This study examines residential enclosures – gated communities and closed residential complexes – as spatial technologies of security emerging at the intersection of global biopolitical processes and local cultural contexts. We analyse fences and barriers as active intermediaries that transform space, establish inclusion/exclusion regimes, and shape urban subjectivity. Through Giorgio Agamben's biopolitical framework, we demonstrate how contemporary enclosures operate according to «inclusive exclusion» logic, where security infrastructure paradoxically intensifies rather than eliminates anxiety by constantly incorporating the threat of the excluded «life».

While situating these phenomena within global processes of neoliberalisation, privatisation of security, and crisis of state sovereignty, our analysis emphasizes the irreducibility of local contexts. Comparing American gated communities, Polish post-socialist enclosures, and Russian closed residential complexes reveals significant variation. The article puts forward some distinguishing features of the Russian case: the relative invisibility of fences as architectural devices; the possibility of a lower level of citizen responsibility compared to Western models; the connection between enclosures as security techniques and the socialist past, the specificities of economic development, and patterns of state governance of residential space. The Polish example illustrates how systematic housing policies can foster critical civic engagement with enclosures, contrasting with both American and Russian patterns.

Our interdisciplinary approach, combining media theory, biopolitical analysis, and urban sociology, reveals how identical architectural forms acquire different meanings and offer different affordances depending on historical trajectories, governance models, and cultural attitudes. As residential enclosures proliferate globally, understanding their complex spatial logics becomes essential for envisioning urban futures that do not reproduce the camp's structure of bare life and permanent emergency.