Global Security Going Local: Sport Mega Event and Everyday Security Dynamics at the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The global securitisation models associated with contemporary sport mega events are currently promoted as having an extremely positive impact on pre-existing domestic security conditions in host cities. This PhD project critically assesses these claims, using the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil as empirical case studies. The research weaves cultural criminological methods with theoretical approaches from the critical scholarship on mega event security. Drawing upon eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, this work investigates how globally standardised mega event security models were implemented in the everyday practices of security officials at various positions in the Brazilian security apparatus. Structured in two parts, the thesis sheds light on how these models adapted to Brazil's security conditions, and the extent to which they impacted ordinary police work in Rio de Janeiro.

Part I outlines the methodological framework of the research, situates the study within the critical literature on sport mega event security, the wider context of the Brazilian crime complex and the development of Rio's urban conflict. Part II of the thesis concentrates on the data analysis. It investigates how the Brazilian authorities planned the mega event security according to three major principles: the implementation of the Integrated Command and Control System (SICC) to foster cooperation among a diverse field of security institutions; investments in technological solutions, such as camera surveillance and communication systems, materialising in the establishment of Integrated Command and Control Centres (CICC); and finally, the realisation of militarised lock-down security perimeters and ostensive policing strategies to secure the mega event boroughs. This first part of the analysis adopts the view from above and mirrors the planners' vision of Rio de Janeiro as a total security fortress. The following parts of the thesis aim to dismantle this vision of security by contrasting it with the mega event security operation at street level. Presenting distinct examples from the field, this work demonstrates how the fortress ambitions played out in selected spaces, thereby illustrating the fortress' permeability. Working from the perspective of a local civil police station and the lived experience of civil police Special Forces, the thesis argues that the planners' rational mega event security model did not affect the everyday conditions of Rio's urban conflict, where traditional patterns of police work still prevail. Furthermore, it reveals how everyday emotions - frustration, pleasure, and adrenaline rushes - and even Special Forces war narratives upset in practice the static and technology-based mega event security models.

Finally, the present work critically examines the officially so-called material (technology, buildings, equipment) and non-material (integration concept) mega event security legacy in Rio de Janeiro. The analysis suggests that, while the event's technological legacy cannot fulfil all of the stated security ambitions, it does leave behind a long-lasting surveillance apparatus that will continue to operate in Rio de Janeiro and reproduces the social-spatial division of the city. The integration ambitions worked temporarily, but failed to materialise at street level, provoking questions as to whether these efforts will continue in the future. The security legacy that this thesis puts forth, however, is one of insecurity. While the mega event security spectacle made specific aspects of security visible, it simultaneously produced insecurity and attempted to make invisible the bloody realities of the city's public security drama. Therefore the analysis concludes that both the mega event security and the politics of public security in Rio de Janeiro make use of a security of camouflage to hide the realities of insecurity that shape the complexities of the lived experiences of police officers and marginalised populations.