 2017, p. 8; Securitas 2017, p. 1; Prosegur 2017, p. 7). Not only are the risks changing, also the customer’s security needs are in flux. As Giddens (1991, p. 119) observes, “A significant part of expert thinking and public discourse today is made up of risk profiling – analysing what, in the current state of knowledge and in current conditions, is the distribution of risks in given milieux of action. Since what is “current” in each of these respects is constantly subject to change, such profiles have to be chronically revised and updated”. G4S-UK (2008) accordingly observes, “As your business changes, so does your security risk profile,” and Securitas (2017, p. 1) notes, “Technology and customer needs are evolving”. Risk identification is never complete. Instead, private security firms underline the need for regular reviews of potential risks. Security health checks are recommended, often on an annual basis. Ironically, research has shown that risk analyses tend to increase anxiety rather than reduce it (Altheide and Michalowski 1999, p. 496, Press et al. 2000, p. 238). In sum, private security firms may exacerbate feelings of ontological insecurity through their discourses of unknown-unknown risks, the necessity to rely on expert knowledge for risk identification and the inherent uncertainty of constantly changing dangers and needs. The next section shows how PSCs, in turn, may help to alleviate these anxieties by assisting in the construction of self-identities through personalised risk profiles.

Risk profiling as identity construction

Personalised risk profiles typically form the second step of commodified risk consultation, responding to the demand for physical and ontological security stimulated at the risk identification stage. These risk profiles support the production of seemingly stable identities by linking self-identity to particular lifestyles and narratives (Giddens 1991, p. 81). In addition, risk profiling frequently invokes, at least implicitly, the juxtaposition of the self to others (Kinnvall 2004, Agius 2017). In contrast to other fields and actors, however, PSCs rarely engage in the othering or securitisation of specific outgroups. Instead, the industry contributes to the construction of self-identity primarily through expert attributions of individual distinctiveness, including status, belonging and ownership (compare Rumelili 2015, Browning and Joenniemi 2017).

The security industry abounds with statistics, tests and services which assign risk profiles on the basis of age, sex, occupation, family status, home ownership and other factors. Although risk statistics concern collectives, risk profiling involves that “this information is conveyed as exact, certain and tailored to the individual” (Press et al. 2000, p. 242). Risk profiles generate the impression that everybody’s identity and risks are distinct. Risks are defined by personal lifestyle and require individualised solutions. Private security firms present even inherently collective dangers as personal and selective. Frequently implying that governments and public police forces cannot take these differences into account, private security companies promise to analyse each customer’s individual risks and provide “bespoke” services, which are “tailored” or “customised” to a client’s requirements (Prosegur 2016, Securitas-UK 2017, G4S 2018). Indeed, the assertion that each customer’s security risks are distinctive is one of the most widely-found statements in the PSC industry. Thus, Securitas-UK (2017) advertises “Expert security solutions for every sector, as unique as our customers.”

Risk profiles also contribute to the construction of self-identities by identifying individual vulnerabilities engendered by particular lifestyles and by providing advice on how to respond. Prosegur (2016), for example, asks “Which stage of your life are you in?”, linking vulnerability to specific lifestages and lifestyles such as old age or having a family. “Whatever the lifestyle, we offer special solutions so that older adults can live alone and protected” (Prosegur 2016). The fact that PSCs use vulnerabilities to estimate the future likelihood and probable impact of a risk for each client matches Giddens’ (1991, p. 85) observation that “the reflexive construction of self-identity depends as much on preparing for the future as on interpreting the past”. Moreover, PSCs connect these self-identities to the potential for purposive behaviour by suggesting that risk profiling allows clients to take charge of their fates. G4S (2017), for example, claims to support customers “by providing expert advice, counsel and decision support to enable them to mitigate their risk”. However, the narrative assertion of clients’ self-identities through bespoke risk profiles and the identification of unique vulnerabilities based on lifestyles and other characteristics, not only offers templates for action, it can also serve as a strategy for reconstituting ontological security through the commercial risk management routines outlined below.

