Refugee Arrival under Conditions of Urban Decline: From Territorial Stigma and Othering to Collective Place-Making in Diverse Shrinking Cities?

Norma Schemschat

doi:10.3390/su132313301

Abstract

Places affected by urban shrinkage are widely depicted as left behind places characterized by decline and decay. Refugees are generally constructed as victims or ‘dangerous other’. Hence, place-making and negotiations of belonging in shrinking cities are accompanied by multiple layers of stigmatization. Despite this contextual factor and even though many questions related to inter-group relations in shrinking cities are still unanswered, refugee-centered revitalization of shrinking cities is being discussed among city officials, planners and in the scientific community. This paper investigates local discourses on urban shrinkage and refugee arrival as contextual factors for negotiations of place and belonging, and connects to previous studies on the stigmatization of declining cities and the othering of refugees. It uses Nayak’s (2019) concept of re-scripting narratives to analyze whether acts of re-writing apply not only to stigmatizations of place, but marginalized groups as well. The paper finds that while dominant discourses on place are contested and at times re-scripted by local actors, discourses which construct refugees as other are reaffirmed. Confirming previous findings according to which stigma was passed on to other marginalized groups, it concludes that there is a need to consider dominant discourses and their negative impact on social cohesion in debates around refugee-centered revitalization.

Highlights

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
Given the aforementioned socio-economic challenges shrinking urban environments pose for inclusion, and considering that shrinking cities and their inhabitants as well as forced migrants deal with strong forms of stigmatization, the analysis seeks to investigate whether attempts can be identified in which actors practice what Nayak (2019) refers to as strategic re-scripting of place and whether this form of rejecting stigma is found in other marginalizing discourses, such as with forced migrants
Local narratives about refugees will be analyzed through the lens of othering in order to learn whether marginalizing narratives on refugees common for the current discourse are challenged or confirmed

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Since the local turn in migration management [3], cities have turned into increasingly important actors in multilevel governance, taking on a more active role, especially in the fields of refugee accommodation and ‘integration’—the latter being a term, which implies a mono-directional path to belonging according to which immigrants are expected to ‘integrate’ into a presumably homogeneous ‘host society’. Authors working on refugee-led revitalization are increasingly focusing on the negotiations of belonging, which new forms of diversity bring about, and voice criticism over the underlying utilitarian rhetoric connected to the concept [4]. Representations of shrinking cities show strong forms of stigmatization. Their depiction is generally dominated by the idea of them as ‘losing out’, as “slum places” [5]. Some authors have put forward their often active civil society as well as their residents’

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Discussion

Conclusion