Talja Blokland

Do People Who Like Diversity Practice Diversity in Neighbourhood Life? Neighbourhood Use and the Social Networks of ‘Diversity-Seekers’ in a Mixed Neighbourhood in the Netherlands

Urban policies in various countries aim at integrating minorities into mainstream society through combating residential segregation. One strategy is to change the housing stock. Assuming that the middle classes leave certain neighbourhoods because they lack suitable dwellings, building more expensive dwellings is an important policy trajectory in the Netherlands. However, living in the proximity of other income groups is in itself insufficient to overcome racial, ethnic and class divides in social networks. The usual policy indicator for defining ‘middle class’, e.g. income, is not a very good predictor for the diversity of networks of people living in mixed neighbourhoods. What, then, is? The first step is to ask what distinguishes people who prefer diverse neighbourhoods. Are people who are attracted by the diversity of an area different from others? Next, we question whether people who like diversity have more diversity in their networks or contribute in other ways to a more integrated neighbourhood through their use of it. We use social network data collected in a mixed inner-city neighbourhood in Rotterdam to explore this. We argue that attracting people to an area because of its diversity may contribute to the economic viability of local businesses and possibly to the nature of interactions in public space. However, we can not empirically substantiate that a preference for a diverse neighbourhood translates into distinct practices or social networks that enhance the integration of ethnic minorities into mainstream society.

“You Got to Remember you Live in Public Housing”: Place‐Making in an American Housing Project

Housing projects in the USA have suffered from stigma and a negative image ever since the first projects were built. An examination of the history of American housing policy can help us to understand this on one level. The strength of the dominant discourse, of housing projects as the last resort for those who fail to be part of mainstream society, is reflected in the fact that the mental geography among residents and outsiders of “The Ghetto”, a small housing project in an otherwise mixed neighbourhood in New Haven, CT, USA, is one of a “fucking depressing” place one would rather not be. This paper discusses how this stigma developed, why residents incorporate this image and the low status of their neighbourhood into their accounts of what the place where they live is like, and what problems this causes. In particular, it addresses the issues of the absence of neighbourhood attachment as place attachment, even though residents “do community” all the time, and the consequences of the lack of place attachments for bringing neighbours together to get things done. It uses Charles Tillys theory of durable inequality, especially his concept of “emulation”, to reflect theoretically on the connection between place attachment, stigma and wider social structures in which peoples life projects are embedded. The paper shows that, in contrast to what urban policy‐makers might like to see, residents refuse to engage with their neighbourhood, as attaching themselves through neighbourhood action to “the community” would imply a recognition that they are in fact the type of person the projects are “meant” for in the dominant discourse of subsidized housing; losers with whom no‐one wants to identify or be identified.

Social Mix Revisited: Neighbourhood Institutions as Setting for Boundary Work and Social Capital

Policy makers tend to think that residential ‘mixing’ of classes and ethnic groups will enhance social capital. Scholars criticize such ‘mixing’ on empirical and theoretical grounds. This article argues that the critics may focus too much on neighbourhoods. Mixing within neighbourhood institutions might work differently, we argue, drawing on data from a mixed school in Berlin, Germany. While class boundaries are constructed, we also find class-crossing identifications based on setting-specific characteristics, highlighting the setting’s importance and the agency of lower/working and middle-class parents. Parents create ties for exchanging setting-specific resources: child-related social capital. Institutional neighbourhood settings can hence be important for boundary work and social capital. Criticism of social capital and social mix should not overlook the role of networks for urban inequality.

Blaming Neither the Undeserving Poor Nor the Revanchist Middle Classes: A Relational Approach to Marginalization

Various critical theories have been developed to contest the culture-of-poverty and rational-choice approaches to urban marginalization. This essay identifies a gap between these theories and qualitative studies of the everyday lives of the poor. Due to a lack of connectivity among various scales in such studies, the intellectual crusade against the blaming of the poor may easily slide into a blaming of the middle class—a broad and undifferentiated label. As a result, it remains unclear exactly how neoliberal regimes and policies that punish the poor are actually becoming social realities, in part because the empirical claims offered up by critical theorists share many of the limitations of mainstream theories. Building from the presentation of an ethnographic vignette, this article maintains that a relational sociology of urban marginalization may help to overcome this problem, and in the process could strengthen critical theory.

Why repressive policies towards urban youths do not make streets safe: four hypotheses

There is an increasing concern in various European cities with ‘youth’ in public space. This concern is by no means new. Young men have been a cause for public concern for a long time. In some countries in the global North, such as Holland, the marginalization along lines of class and ethnicity rather than just class have brought a relatively new dimension to perceived ‘problems’ of youth. Holland is particularly interesting, as it moved from championing tolerance to rather harsh policies and an often overly racist discourse on urban youth. This shift to a more repressive policy model has responded to an increasing public fear. Two peculiar empirical patterns raise the question of effectiveness of such repressive policies. First, the neighbourhoods targeted by these policies continue to show strong feelings of fear. Second, the number of incidents between youth and police do not drop, but rise, affecting the crime and nuisance statistics. This paper explores four hypotheses to explain these trends, drawing on empirical data from studies in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Rotterdam and The Hague, the Netherlands.

‘Even when I see the real scoundrel around here, I don’t feel unsafe’

When the 19th century sociologists expressed their fear of the modern times under the rapidly growing industrial capitalism, they focussed their lamenting of community on the city.

On Roots and Routes

A friend recently invited me to a brunch to celebrate her birthday with a few other college-educated and affluent white women. We talked about the burn-out of another, absent woman, who had a demanding job that brought her to various countries every few years, resulting in her now grown children being “very international”. But “naturally”, went the tenor of the conversation, she was a candidate for burnout as she no longer had any “rootedness”.

Methodological Consequences of Inclusive Community Development: The Value of Ethnography for Housing Studies

In Western liberal democracies over the last decade or so, community development, housing policy and neighbourhood renewal have been increasingly underscored by a philosophy of participatory decision-making (see Imre & Raco, 2003; Lo Piccolo & Thomas, 2003; Maginn, 2004). At one level, it appears that central and local governments have experienced a policy and democratic epiphany. This is reflected in a ‘new’ acknowledgment that ‘when citizens themselves are the key to the quality of neighbourhoods, a new avenue of policy intervention is opened up’ (Lelieveldt, 2004, p. 534; see also Crenson, 1983). In this context, participatory models of decision-making are seen as having the potential to ‘empower’ local residents who were previously the subject of ‘top-down’ or command and control forms of planning (Healey, 1999; Meredyth, Ewing, & Thomas, 2004; Barry, Osborne, & Rose, 1996; Rose, 1996; Dean, 2002). On another level, however, there is caution, suspicion even, about this paradigm shift. A perception exists that governments are essentially displacing, redistributing and/or retreating from their historical welfare responsibilities (Chaskin, 2003, 2001; Fraser, Lepofsky, Lick, & Williams, 2003; Pierre, 1999).