Browsing by Author "Bagson, E."
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Item Analysis of Informal Crime Prevention Strategies in Urban Ghana: The Case of Kumasi and Tamale(University Of Ghana, 2018-12) Bagson, E.Globally, the twenty-first century has been considered as an age of urbanization and globalization. These contribute to cities as key nodes, with potential to lead in socio-economic development: increasing connectivity in goods, information, people and, consequently, creating jobs within economies of scale and of scope. Most city managers have often assumed that development is synonymous with economic growth, ease of access to social services, and a foregone conclusion that with prosperity follows enhance safety of life and property. Nonetheless, recent studies have increasingly revealed that cities can also become active hubs of social exclusion characterised with increasing inequality in the access to social services including policing. Recognising the criminogenic tendencies and insecurity associated with cities life, this study interrogates how the marginalized, in the access to state policing services, respond to their security needs in the cityscape. Using a mixed methods approach, this study interrogates this subject by assessing the role of informal crime preventive strategies in the maintenance of internal security, using the Ghanaian cities of Kumasi and Tamale as a case study. A major finding of the study is that the generally held perception that informal crime prevention strategies are the preserve of the poor, conflicts with the reality as the practice cuts across the entire social structure within the urban space. Thus, the study does not only recommend the recognition of some of these informal strategies but also calls for their integration into the existing formal systems. In the long run, the study recommends that local authorities be encouraged to recruit and train their own police forces to benefit from the rich local knowledge and also to meet the context specific nature in crime prevention situations.Item ‘Informal Exceptionalism?’ Labour Migrants’ Creative Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Livelihoods in Accra, Ghana(Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2019-02) Oteng-Ababio, M.; Tanle, A.; Amoah, S.T.; Kusi, L.; Kosoe, E.A.; Bagson, E.Intra- and inter-regional migration is widely described. Prior studies have attribute varied reasons for this development including the quest for greener pastures and unequal development in northern Ghana. What has escaped critical scrutiny is some migrants’ ability to escape extreme rural poverty, albeit in harsh urban environment. Such a missing gap can potentiate high policy failures, hence the need for academic attention. Using a mixed method, we focus on two informal daily livelihoods as exemplars – exceptionalism – in Accra. We see their embedded organisational vitality and dynamic networks as illuminating for good livelihood practices, proper city governance and fostering economic empowerment. We call on city authorities to take cognisance of such complexities and heterogeneity of production–labour relations, failure of which can spell doom for policies ostensibly initiated to curb migration, as they are likely to be underpinned by factual inaccuracies and may result in ill-fated interventions.Item Securing the urban space: on whose terms? Insights from poverty and crime baseline survey in Tamale, Ghana(2016) Bagson, E.; Owusu, A.Y.Typically, the interaction of official security policies, the urban tissue, and individual characteristics largely underpin the liveabiliy of cities as centres of social interaction which invoke residents’ sense of place attachment, social cohesion, and quality of life. Studies in advanced countries have contributed significantly to understanding these synergies, but there remains a large gap in knowledge in rapidly urbanizing countries. Ghana presents an interesting case study, as the security landscape appears motivated more by ideology than rationality, with what ‘works’ increasingly becoming populism rather than responsibility. Moreover, the limited researched criminology literature has focused mainly on the larger cities, neglecting medium-sized cities such as Tamale. Based on extensive fieldwork involving 450 household heads, ten key informant interviews (KIIs), and three focus group discussions (FGDs) from three socio-economic communities in Tamale, this paper examines how security arrangements in the city’s various neighbourhoods reflect and connect the urban fabric with residents. We advocate for a more geographically sensitive and nuanced understanding of each neighbourhood’s concerns and a re-consideration of security interventions, in order to reflect not only the broad spectrum of safety demands of the affluent but also those of the socially excluded and more economically disadvantaged groups in society.