Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper aims to disrupt the dominant ‘segregation as negative’ narrative, by exploring hopeful experiences and perceptions of ethnic residential concentration. Drawing on fieldwork in an ethnically mixed, working-class inner-city neighbourhood, we critically reflect on recent debates around ethnic segregation, particularly hegemonic and ‘official’ policy discourses that position ethnic concentration as incompatible with social solidarity. Narratives from residents’ in-depth interviews in Liverpool 8 problematise this association, offering alternative interpretations of ethnic concentration. Historically, Black and other racially minoritised communities were spatially confined to this area through endemic structural racism. This accentuated existing class, religious and racial inequalities, leading to the stigmatisation and marginalisation of neighbourhood and community. Neighbourhood challenges to racism help both shape and reinforce allegiance and belonging to the neighbourhood of Liverpool 8. Out of structural discrimination and spatial confinement, a unique identity with place has been forged. This has strengthened perceptions of social solidarity amongst residents and led to a neighbourhood belonging ‘through difference’, not despite the multiple disadvantages residents faced, but, in many ways, because of them. Our findings underscore the value of contextualising the circumstances under which ethnic concentration is (re)created – to appreciate the nuances of its consequences, and how communities respond to them.
Highlights
When I was growing up, most Black people you knew [...] who came into the city [...] ended up being put in the Liverpool 8 area [...]
This paper has explored how, and in what ways, distinct community and neighbourhood characteristics can shape positive ethnic residential concentration
We began by critiquing the dominant UK policy narrative that segregation is inherently and consistently negative and reflecting on Peach’s (1996) arguments for ‘good’ segregation
Summary
When I was growing up, most Black people you knew [...] who came into the city [...] ended up being put in the Liverpool 8 area [...]. I wouldn’t live anywhere else (30–39, female, Black) These two narratives, relayed by residents during fieldwork in a British inner-city neighbourhood, represent in microcosm the differential processes involved in the D. The adverse conditions in which they are rooted, have helped shape and reinforce allegiance to neighbourhood, as well as a wider sense of ‘ownership’ and belonging These accounts, epitomise the complex relationship between structure and agency – of the way enforced and discriminatory class and ethnic spatial confinement has contributed to a strong sense of neighbourhood identity, belonging and attachment, rather than fragmentation. These inter-related experiences and processes are the foundation on which our study rests
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