Transformed Security Practices: Informalization in the production of hegemony and place

The paper builds an analytical framework to study the relation between security and informality and the extent to which it contributes to producing hegemony in local politics. By emphasising a processual understanding of hegemony, the paper develops a twofold argument: (1) that structurally powerful actors with well-established links to state institutions carry out informal practices just as well as those often perceived to be at the 'margins' of the state and (2) that subaltern groups are capable of transforming their society, while also reproducing inadvertently hegemonic security practices. The analytical framework is unpacked through two Mexican cases: the CRAC-PC in Guerrero State and neighbourhood vigilantism in Oaxaca City. The CRAC-PC case shows that procedures in which hegemony is challenged are through actors resorting to state institutions (law, judiciary) coupled by paralegal institutions that enhance placemaking of rural indigenous communities. The Oaxacan case shows how communities challenge state actors through a series of practices that bring people together into networks that put into question the hegemonic organization of in/security at city level. The analytical framework helps to break with the dichotomisation between formality and informality and to understand how informality is practised in both struggles for and against hegemony.