Loïc Wacquant's ‘Ghetto’ and Ethnic Minority Segregation in the UK: The Neglected Case of Gypsy‐Travellers

This article utilizes Loïc Wacquant's concept of the ghetto as an analytical tool in understanding the marginal and ambivalent position of Gypsy‐Traveller populations resident on sites (or camps) in Britain. The article argues that the fruitful work of quantitative urban scholars on ethnic segregation in the UK has neglected Gypsy‐Travellers. It suggests that the theoretical concept of the ghetto can elucidate the ways in which the spatial marginality of sites serves as a weapon of ‘confinement and control’ for the dominant, and an ‘integrative and protective device’ for the stigmatized Gypsy‐Traveller population. Drawing on qualitative empirical data, key characteristics in Wacquant's definition of the ghetto are shown to hold true for Gypsy‐Traveller sites; these include ethnic homogeneity, spatial confinement, shared cultural identity, mutual distancing and a retreat into the private sphere of the family. This comparison also reveals key differences in terms of economic function, parallel institutionalism and the relationship with the state. The article points to the potential offered by Wacquant's theory and suggests that the dismissal of the ghetto concept within the UK ignores its power as a tool of comparison. The article suggests that qualitative and theoretical approaches should seek to complement the work of quantitative social scientists through focusing on everyday social relations and encounters between ethnic minority groups and ‘host’ populations — both within and outwith residential boundaries. It also questions the urban‐centred focus of debates on ethnic segregation.     

‘Get out of Traian Square!’: Roma Stigmatization as a Mobilizing Tool for the Far Right in Timişoara,Romania

Post‐communist Central and Eastern Europe has seen far right movements and parties gain considerable ground by drawing on nativist and ethnic claims to call for a return to an imagined past. In Romania, far right groups have been able to capitalize on a sense of injustice while also playing on historically negative feelings towards the Roma community. These patterns have been observed in Timi?oara, where the group Noua Dreapt? (New Right) has established a foothold over the past decade by emphasizing claims that blame the Roma for loss of built heritage and corruption in the administration of property restitution. The aims of this article are to examine the emergence of Noua Dreapt? and its use of Roma stigmatization, and to consider the ways in which extreme views are normalized by appealing to beliefs and perceptions. The findings of the article show that pre‐existing prejudices can be a powerful force that not only targets marginalized communities, but also challenges administrative practices and builds organizational support. At the level of the city, it is possible to identify the way in which these claims can be more precisely calibrated to draw on concerns that circulate within the community.     

Economic restructuring and state intervention in Holdenist suburbia: understanding urban poverty in Australia

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s a particular conjuncture of capital-state relations formed in Australia, leading to the development of a distinctive urban form —‘Holdenist suburbia’: built by government; of a large scale and uniform appearance; constructed of poor quality, cheap materials; home to relatively high percentages of public renters; comprised of predominantly working-class families; adjacent to manufacturing employment; and stigmatized. An examination of one such Holdenist suburban estate in 1966 and 1991 illustrates how certain aspects of economic restructuring and state intervention have forged such spaces as sites of urban poverty. With the broad aim of connecting Australian urban studies to ongoing international debates about the nature of contemporary urban poverty, it is noted that distinctive characteristics of Australian urban and welfare state development render the application of concepts derived from different cultural settings problematic. This paper makes two points. First, a ‘finer-combed’ interpretation of Australian postwar suburban development is required to delineate the role of the state in shaping a particular urban form during this period — the Holdenist suburban form. Second, this delineation is particularly important to understanding contemporary urban poverty in Australia, for the social provisions of state policy have, in contradictory fashion, both prevented the full development of outcast ghettos (Marcuse, 1996) and, in conjunction with the processes of economic restructuring, forged sites of urban poverty.     

