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Abstract

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Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, Industrial relations, Regulation/deregulation, private security, transnational

Description

This project will explore the internationalisation of the Swedish private security industry in the contemporary period. The mixed methods research project employs qualitative and quantitative register-data research and ethnographic interviews of working private security guards, or vaktare and ‘safety-entrepeneurs,’ or trygghetsentreprenör. Looking at the internationalisation both here in Sweden in the working profession as well as the business model allows for a multilayered contextually informed project in who, how, and in what ways 'safety' and 'security' are commodified, marketed, and provided in Sweden.

The desk research will map the corporate landscape of private security contractors amidst ongoing acquisitions and market transition, as well as a spatial representation of those municipalities which are employing private security, and/or from where private security workers commute. In the field, ethnographic interviews of working vaktare and trygghetsentreprenör will fill out the insider perspectives of this industry in transformation. The goal is to provide a contemporary archive of Swedish security work, workers, and the broader industrial ecology. By beginning from a transnational lens, we can look to Swedish industry's place in the global market, and exploit the possibilities for multi-scalar and sited comparison of internationalization of this industry, and its workers.

Domestically, this project comes as a timely contribution insofar as smaller Swedish municipalities are increasingly relying on private security to undertake policing functions, while those filling these roles increasingly have international experience(s) of migration or doing security work outside of Sweden. Simultaneous to this development, internationally, major Swedish players in the security and surveillance market are increasingly taking on transnational roles and competing at the highest level for security contracts, particularly in the areas of surveillance and other technological solutions. By undertaking research into these two aspects with perspectives from workers and industry, we can provide a broad understanding with insider-contextual specificity about the nature and practice of this emerging worknorm. Measurable outcomes of the project will be the publication of research articles, an online mapping project, and a collective edited volume, with contributions from those working both in Sweden and abroad on internationalisation and security questions, with a specific focus on the Nordic region.

2020 - 2022

Funding

Helge Ax:son Johnsons fond

REMESO Project Leader

Asher Goldstein, PhD Student

Participants not from REMESO

Contact for project

asher.goldstein@liu.se


Last updated: 2020-07-27



Page responsible: erik.berggren@liu.se
Last updated: 2020-05-27