Security at the Margins (SeaM): Spaces and strategies for negotiating security in urban South Africa

在全球范围内，城市地区被视为发展的潜在引擎和暴力和退化的不稳定漩涡，既乐观又怀疑。这两种愿景在南非都有吸引力。城市生活为一些人提供了改善经济地位、增强能力和扩大自由的机会。然而，鉴于城市化的速度和城市治理的问题，城市地区仍然是不平等、退化、危机和冲突的空间。对于那些处于社会边缘的人来说尤其如此，他们的生活深受安全和正义谈判的影响。正如最近的仇外暴力浪潮所表明的那样，城市他者的福利及其社会经济发展的长期前景与这些谈判的结果密切相关。积极的城市转型需要理解多重边缘如何在城市地区相互作用。目前，这个交叉点被忽略了。南非-英国伙伴关系建立了一个国际学术网络，以建立严格和创新地解决这一问题的能力。我们雄心勃勃的议程主要关注（国内和国外的）移民和男女同性恋双跨酷儿（LGBTQ）群体。尽管拥抱多样性和差异的自由是民主城市的核心，但这些城市的“他者”面临着日常偏见和严重暴力的压力，比如仇外骚乱或“纠正性强奸”行为。移民和LGBTQ人群面临的安全威胁具有可比性，但其背后的逻辑是不同的，这有利于比较。我们的伙伴关系将加强南非的能力，以探索个人在更广泛的经济、社会和政治制度中用于谈判这些不同边缘群体的战略。它还将特别培养技能，以探索数字技术在这一过程中发挥的作用，塑造城市地区的权力、资源和信息流动；以及政策制定者和民间社会团体如何应对城市福祉的复杂挑战。该伙伴关系发展技能、知识和网络，支持社区、民间社会团体和政府机构积极参与的前沿研究。我们将确定研究协同效应；提供大数据、社会网络分析、远程事件映射和可视化方法方面的方法培训，推动城市研究的边界；资助“城市实验室”试点项目，鼓励创新方法和问题；组织访问学者，为有意义的合作提供时间和空间；并提供影响培训，以确保我们及时的跨学科研究议程具有有效和广泛的影响。官方发展援助声明：该项目的主要目的是促进伙伴国家的福利和发展。它将以三种主要方式做到这一点。首先，合作研究的主题对南非至关重要，在南非，快速的城市化、根深蒂固的不平等和不平衡的发展风险着积极的城市转型，特别是与移民或LGBTQ社区等弱势群体有关的城市转型。其次，我们将通过利用我们两个合作伙伴的比较和互补优势来解决这些关键问题，金山大学在详细的当地历史、人种学和定性研究方面的优势，并在南非政策网络中产生影响，爱丁堡大学在方法方面的优势，特别是跨学科方法。第三，该项目将利用爱丁堡大学在定量方法和数据科学方面的专业知识，该项目旨在培养Wits大学研究人员在新方法方面的研究能力，并产生未来的合作研究。

Globally, urban areas are viewed with great optimism and suspicion, as potential engines for development and destabilising vortexes of violence and degeneration. Both visions have traction in South Africa. Urban living has offered opportunities for some to better their economic standing, strengthen capabilities and expand freedoms. However, given the pace of urbanisation and problematic urban governance, urban areas remain spaces of inequality, degradation, crisis and conflict. This is particularly true for those on the margins, whose lives are profoundly shaped by the need to negotiate security and justice. The welfare of urban Others and their long-term prospects for socioeconomic development are intimately bound up in the outcomes of these negotiations, as recent waves of xenophobic violence demonstrate. Positive urban transformation requires understanding how multiple marginalities interact in urban areas. At present, this intersection has been neglected. This South Africa-UK Partnership forges an international academic network to build capacities to rigorously and innovatively address this issue. Our ambitious agenda focuses primarily on (internal and external) migrants and lesbian-gay-bi-trans-queer (LGBTQ) communities. Although the freedom to embrace diversity and difference is at the heart of a democratic city, these urban Others face the stresses of everyday prejudice and spectre of severe violence, like xenophobic riots or acts of 'corrective rape'. Security threats facing migrants and LGBTQ people are comparable, but the logics animating them are distinct, making them conducive to comparison. Our Partnership will strengthen capacities in South Africa to explore strategies individuals use to negotiate these varied marginalities, embedded in wider economic, social and political systems. It will also particularly build skills to explore roles that digital technologies play in this process, shaping flows of power, resources, and information in urban areas; and how policymakers and civil society groups are responding to complex challenges of urban wellbeing. The Partnership develops skills, knowledge, and networks, supporting cutting edge research that actively engages communities, civil society groups and government agencies. We will identify research synergies; provide methods training in Big Data, Social Network Analysis, Remote Event Mapping, and Visual Methods to push the boundaries of urban research; fund 'urban lab' pilot projects to encourage innovative methods and questions; organise visiting fellowships to provide time and space for meaningful collaboration; and provide impact training to ensure that our timely interdisciplinary research agenda has effective and wide-reaching influence.ODA statement: The primary purpose of this project is to promote the welfare and development of the partner country. It will do this in three primary ways. First, the topic of the collaborative research is crucially important for South Africa, where rapid urbanisation, entrenched inequities and uneven development risk positive urban transformation, especially in relation to vulnerable groups such as migrants or LGBTQ communities. Secondly, we will address these key concerns through drawing on the comparative and complementary strengths of our two partners, Wits University's strengths in detailed local historical, ethnographic and qualitative research and generating impact in South African policy networks and Edinburgh's strength in methods, especially interdisciplinary approaches. Thirdly, the project will draw on Edinburgh's expertise in quantitative methods and data science, and the project is designed to build the research capacity of Wits University researchers in new approaches and generate future collaborative research.