Times and Spaces of Homeless Regulation in Japan, 1950s–2000s: Historical and Contemporary Analysis

Since the late 1970s, Atlantic Fordism has seen rising homelessness and ghettoization as the ‘new urban poverty’ (NUP) (Mingione, 1996). Despite some similarities, the NUP in Japan has a unique rhythm and spatial pattern. In order to explore Japanese NUP, this article develops an interpretation of Japan's strategies to regulate poverty and homelessness during the last 50 years, paying particular attention to the spatial consequences of such strategies within major Japanese cities. First, I theorize long‐term economic growth patterns as a basic parameter of poverty and homelessness regulation and present a periodization of Japanese trends since the 1950s. Second, I analyze poverty in Japan and the transformation of national strategies of spatial regulation in the 1990s, when homelessness grew. Third, I examine the multi‐scalar processes through which new regulatory spaces of homelessness were produced in the 1990s and 2000s, when failures of post‐bubble crisis management ballooned in Japan. I argue that, through a dialectic between national/local rule‐setting and homelessness, the Japanese state fragmented the dominant scale of poverty regulation, rescaled the site of homeless regulation and contained homelessness in relatively autonomized cities. I conclude that, from the 1990s until the late 2000s, Japan's homelessness and its contradictions tended to be transferred to the spheres of urban workfare and urban policing, which I call new regulatory spaces of homelessness, that lie around the fringes of national social rights.     

Urban Governance and the ‘European City’: Ideals and Realities in Dublin,Ireland

Throughout recent decades, a significant amount of attention has been given to the notion of the ‘European city’ within policy formation and academic enquiry. From one perspective, the ideal of the ‘European city’ is presented as a densely developed urban area with a focus on quality public transport and a more balanced social structure. More recently, however, the particular elements of the ‘European city’ associated with pedestrianized public space, urban design and image‐making strategies have become central features of entrepreneurial urban policies throughout Europe. This article undertakes an examination of the notion of the ‘European city’ in urban change in Dublin since the 1990s. Specifically, the article illustrates the degree to which a wholly positive spin on the urban design and image‐making elements of the ‘European city’ in Dublin has served as a thin veil for the desired transformation of Dublin according to neoliberal principles.     

Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma,Ruins and Everyday Life

A key question in urban sociology is how people interpret the urban environment. At a time when cities are increasingly militarized, this question is particularly important for understanding how militarism impacts urban life. However, urban sociologists have not addressed how people experience militarized environments. This article turns to this question by considering the case of Lydda‐Lod, an Israeli city that has been demographically and physically transformed by war, displacement and securitization. Drawing on Wacquant's sociology of spatial stigma and adding insights from works on emotions in (post‐)conflict cities, I examine how poor Palestinians think and feel about the surveilled districts where they live within the city's broader landscape of ruins. I show how the Israeli military, security and policing agencies have collectively produced spatial stigmatization of these districts. I discuss how Palestinians respond to this spatial stigma by attaching a sense of worthlessness to their districts. However, this reproduction of spatial stigma is punctuated by expressions of care for the built environment and by a desire to revalorize collective Palestinian life in the city. I conclude by discussing how a perspective on militarized cities focused on everyday responses to militarism and attentive to marginalities enriches urban sociology and urban studies more generally.     

Cities in Contemporary Capitalism

This article outlines essential concepts of the political economy approach of urban research and offers critical modifications and clarifications to some of its contentions concerning the functioning of cities as ‘strategic places’ of capital accumulation. The interrelations between contemporary capitalism and urban economic development are discussed at the scale of a transnationally extended urban system. Based on the general context of the global economic downturn, I focus on the role of cities in distinct circuits of capital, the switching of capital flows within the urban system and the different functional roles of cities within the world city network that interconnects cities both in the global North and South. I call into question the established focus of urban economic research on the role of cities as financial and service centres, arguing that cities might redirect their economic development trajectories towards ‘real economy’ activities, in contrast to relying on the disastrous development model of finance‐dominated capitalism.     

