After the terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005), the issue of security is at the top of the political agenda. Public debates with regard to security and risks have created a sense of urgency that has rapidly spread across the world in this first decade of the millennium. For Security Reasons tells the stories of the work practices of employees in the railway sector, in light of the heightened sense of urgency. Set against the background of local cultural and societal discourses with regard to security in Spain and the Netherlands, the book consists of a collection of narratives about daily life at the railways, focussing on the dangers, joys and tensions of work in this sector. Anyone who has ever travelled by train will recognize the situations that are vividly portrayed, and yet the research of Hanneke Duijnhoven offers us a unique view on the many different ways in which people working in the Dutch and Spanish railway sector make sense of security issues.

Hanneke Duijnhoven works at the department of Culture, Organization and Management at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the VU University in Amsterdam. For her PhD research she conducted an interpretive ethnographic study in the Dutch and Spanish railway sector.