“Safety: everybody’s concern, everybody’s duty”2 is a catchphrase launched by the
King Baudouin Foundation and is an appeal to policymakers and the public to tackle ‘unsafety’ in a local manner and in collaboration with citizens3. As such, the King Baudouin Foundation suggests that the active involvement of citizens is vital to the governance of safety. Active citizens are believed to behave in a more responsible manner, which in turn would result in feelings of safety. Active citizens are furthermore sensitive to the safety of others. The concept of active citizenship implies that individuals interact with one another so that mutual trust and feelings of social connectedness among citizens can emerge. ‘Active citizenship’ and ‘social cohesion’ are thus closely interwoven, and both concepts are believed to be essential to people’s ‘perception of safety’. In this paper, we will question the assumption that ‘social cohesion’ and ‘active citizenship’ are prerequisites for people to feel safe. First, we will outline that the emergence of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘active citizenship’ in the governance of safety is the result of the current conceptualization of ‘fear of crime’. Fear of crime is perceived as
a product of concerns and doubts about one’s position and identity in late modernity (part 1). Next, we will discuss current theories that suggest that these concerns and doubts can be countered by re-embedding people into the community. In this context, civic engagement and social integration are viewed as the new tools to improve people’s wellbeing, which in turn would result in more positive perceptions of safety (part 2). However, we will question these alleged positive linkages between ‘perception of safety’, ‘active citizenship’ and ‘social cohesion’ and point out that the three concepts might even counteract (part 3). Finally, an alternative perspective is suggested that
acknowledges the importance of ‘identity’ in understanding people’s perception of safety. This perspective first and foremost recognizes that people’s identity is not limited to their social integration and involvement in the local community. Consequently, research or policy initiatives that focus on ‘social cohesion’ and ‘active citizenship’ are perhaps not fully addressing the complexity of people’s perception of safety.