Thermal Eco‐cities: Green Building and Urban Thermal Metabolism

Eco‐city projects are becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the globe and are often marketed as ‘new’ urban environments focused on achieving sustainable urban living while promoting environmental–economic transitions towards a low‐carbon technological and industrial base. The article argues for the need to consider the thermal aspects of urban metabolism, while at the same time focusing on the link between individual buildings and eco‐city master plans and wider economic development strategies at a state level. In so doing, the article encourages critical analysis of eco‐city design and planning, while keeping a focus on the role of specific building structures within eco‐cities as examples of the intermeshing of what can be termed a ‘political ecology of scale’ which stretches from specific buildings' climatic characteristics, to the metabolic master plan for eco‐cities, to provincial, regional and state‐level plans for the integration of eco‐cities within wider economic and political development trajectories. The article focuses on Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, an eco‐city under construction at the time of writing.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.     

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

In the urban studies literature, urban politics is usually considered in two distinct locations: the city (often understood in quite conventional centralist ways) and the suburb (understood as spatially peripheral and politically at odds with the central city). At the metropolitan scale, the two types of urban politics are discussed in relation to one another. More recently, the metropolitan scale of urban politics has been expanded to regional dimensions. We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.     

Refining Targeting against Poverty Evidence from Tunisia*

We introduce a new methodology to target direct transfers against poverty. Our method is based on estimation methods that focus on the poor. Using data from Tunisia, we estimate ‘focused’ transfer schemes that highly improve anti‐poverty targeting performances. Post‐transfer poverty can be substantially reduced with the new estimation method. For example, a one‐third reduction in poverty severity from proxy‐means test transfer schemes based on OLS method to focused transfer schemes requires only a few hours of computer work based on methods available on popular statistical packages. Finally, the obtained levels of undercoverage of the poor are particularly low.     

Living With Stigma: Spatial and Social Divisions in a Danish City

Inspired by Bourdieu's theory of homology between social, mental and spatial structures, this essay dissects the relationship between spatial and social divisions in the Danish city of Aalborg using varied data from official statistics, surveys, qualitative interviews and field observations. Spatial divisions reflect differences in the objective distribution of economic and cultural capital, and are accompanied by symbolic divisions in residents’ minds. Some nuances are, however, added to Bourdieu's homology argument, as there are discrepancies between objective distributions and mental schemes, such that the latter exaggerate and dramatize the former. The neighbourhood of Aalborg East is subjected to this symbolic exaggeration in the form of spatial stigma or territorial stigmatization. An analysis of residents’ strategies for coping with spatial stigma furthermore provides an illustration of Wacquant's claim that this stigmatization can be met with a range of socially patterned responses ranging from acceptance or indifference to recalcitrance.     

If Urban Regions are the Answer,What is the Question? Thoughts on the European Experience

This essay contributes to the current debate in the field of critical urban and regional studies on the meanings of the ‘regional’ and the ‘urban’. From a political science perspective, we focus on the European case. Firstly, we argue that the conception of the regional scale is not the same in various languages and traditions. Regions in Europe carry meanings and connotations that are not always easy to translate without losing their specific histories. Secondly, our analysis of contemporary debates on the ‘regional’ in the field of urban studies reveals that both practitioners and academics consider the regional scale mainly as a functional space, as the space for economic competitiveness. However, urban regions are also to be regarded as spaces for social and political mobilization. I argue that the political dimension of the ‘regional’ deserves more attention and that further research needs to be undertaken in this respect.     

Urban poverty and marginalization under market transition: the case of Chinese cities

