Biographically-shaped modalities of experiencing safety and risk in a sample of Edinburgh-based LGBTQ+ people over 60

• In Event: Social Dimensions of Fear of Crime

Abstract

Is there a way of perceiving and experiencing safety and risk that can be appropriately assumed to be universal to all? The author of this paper will draw on his doctoral research collecting oral histories of LGBTQ+ people over 60, who have lived in Edinburgh for a significant part of their lives, to re-evaluate the process, in criminological research and beyond, of laying down all-embracing definitions for what it means to be and feel safe or at risk. The presenter will do this by setting out the multifarious, dynamic and, sometimes, contradictory ways in which the participants of his research project reported to have experienced safety and risk at different stages of their lives and how their understanding of these concepts has changed with the passing of time and in the process of ageing. Through this paper the author intends to contribute towards renewing the impetus for discussions in criminological research that revisit the axiomatic assumption that fear of crime and victimisation are the sole, or even the primary, instigating factors of risk or debilitating agents of safety and that seek to widen criminological interest to account for the subjective ways of perceiving safety and risk.

Author

• Leo Kritikos, University of Edinburgh