Suspicious cities: An analysis of the securitisation of urban everyday life in London and Brussels

ABSTRACT

This article engages with the material-discursive ways in which urban everyday life in London and Brussels has transformed under the impression of (counter)terrorism and demonstrates how human and non-human bodies are entangled in this process. Following Barad’s understanding of posthumanist performativity, I conceptualise urban everyday life as an entanglement of intra-acting sites, objects, and people. My historiographic analysis of everyday life in London and Brussels shows how both metropoles have incrementally adopted a culture of pre-emptive security because more and more human and non-human bodies are increasingly assigned with material-discursive suspiciousness, while simultaneously more and more human and non-human bodies are charged with looking out for suspiciousness. As the notion of entanglement reveals how everyone and everything that intra-acts in urban everyday life is also to some extent accountable for its securitisation, my findings imply ultimately an ethical responsibility to counter the securitisation of everyday life in European metropoles which I argue constitutes a process of urban segregation.

KEYWORDS:

• Counterterrorism
• urban everyday life
• European cities
• suspiciousness
• posthumanist performativity

Disclosure statement

In accordance with Taylor & Francis policy and my ethical obligation as a researcher, I hereby confirm that there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report in the context of the research reported in the enclosed paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalie S. Pawlowski

Natalie S. Pawlowski is a Ph.D. candidate and research associate at the Institute of Political Science, University of Tübingen, Germany. She holds a BA degree in Political Science and Public Law from the University of Tübingen and an MA degree in EU External Relations and Conflict & Security Studies from the University of Kent. In her Ph.D. thesis, she analyses (counter)terrorism in European cities and its transformative effects on urban everyday life.