Rapid urban growth in China has been accompanied by rising social inequality and marginalization of disadvantaged social groups such as laid‐off workers of the state‐owned enterprises and rural migrants. The Chinese government has officially acknowledged the existence of ‘marginal groups’ and prioritized combating the new urban poverty as an urgent task to eliminate the root of potential social instability. This article proposes the concept of ‘poverty of transition’ from the institutional change perspective to examine how the ‘new’ urban poverty is created by the disjuncture between the old and new institutions. Specifically, the poverty of transition suggests that the main cause of the new poverty is structural, i.e. economic restructuring and the release of redundant workers previously hidden inside the workplace, and the increasing migrant population who are excluded from the formal urban institutions. A sizable underclass is now under formation in the sense that they are institutionally detached from mainstream urban society. To close the disjuncture between the marketization of labourers and the transition in welfare provisions requires more than just a policy of poverty relief; instead it requires a fundamental vision of the new ‘citizenship’ in the Chinese city. En Chine, la rapide croissance urbaine s'est accompagnée d'une aggravation de l'inégalité sociale et d'une marginalisation des groupes sociaux défavorisés tels que les ex‐employés des entreprises nationalisées et les migrants ruraux. Le gouvernement a officiellement reconnu l'existence de ‘groupes marginaux’ et annoncé comme une priorité la lutte contre la nouvelle pauvreté urbaine afin d'éliminer cette source potentielle d'instabilité sociale. L'article propose le concept de ‘pauvreté de transition’ dans une perspective d'évolution institutionnelle, afin d'examiner comment la ‘nouvelle’ pauvreté urbaine naît de la rupture entre institutions anciennes et nouvelles. Notamment, ce concept suggère que la cause première de la nouvelle pauvreté est structurelle, autrement dit émane de la restructuration économique et du dégagement des ouvriers en surnombre précédemment dissimulés sur leur lieu de travail, ainsi que de la population migrante croissante, exclue des institutions urbaines officielles. Une classe inférieure considérable est en cours de formation au sens que ses membres sont isolés institutionnellement de la société urbaine normale. Combler cette rupture entre la marchandisation des ouvriers et la transition des mesures sociales exige, davantage qu'une simple politique publique d'aide aux pauvres, une vision fondamentale de la nouvelle ‘citoyenneté’ dans les villes chinoises.     

Your Life Chances Affect Where You Live: A Critique of the ‘Cottage Industry’ of Neighbourhood Effects Research

This article advances a critique of the ‘neighbourhood effects’ genre in urban studies, by arguing that an acceptance of the ‘where you live affects your life chances’ thesis, however well‐intentioned, misses the key structural question of why people live where they do in cities. By examining the structural factors that give rise to differential life chances and the inequalities they produce, and by inverting the neighbourhood effects thesis to: your life chances affect where you live, the problem becomes one of understanding life chances via a theory of capital accumulation and class struggle in cities. Such a theory provides an understanding of the injustices inherent in letting the market (buttressed by the state) be the force that determines the cost of housing and therefore being the major determinant of where people live. The article draws on Marxist urban theory to contend that the residential mobility programs advocated by neighbourhood effects proponents stand on shaky ground, for if it is true that ‘neighbourhood effects’ exceed what would be predicted by poverty alone, moving the poor to a richer place would only eliminate that incremental difference, without addressing the capitalist institutional arrangements that create poverty.     

Territorial Stigmatization and Territorial Destigmatization: A Cultural Sociology of Symbolic Strategy in the Gentrification of Parkdale (Toronto)

Territorial stigmatization is one of the most powerful concepts for understanding how social, spatial and symbolic processes are intertwined in producing contemporary urban inequality. Through a detailed case study of Parkdale, a Toronto neighbourhood that has been profoundly shaped by its long association with poverty, single room occupancy housing and psychiatric survivors, this article works at the points of intersection between the rapidly expanding literature on territorial stigmatization and wider social scientific interest in gentrification‐led displacement. Drawing on archival research, participant observation and interviews with residents, it demonstrates how territorial stigmatization, and a new allied concept, territorial destigmatization, operate in Parkdale. Territorial stigmatization and destigmatization work across three dimensions: legal, material and discursive. Using conceptual tools from cultural sociology to foreground symbolic elements of these three dimensions, two strategies of territorial destigmatization are delineated: one that operates in concert with gentrification‐led displacement, and the other that works to symbolically reinscribe stigmatized persons and housing forms. To complement and sharpen territorial stigmatization research, recent findings from studies of stigma are integrated to show how psychiatric survivors and housing advocates in Parkdale use territorial destigmatization to offset gentrification‐led displacement.     

