Carina Listerborn

Geographies of the Veil : Violent Encounters in Urban Public Spaces in Malmö

Encounters between strangers, as different users of public spaces, are one of the core subjects for discussion in relation to orders in the public space. The empirical material presented in this article illustrates power relations in public spaces of Sweden, which gives a specific national and nationalist framing. This article is based on interviews with 19 Muslim women, all of whom wear the hijab. The aim of this article was to illuminate the neglected violence Muslim women are exposed to and to investigate violent public encounters from the point of view of female Muslim citizens. This recounting of encounters strives to understand the ‘lived experiences of pain’ [Ahmed, S. (2001). The organisation of hate. Law and Critique, 12, 360] and what hate is doing in terms of the effects of hate crimes. First, the concept of affect and economy of hate is elaborated on, after which the meaning of violence is developed in relation to place and space. By showing how frequent such gendered and Islamophobic violence is, in its different forms, while at the same time being largely an overlooked form of violence, the empirical material implicates that such acts of everyday violence work to establish and maintain a hegemonic social, spatial and political order.

Suburban women and the ‘glocalisation’ of the everyday lives: gender and glocalities in underprivileged areas in Sweden

This article presents results from two case studies of marginalised housing areas on the outskirts of two major cities in Sweden. The areas have been analysed through the lens of glocalisation of the everyday lives. The aim is to illustrate and gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of, and relationship between, place, gender and transnationalism. The article contests the simplified image of migrant women in these marginalised areas as local-bound and isolated. It analyses their everyday lives as spaces of glocality, with a particular focus on local and global networks, local and global meeting places, and relationships to local authorities. The aim is to disseminate new knowledge about the complexities of these womens lives in a global–local context, which also has implications for the theoretical concept of glocality. Through the concept of glocality, the beneficial as well as the negative aspects of these womens lives in marginalised neighbourhoods are illustrated.

Renewing Urban Renewal in Landskrona, Sweden : Pursuing Displacement through Housing Policies

Abstract The city of Landskrona in the South of Sweden has never fully recovered from a phase of heavy deindustrialization during the 1970s and 1980s. After years of socially inspired plans and projects, the local authorities have now decided to shift gear and tackle problems of criminality, unemployment and social exclusion through a renovation and eviction plan of the inner city. The basic thought behind the plan is to radically alter the social fabric of the inner city through major alterations of the housing market. The Crossroads Centre/East plan proposes that the municipal authorities, together with five real estate companies, form a new company to renovate houses, convert rental apartments to condominiums, demolish and rebuild. One hundred million Swedish kronor are invested in the company – 95 million will come from municipal funds. The proposal in the City Council, led by the Liberal Party, was supported by 49 out of 51 Councillors, including the Social Democrats and the extreme right‐wing Sweden Democrats. The aim is not hidden: welfare recipients should be actively steered away from the city centre and make place for a (imaginary) wealthy middle class. The overall objective of the company is ‘to improve both the physical and socio‐economic status in Landskronas central and eastern parts’. To understand this urban renewal proposal, we would like to present Landskrona as an example of a watershed in Swedish housing politics that forces us to consider: (1) the nature of gentrification processes in Scandinavia – from gentle to brutal; (2) the shift in viewing affordable housing as a problem, rather than a solution; and (3) the possible introduction of “renoviction” in Sweden.

Feminist struggle over urban safety and the politics of space

This article explores safety and politics of space in two ways. First, it reviews research on women’s fear and calls for safer cities, identifying four contradictions in the geography of fear discourse. Second, it elaborates on how including various forms of fear may repoliticize the contemporary depoliticized and co-opted safety discussion by focusing on sexist and racist threats rather than exclusively on the white middle classes. Here, threats to veiled Muslim women and their experiences in public spaces are, in particular, emphasized as exemplifying fears that are neglected in the safety debate. The article concludes that, rather than the whole safety issue being dismissed as ‘neoliberal’, there is an urgent need to strengthen the analysis of power and illuminate experiences of pain and fear in sexist and racist violence.

The flagship concept of the ‘4th urban environment’. Branding and visioning in Malmö, Sweden

Abstract In the process of turning the post-industrial city of Malmö, Sweden, into a knowledge-based, creative city, new urban planning strategies and visions are being developed. An important component of developing the “knowledge city” is the spatial conceptualization for renewal of urban life. One such concept introduced in Malmö is “the 4th urban environment” (det 4.e stadsrummet). In this article, based on critical urban studies, the development, branding, and practice of the 4th urban environment as a strategy to generate a creative economy and knowledge city is critically analyzed as part of a neoliberal planning discourse. The article raises the question, what kind of vision is “the 4th urban environment”? What is it an expression of; what does it mean for planning practice and to urban development? Contextualizing and investigating trends of neoliberal planning ideas are important to an understanding of the social and economic consequences of unequal power relations. The 4th urban environment and its application in Malmö is illustrative of existing neoliberal planning practices in a Nordic context, and in other similar economies with legacies of redistribution policies and long-standing leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This article focuses on what is articulated within discourses that re-present particular notions of space and place, to gain a better understanding of what neoliberal planning does to space.

Translocal Geographies. Spaces, Places, Connections

Translocal Geographies. Spaces, Places, Connections deals with the complexity of grasping mobility and emplacement in an interconnected way through everyday translocal practices. “Translocality” takes an agency-oriented approach to transnational migrant experiences as it situates and place-base embodied everyday experiences and practices. In this anthology the translocal approach, not only tries to analyse global– local relations, but also local– local connections, which not necessarily cross national borders. The authors are interested in “translocal geographies as a simultaneous situatedness across different locales which provide ways of understanding the overlapping place-time(s) in migrants’ everyday lives” (p. 4). This opens up for a broadened and more spatially complex understanding of mobility in relation to place-making processes or “groundedness” during movement, as it focuses both on situatedness and connectedness to a variety of other locales. Migration in this understanding is wider than just transnational. Scales of rural–urban, inter-urban, inter-regional, as well as immobile groups, can be included in this approach. Comprising the everyday spaces of public transport, residential mobility, bodily and sensory perceptions from moments of migration and movement, the authors aim to take the notion and conceptualization of the existing transnationalism literature further through understanding these spaces as multi-scalar and as a continuum. As people become more mobile, so does places become stretched and transformed. What began as an AAG session resulted in an anthology with 11 authors representing 5 nationalities and 5 disciplines (geographers in majority), including specially invited Michael Peter Smith, author of Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (2001). The anthology contains of five parts; (1) Introduction: Translocal Geographies, (2) Translocal Spaces: Home and Family, (3) Translocal Neighbourhoods, (4) Urban Translocalities: Spaces, Places, Connections and (5) Epilogue (by M. P. Smith). As the introduction points out, the translocal approach provides both a theoretical and methodological challenge, and great effort is given to develop a methodological frame to understand the “local as situated within a network of spaces, places and scales where identities are negotiated and transformed” (p. 5). Using different materials; textual (narratives, biographies, diaries), participatory observations and visual (photos, videotaping), the authors want to “go beyond traditional approaches of settlement geographies and political economies” (p. 7) to capture “situated mode of human agency and mobility” (p. 7). “Grounded transnationalism”, as put forward by Kathryne Mitchell, combined with Pierre Bourdieus concept of “habitus”, and Edward Soja’s extension to spatial European Planning Studies Vol. 20, No. 3, March 2012