The Patrols’ City

In Barcelona, in the name of convivencia (a concept that means togetherness, conviviality, public order), various municipal services have created teams to patrol city. These are “proximity” services, a type social vigilance managed by patrols who aim survey specific areas Barcelona within which poor, illegalized, and racialized people, move, work, live. Drawing on ethnographic notes interviews with people affected this vigilance, I show how institutional produces insecurity perceptions conflicts. addition, vigilant presence disrupts intimacy taking away their autonomy producing alienation. Paradoxically, convivencia, illegalized isolation from city, creating racial order.