Ontological security through risk management routines

Security routines, repetitive performances and habitual assurance form the third part of commodified risk management. Zero risk does not exist. There is always a chance that harmful events may occur. Risks, therefore, require constant surveillance, analysis, assessment and mitigation. However, risk management routines serve not only physical security needs, they can also be “of central importance to the maintenance of ontological security” (Giddens 1991, p.167). By providing continuous risk management 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the private security industry offers a framework of routines and habit which creates stability and certainty in a “complex and insecure world” (G4S 2018).

The “home” in all its guises, whether conceived of as one’s own house, place of work or home country, plays a particularly important role in respect to ontological security because it provides “a secure base around which individual and community identities are constructed and daily life is routinised” (Hawkins and Maurer 2011, p. 144, also Kinnvall 2004, Colic-Peisker et al. 2015). “Taking care of your home is protecting your world,” affirms Prosegur (2016). Unsurprisingly, the deterrence of potential invaders and the protection of the home play an important role in commercial security risk management. The range of services and equipment aiming to deter attackers or criminals includes static guards, mobile patrols, CCTV surveillance, security checks at buildings and airports, intruder alarms, cash and property marking, and access control technologies. Among these, manned security guarding and remote CCTV monitoring have seen the largest increases in turnover. Securitas-UK (2017) asserts that “mobile patrols are a highly effective visual and physical deterrent.” Incidentally, these services are not only among the most conspicuous in terms of visible lifestyle attributes, they can also contribute to ontological security because security patrols regularly assure customers that their “home” and, thus, their life is under control.

Protective services and technologies, such as the perimeter fencing as well as other forms of access control to gated communities, airports, train stations, shopping malls and business estates also have this dual effect. On the one hand, they can reduce physical vulnerabilities or increase the defensive capabilities of a customer. On the other hand, they can help assert clients’ self-identities by means of bespoke services linked to their personal lifestyles, the exclusion of others and the routine performance of security services. The spread of privately protected gated communities has been identified as a particular expression of the search for a secure home and ontological security. Dirsuweit (2007, p. 61) argues with regard to gated communities in South Africa that “in creating a normative inside and the threat of the abnormalised outside, road closures, whether they are effective in reducing crime or not, offer a very powerful means of securing ontological certainty”. The recent expansion in the number of gated communities in Europe thus also addresses ontological security needs (Atkinson and Flint 2004, Glasze et al. 2006, Stoyanov and Frantz 2006).

Since private risk management firms manage, but do not eliminate risks, the risks remain. However, the routines of the security industry assure clients that they have done all that is possible to physically protect themselves, while simultaneously contributing to ontological security. The potential ontological security-sustaining effects of these services are particularly evident in the observation that many routine measures, including technologies such as panic buttons, burglar alarms and CCTV cameras, reduce diffuse anxieties rather than potential harm (Furedi 2006, p. 2). The phrase “peace of mind” is one of the most frequent statements on private security industry websites after references to the bespoke nature of commercial risk management. Prosegur (2016) avows “We assure you peace of mind wherever you are, with home protection, personal care and location services,” and Securitas-UK (2017) promises “to deliver best value and peace of mind for our customers”. Since few commercial risk mitigation mechanisms have a measurable effect on the prevention of crime or harm their effects are often primarily emotional and psychological (Welsh and Farrington 2007, p. 8). Thus, it has been observed that CCTV cameras have little utility as a deterrence mechanism because the poor quality of the videos, the complexity of the visual data and the huge amount of material (Bowcott 2008). Another feature of risk mitigation services and technologies which can contribute to ontological security is the promise of enhanced control over one’s environment. Prosegur (2016), for example, advertises its system of interconnected remote-controlled household security alarms with the slogan “Control in the palm of your hand”. Although remote alarms can do nothing to repel a burglar and prevent theft, it gives the appearance of “control” because the client knows what is happening and may thus be able to contact the police.

