Multiple Eviction: An Investigation of Chain Displacement in Dane County, Wisconsin

Abstract

Within a context dominated by the seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of gentrification and abandonment in New York City during the early 1980s, Peter Marcuse developed an influential typology of displacement that can be conceptualized as a movement from the most readily observable forms of “last-resident” displacement to increasingly less measurable forms of “exclusionary displacement” and “displacement pressure.” While the typology depends heavily on the explanatory frame of demographic transition and the movement out of space, Marcuse also included the possibility of a contradictory form of “chain displacement” that often occurs in non- and/or pregentrification spaces without demographic change. Using geocoded data from 16 years of eviction records in Dane County Wisconsin, this research not only demonstrates the existence of chain displacement within specific neighborhoods, but also exposes sites of “multiple eviction” that combine with forms of disadvantage and relative demographic “stability” rather than patterns more characteristic of gentrification processes.