The Neighbourhood in Pieces: The Fragmentation of Local Public Space in a Swedish Housing Area

In this article, we investigate the transformation of local public spaces in the ethnically and socially diverse housing area Norra Fäladen during 1970–2015. After being built, the area soon faced stigmatization and became known as a problem area. This was followed by a series of investments in local public spaces aiming for a stronger appropriation of the neighbourhood by its inhabitants. The production of a ‘neighbourhood spirit’ has, however, slowly deteriorated over the last two decades. Through the introduction of new areas, with large single‐family houses on the one hand, and a densification of the existing housing stock on the other, the inhabitants’ dependence on the existing (but now decreasing) public spaces within the area has been polarized. Local public spaces are also being increasingly relocated from central parts of the neighbourhood to the peripheries or outside the area. In this article, we investigate how this quite slow, yet steady, transformation has affected the local public spaces and the everyday life of the area.     

Sovereignty Beyond the State: Exception and Informality in a Western European City

Bridging debates on urban sovereignty and urban informality, this paper argues that relationships between sovereignty and informality may not reside exclusively in the way the sovereign state decides to allow or forbid informality, but also in the way sovereignty is distributed among a range of state and non‐state actors. Drawing upon fieldwork on the early‐2010s management of displaced Romanian Romani families in two emergency camps in the city of Montreuil (France), the paper shows how the NGO responsible for managing one camp acted as sovereign power, allowing a number of informal activities to thrive within its confines. By contrast, inside the other camp, managed by another NGO that resolutely implemented state directives, only formal activities took place. Building on Dean's (2010) concept of ‘disaggregated sovereignty’, the paper mobilizes this disjuncture as a case for critically examining how the ‘state of exception’ takes shape beyond the state's grip. A subtext running throughout is the parallel between the very first camps for civilians in nineteenth‐century colonized territories and these twenty‐first‐century camps for Roma in Europe—both elicited a state of exception partially predicated on camp dwellers’ perceived ethnic/racial homogeneity.     

Contesting Sustainability: ‘SMART Growth’ and the Redevelopment of Austin's Eastside

The compatibility between an agenda for sustainable urban development and the neoliberal economic restructuring of urban space has been observed within cities in developed countries across the globe. From providing economic support to local ‘green’ industries to creating bike lanes, municipalities develop sustainability strategies that are designed to boost their competitive advantage. Moreover, municipalities are responding to demands from popular social movements and national governments that seek to reconfigure societal relationships with the natural environment in cities. Cities are increasingly understood not as part of the ecological crisis but as part of the solution, or as places where alternative patterns of sustainable consumption and new socially and ecologically responsible industries can be developed. Over the last decade in Austin, environmental sustainability has become an uncontested paradigm that has progressively shaped the city's urban space and policy. Two competing conceptualizations of the environment, so‐called ‘environmental’ and ‘just’ sustainability groups, are explored in this article. I demonstrate how the notion of environmental sustainability has been selectively incorporated into the hegemonic vision of Austin's strategic growth plan. I argue that the dominance of this conceptualization is best understood by asking what counts as the ‘environment’ for environmentalists, and understanding the unstated assumptions about the environment shared by the business community and environmentalists.     

Street Performance,Public Space,and the Boundaries of Urban Desirability: The Case of Living Statues in Barcelona

How do cities determine who has the right to station themselves in iconic public spaces? This article explores this question by analyzing the evolution of Barcelona's approach to regulating street performance, with a particular focus on regulations pertaining to ‘living statues’. Although most buskers have been expelled from the Ramblas, one of the city's most emblematic walkways, living statues remain permitted on the promenade. This, I argue, is due to the general embrace of statues as part of local tradition and their integration within city‐branding campaigns, as well as their own organizing and boundary work. As the image Barcelona seeks to cultivate has changed, however, the right of statues to station themselves in public space has become ever more tenuous. My findings speak to broader questions regarding how cities determine the boundaries of ‘urban desirability’, as well as why and how such boundaries change over time. They also elucidate the strategies that groups located at the margins employ in attempting to position themselves favorably in relation to such boundaries. More generally, they highlight how current approaches to analyzing urban inclusion and exclusion may benefit from a more sustained engagement with the burgeoning social scientific literature on symbolic boundaries.