Transforming experiences of citizen security?

Transitional Justice is concerned primarily with the aftermath of armed conflict, and is thus closely tied to understandings of security. Yet it tends to equate peace agreements and elections with a return to peaceful normality. This macro-perspective, however, ignores the continued impacts on citizen security in times of transition. These impacts arise from both conflict dynamics – such as the continued territorial control of armed actors – and more general structural societal dynamics – such as the hyper-concentration of economic resources. This chapter examines the localised citizen security implications of peace processes to see whether grounded experiences have been transformed in line with national developments. Theoretical insights from transitional justice, transformative justice, state-building and citizenship literatures are combined with grounded knowledge of Northern Ireland and Colombia to analyse the transformation (or lack of) in citizen security experiences following national-level peace agreements.