There exists a widely shared consensus, reflected in an ever growing body of literature, that over the last two to three decades, Latin America has witnessed a dramatic increase in crime, violence and insecurity, converting it into one of the most violent regions in the world. The articles collected in this Dossier aim to contribute to the related academic debate by focusing on an empirical and analytical dimension of these developments, which, from our perspective, has received very little attention so far: space. Space is socially produced by socio-political relationships and, at the same time, reflects the inscription and condensation of these relationships in specific spatial settings (territorial, institutional, cultural). Therefore, we assume that a spatial analytic provides a promising entry point for a context-sensitive assessment of larger socio-political relationships and the problems of insecurity in contemporary Latin America. By focusing on issues such as the urbanization of insecurity, diverse spatial security strategies as well as social and cultural processes of (in)security-related space-making in and through different spatial contexts across disciplinary boundaries, this Dossier aims to offer fresh and empirically grounded perspectives on a central, yet largely neglected, dimension of Latin America’s insecurity panorama and its impact on local security governance.