Glabal and Local Private Security Companies in Kenya: a balanced relationship?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between private security companies in Kenya. This thesis makes a distinction between two sorts of private security companies; global and local. The thesis argues that the relationship between the two is not balanced in favour of the global one. This conclusion has been reached by applying a Bourdieu enhanced global security assemblage approach to the Kenyan security sector. The global security assemblage approach, allowed the researcher to look into the Kenya security sector from a perspective where all actors are treated equal, instead of the more traditional way of thinking, where the state is put as the central unit of analysis. Using Bourdieu's concepts of economic, cultural and symbolic capital, the researcher was able to make a distinction between the two PSCs by looking at how much capital each PSC possessed. The conclusion of this thesis is that the global PSCs possess more capital of each form than the local. Research was done by spending two periods of three months in Kenya. During these periods the Kenya security sector was extensively observed, due to the researchers internship for a private security company. The first period formed the basis on which latter research was done. During the first...