RC21 CONFERENCE 2013

Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology

The fracturing of urban citizenship in Europe: spatial exclusion and excluded spaces in contemporary European cities

The focus of this session is on the strategic abandonment or deliberate neglect of spatially concentrated communities that are deemed to be unworthy or undeserving of investment, protection and support by the state and organised capital. The spatial separation between citizens who can claim the full support and protection of the state and the law and those who experience reduced or no citizenship rights, which has a long history in European urban society, appears to have been accelerated by a drive towards state divestment in welfare and other forms of social and economic mitigation in Europe’s most marginal urban spaces. We therefore welcome papers that draw on comparative historical and geographical (including extra-European) analyses to understand the particular characteristics and drivers of contemporary socio-spatial segregation along with its economic, socio-cultural and political effects.
Potential themes for papers in this session include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

  • the spatial dimensions of civic exclusion, which may use a case study approach or draw on comparative historical and geographical examples from Europe and beyond
  • the identification and analysis of governmental strategies around the ejection, containment and quarantining of unruly publics
  • the creation and deployment of stigmatising narratives and representations in legitimising exceptional laws, force and violence against socio-spatially excluded publics
  • studies of the social, economic and cultural composition and characteristics of excluded urban spaces and how such communities sustain themselves in the absence of ‘the right to the city’
  • critical analyses of interventions by state and non-state actors which seek to mitigate urban civic fracturing at different scales of intervention from the local to municipal/city, regional, national and European levels
  • methodological issues, difficulties and developments that are particularly relevant to the study of marginal/marginalised urban communities

Session Organizers

Dr. Simon Parker, Centre for Urban Research, University of York, UK, T: 01904 323542, E: simon.parker@york.ac.uk
Dr. Rowland Atkinson, Centre for Urban Research, University of York, UK, T: 01904 434742, E: rowland.atkinson@york.ac.uk

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