Introduction

There has always been an acknowledgement of the central position of ports within the development of our societies throughout the ages (Darwin, 2020; Stenning and Easton, 2021). So far in this book, ports have been explored through the lens of economic sociology and attention has been paid to the complex crimes that take place through and within the port. These accounts have presented ports as logistics hubs that take up an important glocal strategic position in cities, countries, continents and seas. During a workshop organized for academics and practitioners working on port security, Julie Berg defined ports as:

By harmscapes, she refers to the technological, environmental and other risks (such as terrorism, for example) that share common features of radical uncertainty and unpredictability, defining our age in accordance with what Beck (1992) called a risk society (Holley et al, 2020). Indeed, ports play a crucial role in the global economy, acting as the ‘beating’ heart of both legal and illegal flows of people, goods, information and money. They are places and spaces few will ever visit, silently relied upon by society, where criminals may abuse the sheer volume of trade and activity to ‘surf ‘ undetected along the legal ‘waves’ of global commerce. This makes ports a true ‘hell’ in terms of providing security. With so many practices and processes connected to one another, and a multitude of actors operating within internationally linked ports, it is challenging to untangle the concept and reality of security governance in ports.