The production of territorial stigmatisation

Abstract

The concept of territorial stigmatisation has garnered increasing attention over the past decade. Studies from across six continents confirm and contribute to the concept’s growing relevance in explaining the social and symbolic dimensions of advanced and urban marginality. However, the debates remain fragmented, and most studies have focused more on confirming and expounding the impact of territorial stigmatisation than its production. Based on an inductive analysis of 119 peer-reviewed articles we provide an overview of this fragmented field of research and to bring structure to the debates, we identify six distinct yet broad and partly overlapping ‘areas of research’ on the production of territorial stigmatisation. Within these, we identify 16 different modalities of production of territorial stigmatisation. We argue that the concept, in practice, is highly composed with several modalities operating simultaneously depending on context and scale and that analysing this flexibility is key to better conceptualise territorial stigmatisation. Furthermore our analysis implies that the production of territorial stigmatisation in its different modalities is not merely an unforeseen consequence of a society trying to deal with a wicked problem, but integral to contemporary forms of neoliberal urban governance where territorial stigmatisation to an increasing extent has become a legitimation strategy of the current radical policy measures of demolition, gentrification and re-privatisation of stigmatised territories.