Abstract

Much existing research has considered the impact of fear of crime. We move beyond this research by reporting on the findings of an online survey of male and female students administered at a university in the north of England in 2016 exploring their perceptions of safety and experiences of interpersonal violence during their time as a student, on and off-campus. Using qualitative data, we explore the subjectivities of students who identify as feeling safe and unsafe in their everyday routines. We make sense of these contradictory positions by detailed analysis of the interwoven layers that make up their stories of safety. Layers of the self as gendered and/or racialised subjects of ‘hate’ or stories about these, intersect with time, place, space and ‘others’, to create an individual’s sense of the self as safe or unsafe that shifts as individuals move in and out of their constructed boundaries of safety. We map out the defining features of the unsafe urban landscape and how and why it serves to hinder marginalised identities from participating in public and educational spaces. This paper argues that these boundaries of safety need to be widened by educating key individuals about how to enhance perceptions of safe surroundings, which should include a discussion about socially enhancing and physically altering masculinised ‘white’ environments.