To sum up, private security risk management can contribute to ontological security through services which emphasise routine, individuality and exclusivity. Ironically, security measures designed to reassure people can also amplify their anxiety. Extensive security arrangements such as pervasive monitoring and increased patrols can create the diffuse image of a dangerous environment, making people feel unsafe in the first place (Zedner 2003, p. 165). The demand for assurance can thus become self-perpetuating. The next part, therefore, turns to the question of whether the commodification of ontological security is a healthy or maladaptive strategy.

Healthy or maladaptive?

From an individual perspective, the commodification of ontological security in Europe has certainly several advantages. Treating physical and ontological security provision as a matter of personal lifestyle fits the conditions of post-traditional, industrial and globalising societies where trust in political institutions and authorities is diminishing. The marketisation of security also conforms to the high value placed by European citizens in individual freedom and agency, permitting maximum individual choice between a multiplicity of security companies and services. On the practical side, PSCs seem well able to offer ontological security through narratives and routines which support not only continuous, but also flexible and reflexive identity constructions. The necessity to adapt to changing security environments is a key message of the security industry. In contrast to political and media discourses, the European firms examined in this study engage neither in the “othering” of specific outgroups nor in the securitisation of these groups. PSCs generate ontological security primarily on the basis of positive self-identities by asserting the distinctiveness, exclusivity and status of their clients and services.

However, there are also important disadvantages for the individual as well as for European society generally. For one, customers should be aware of and concerned about industry narratives which exacerbate fear and anxiety. As noted above, PSCs tend to highlight unknown-unknown risks by reference to the inherent incalculability and potentially devastating consequences of future dangers. Worst-case narratives and disaster rehearsals amplify the anxiety-causing effect of these discourses. Since PSCs profit from and have an interest in creating and maintaining demand for their services, it can be assumed that their analyses will always be skewed towards amplifying perceptions of insecurity.

Another problem is the function of the private security market as an expert system (Giddens 1991, p. 137). By relying on expert systems rather than personal, national and international experience for risk identification, risk profiling and risk management, Europeans are in danger of becoming dependent on contracted security professionals for their ontological security. The private security industry thus resembles the CIA which, according to Steele (2017, p. 78) helps to “present the appearance of certainty in an otherwise uncertain realm” by means of expert knowledge and organisational routines. Unfortunately, the citizens and governments who reflexively turn to expert systems for advice “can never attain absolute certainty” because even expert knowledge of risk is always contingent and precarious (Steele 2017, p. 78). Moreover, the emergence of the security industry as an abstract expert system frequently appears to come at the cost of decreased trust in interpersonal relationships and collective security communities. As Georgiou (2013, p. 5) writes, “technological change and industrialisation have changed most humans’ significant relations from being primarily face-to-face to being increasingly mediated and dependent on abstract systems of effective management of risks”. Many PSCs actively contribute to undermining trust in public institutions by insinuating that national governments and the EU are incapable of addressing the unique and differentiated security needs of their citizens.

On a deeper psychological level, the lifestyle identities acquired through professional risk profiles belong to virtual identities and artificial communities. They exist only in the narratives of the industry and are cut off from actual interpersonal communication and interaction other than with professional security experts. Such commodified self-identities are likely to be less healthy than societal identity constructions because they can only indirectly and in an abstract manner satisfy the “profound need to belong and gain acceptance into groups” (Chernobrov 2016, p. 584). The actual interpersonal element and psychological support of social communities is missing from abstract, professional ascriptions of commodified identities.

