‘Arms for mobility’: policing partnerships and material exchanges in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

This paper analyses two policing arrangements between the state police and several private security companies in Nairobi, Kenya. These arrangements entail that police officers team up together with security officers in their company vehicles. As private security officers are unarmed in Kenya by law, there is a direct exchange of 'arms for mobility', an emic term that refers to an exchange of firearms for 'mobility', i.e. vehicles and other financial resources. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on policing in Nairobi, Kenya between 2014 and 2018, I analyse how this exchange (re)centralises the state police and the critical role of the 'arms' in this process. Drawing from Star and Griesemer (1989), I see the firearm as a 'boundary object' that brings policing actors together, but simultaneously reaccentuates their differences and in this case, reaffirms and repositions the dominant role of the state police in the Kenyan policing landscape. With this argument, I aim to further prompt more in-depth studies on how certain objects define policing practices, and emphasise the merit of ethnographic research as a methodological approach to uncover such dimensions.

Cultural and symbolic capital in the market for security: police-private security relations in Mexico and the United Kingdom

“…As a consequence, they tread a fine line between simultaneously appealing to and dissociating themselves from the cultural and symbolic capital of the police. Traces of this more complex dynamic have been observed in, for example, Brazil (da Silva Lopes 2018), Kenya (Diphoorn 2015(Diphoorn , 2020, Nigeria (Abrahmsen and Williams 2011) and Mexico (Puck 2017a(Puck , 2017b.…”

“…In those countries where the police enjoy high levels of public trust and confidence, private security actors can be found openly and directly borrowing from the cultural and symbolic capital of this state institution to enhance the status of their everyday operations (see for example: White 2010, Leloup 2019). By contrast, in those countries where the police are plagued by a poor reputation, private security actors often display a far more ambiguous relationship with these forms of capital, working both through and against them, often at the same time (see for example : Puck 2017a, Diphoorn 2020. These observations present an interesting puzzle about how private security actors engage with the materialities and normativities surrounding the police in different parts of the globe.…”

Challenges Facing the Provision of Security Services by Private Security Firms; A Study of Juja Town, Kiambu County, Kenya

“…The Staff Check is a database with information that includes guards previously employed by PSCs or laid off due to misconduct. This contrasts with members of the Protective Security Industry Association (PSIA), who are not required to check employee background checks (Diphoorn, 2019). It is also worth noting that higher authorities have taken the matter upon themselves due to the rise in cases of criminals working with security guards in Kenya to ensure sanity in the sector.…”

Police guns and private security cars. Ordering the state through socio-material policing assemblages in Nairobi

“…Another less regulated co-operation is within the Cash in Transit operations of private security companies (cf. Diphoorn, 2015Diphoorn, , 2019. In these arrangements Administration Police personnel regularly travel in the 'follow-car', a private security car that drives behind an armoured vehicle transporting valuables through the city.…”