Coping with urban crime and resilience factors: The case of the Maasai security guards in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

Academic literature on cities portrays urban residents as passive victims of crime highlighting mainly their strategies in coping with it, strategies which are often not very successful. Using the case study of the Maasai security guards in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this paper purports that urban residents are not simply passive victims of crime but also deploy various capacities of coping with the threat. The paper examines crime threat among the guards to determine the guards’ capacities of coping with the threat and recommend factors for enhancing such capacities. Based on the multi-layered social resilience framework, a qualitative approach was utilised drawing on 64 in-depth interviews, three FGDs, observations and a review of secondary data. The study revealed that on the one hand, the guards managed to develop reactive and less proactive capacities of coping with the crime threat mainly based on the individual, household, community level and to a lesser degree national and international levels. On the other hand, migrants’ coping capacities were impeded by their lack of modern weapons, formal security skills and training, limited access to mobile phones and knowledge in using them. These factors should be considered in supporting the guards to more competently cope with the threat. These findings shed light on alternative ways of understanding and alleviating the negative consequences of crime among urban security guards and other urban residents.
Keywords: Security work, urban crime, threats, Maasai migrants, coping strategies, resilience