Conclusion

In light of pervasive anxiety among European citizens the growth in the market for security has been an important, but under-researched development. It appears to respond to the elemental transformations and traumas which have characterised life in Europe during the past decade, ranging from the long-term destabilisation of traditions and the emergence of new institutions due to regionalisation and globalisation to the unforeseen economic downturn and the massive influx of migrants and refugees. This article has examined how the market for private security services can contribute to engendering a sense of physical as well as ontological security. It has illustrated that private security firms are able do so by means of three mechanisms: risk identification, risk profiling and risk management. Judging by the enormous increases in annual turnover, the private industry appears to be very successful in meeting the physical and psychological needs of its customers. As Securitas (2017, p. 5) reports, “we contribute to a safer society and shape the global security of tomorrow: protecting homes, workplaces and societies”. No other service sector in the EU has seen similar growth rates.

However, the commodification of ontological security may not be without problems. The three market leaders examined in the empirical part of this article do not engage in maladaptive ontological security strategies such as othering and securitisation. But profit motivation encourages these firms to exacerbate feelings of ontological insecurity through discourses of unknown-unknown risk and risk management strategies which create a long-term dependence on the expert knowledge of the industry. Moreover, the self-identities produced by commercial risk profiling are largely virtual and abstract. They cannot satisfy the deeper psychological and emotional needs of citizens to be part of and recognised by “real” social communities.

Arguably, the collective identity provided by the EU is also virtual, relying as it does on political narratives and routines (Mitzen 2006b, Della Salla 2017, Della Salla 2018). The weakness of international political discourses and practices compared to the identity-sustaining effects of direct social interaction may go some way to explaining the fragility of European identity and its ontological security-sustaining effects. Thus, Cram (2012) distinguishes between abstract self-identifications as “European”, on the one hand, and the perceived physical and social benefits attached to being a member of the European security community, on the other hand. According to her findings, “explicit identification with the EU is most likely to emerge when (or if) the EU becomes a positive meaningful presence in the daily lives of its citizens” (Cram 2012, p. 83, italics added).

The above suggests that the EU’s impact on ontological security not only depends on convincing narratives, but also on its ability to contribute directly and visibly to a socially cohesive, ordered and secure lifestyle. To do so, the EU and its member states must stop their support for the individualising logic of commercial physical and ontological security provision which has been used to detract attention from their own collective and political responsibilities for risks and anxiety (Krahmann 2011). By following this logic, the EU risks further undermining public trust in its ability and willingness to deal with perceived crises. The EU’s Internal Security Strategy (2010, p. 10) is representative of this misguided thinking with its emphasis on “working with industry to empower and protect citizens”. The potential benefits of collective responses to (ontological) insecurity are manifold (Krahmann 2006). Most importantly, only public institutions are able to target the underlying root causes of physical as well as ontological insecurity. In the case of terrorism, this may include addressing the grievances of terrorist groups and their perceived exclusion from legitimate political processes as well as the construction of new collective identities which include perceived “others” at the national and European levels. With regard to fiscal insecurity, unemployment and crime, it may involve direct and indirect investments in order to reduce lifestyle differentials and social exclusion. Only by effectively dealing with these broader, human security needs can the EU address the material as well as psychological security demands of its citizens. In conclusion, an ontological security perspective helps to show that the mismatch between security and anxiety in the EU is in fact no opposition. Instead this mismatch follows from the close relationship between physical and ontological security. A healthy response should be one which provides both by enabling autonomous, sustainable, reflexive and positive self-identities.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elke Krahmann is Chair of International Relations at the University of Kiel, Germany. She has published widely on the transformation of national and international security governance, including her Ernst-Otto Czempiel award-winning monograph States, Citizens and the Privatisation of Security (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Her latest ESRC-funded research project examined the use of private security contractors by international organisations such as the United Nations, NATO, and the European Union.

ORCID

Elke Krahmann http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6524-2022

Notes

1 2000 to 2015 figures.

2 This definition excludes firms focussed exclusively on cyber security, producers of security and military technologies and providers of military services.

3 The CoESS figures include EU member states as well as six additional European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey.