Anti-social behaviour in the square. Differentiation mechanisms among non-native groups in a peripheral neighbourhood of Barcelona

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses differentiation processes between non-native groups in a stigmatized peripheral neighbourhood of Barcelona. Its more established dwellers – internal migrants from the South of Spain – have set in place differentiation processes between them and the more recently arrived international migrants. To substantivize differentiation processes, in a context where race has been largely silent, they appropriate the “civic terminology” that has become popular in the city in the last decade. In the global context of hyper-regulation and increasing privatization of urban public spaces, this group’s discursive strategies, based on the civic/non-civic divide, aim to ensure control over accessible open public space, a resource that is locally scarce. Using the ethnographic example of the tensions around “proper behaviour” in the area’s main square, the article explores processes of identification and differentiation in a context where autochthony cannot be unproblematically called upon.