Security Policies, Between Social Imaginaries And Identity Claims[Les Politiques De Sécurité, Entre Imaginaires Sociaux Et Revendications Identitaires]

An essential component of any public policy is the need to respond to social demand and to provide arbitration and/or mediation functions between conflicting and equally legitimate interests. This paper focuses on highlighting the major role played, in the transformation of security policies, by the reshuffling of collective imaginary representations and the deep changes of social transactions process related to identity claims. The mediatic building and political exploitation of the feeling of insecurity find a particularly favorable context in the process of globalization that mutualizes threats and reduces the effectiveness of traditional protections. The concomitant rise of identity claims is no accident: since the threat comes from the other, security can only come from here. It is a systemic process with multiple interactions, the effects of which in France are all the more destructive for the Republican model, as it generates both a community withdrawal and inter-community tensions. This crisis reflects the failure of a model of coordination of public action based on the unilateral and procedural use of law in a purely institutional framework. It demonstrates the imperative need for security policies, as with many others, to have a strategic and managerial coordination, within a territorialized framework. It is on this condition that the sons of dialog and negotiation can be revived, in collective and shared ownership of security issues. Only then will it be possible to conclude, among all the stakeholders, transactions of a new type, without which there can be no refoundation of the social contract.