Safety and Security in Diverse Society

Security has become one of the key terms of our time. It is used to justify a wide range of political decisions and actions. The objective of the research team ‘Safety and Security in Diverse Society’ is to study security as a political and everyday phenomenon, covering  conceptual, practical, and methodological aspects of comprehensive security studies.

This research team examines safety and security from the perspectives of multiculturalism and societal diversity. Societal diversity is understood both as a state of affairs describing societies, acknowledging the presence of ethnic, cultural, and other forms of diversity, and as a political  and everyday struggle over the issues of diversity.

The research conducted within the team takes the perspective of societal power relations as its starting point, questioning who has the power to define what is understood as security and how security is produced. Knowledge about security and safety is understood as situated. We are interested in exploring the kinds of opportunities for action related to security that various societal categorizations, such as gender, ethnicity, class, or neurodiversity, create. At the same time, we ask what security looks and feels like from the perspectives of different (minority) groups and how security can be inclusively constructed both as an individual experience and as a broader societal phenomenon.

Within this broad framework, members of the research team conduct studies on topics such as conflicts, including Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and the everyday security and autistic utopias.

If you  are interested in our activities, please contact Associate Professor Tiina Sotkasiira, https://uefconnect.uef.fi/tiina.sotkasiira/