The geography of perceived safety of the neighbourhood: An intersectional intercategorical analysis

Abstract

The perception of safety has been studied in relation to various individual and contextual characteristics. It is rarely considered in quantitative studies that peoples social identities intersect to shape how they perceive safety, and that such intersections are also shaped by place. This paper uses recent innovative developments in statistical modelling that has drawn from intersectional scholarship, bringing these together with a geographical intersectional perspective. A multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) was applied to analyse a nationally representative sample from the “Neighbourhood Survey 2020” carried out by “Anonymized” University. The analysis showed that while most of the variation in perceived safety was explained by separate social labels, a small proportion was attributable to intersectional social strata. It is suggested that quantitative analysis of perceived safety can benefit from understanding respondents’ intersectional social labels, including residential context. This may be particularly important in relation to low response rates of surveys on perceived safety, which may impact the representation of particularly marginalized social groups and places.