In the city of Barcelona, forms of social vigilance are practised in the public space to ensure public order and the global city’s “look”. These preventive interventions aim to ensure “zero risk” and complete security in the neighbourhood’s streets (Fieldwork 2020). The interventions of the vigilant teams in the neighbourhood are based on security barometers evaluating risk and “spontaneous” calls from the neighbours. They control settlements, informal housing spaces, or streets where poor and mobile people work. The municipal regulations on public space use are broad-spectrum, meaning each neighbourhood applies them according to its criteria, which will be different in an upper-middle-class area compared to a more peripheral one. The perception of risk can differ from one neighbourhood to another.
This paper is based on an ethnography with the social vigilance teams and interviews with the neighbours in two touristic neighbourhoods in Barcelona.
This “proximity” vigilance, as the teams define themselves, encourages the citizenry to report on what they consider a “risk”. In this case, the state institutions endow citizens with a new agency: becoming an informant. This practice initiated by the state can develop into a more autonomous one as the neighbours can act independently. The perception of risk influences the acceptance/eviction of a neighbour and processes of othering and racialisation. At the same time, the cooperation between institutional and private intervention installs legal hybridity, raising the question of who has the monopoly of control: state agents or the neighbours.
