Producing gentrifiable neighborhoods: race, stigma and struggle in Berlin-Neukölln

Abstract

Through a case study of an immigrant dense working-class neighborhood in Berlin, this article asks how racial and territorial stigmatization figure into state-enabled financialized gentrification and resistance against it. While there is a discussion on territorial stigmatization in the gentrification literature, this debate remains understated in the emerging financialized gentrification literature and rarely connects to race. Debates on resistance to financialization, in turn, while being attuned to the detrimental effects of stigmatization on struggle, pay little attention to the role of the local state as a producer of stigma. In this article I draw together debates on financialization, state-enabled gentrification and racial and territorial stigma to suggest that the local state, through its oppressive classifications and racialized representations of urban space, contributes to preparing the symbolic and material structures on which finance capital is able to flourish, not only by normalizing displacement, but by hampering resistance and demobilizing local working-class communities.

Keywords:

• Racial and territorial stigma
• gentrification
• financialization
• struggle
• local state
• Berlin

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to comments on earlier versions of this article by Mustafa Dikeç and Carina Listerborn. I would also like to thank Özlem Çelik for her guidance and the valuable comments by three anonymous reviewers, all of which have helped to improve this paper substantially.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Neukölln has an unemployment rate of about 12 percent (8 percent in Berlin) and an underemployment rate of 16 percent (10 percent in Berlin) (Statistik Arbeitsagentur, 2019).

2 This is a slight decrease from previous years, but it goes without saying that the share of rental is still exceptionally high, irrespective of the cities we compare with (Fields & Uffer, 2016).

3 A small, yet important, detail is that youth soccer is widely popular among migrant children in Germany, particularly Turkish migrants who are the largest ethnic minority in Neukölln. Describing migrant families as ignorant towards soccer training is all the more baffling, especially when referring to a time when many families had been in Germany for decades already (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 2006).

4 From 1975 until 1990 Turkish, Yugoslavian and Greek nationals were not allowed to move to the central boroughs of Kreuzberg, Tiergarten and Wedding to avoid ethnic concentration.

5 Despite having been home to immigrants for a long time, at least until recently, even Germans with immigrant parents were colloquially referred to as ‘foreigners’, typically irrespective of citizenship.

6 Only two neighborhoods, Reuterkiez and Schillerkiez, were considered in the pre-study, while the Alliance had demanded protection for North-Neukölln neighborhoods (eight in total). MS was only extended in 2019 to the whole area, after mayor Buschkowsky and district councilor Blesing were replaced.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council for the Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS), Grant Number 2020-01739.

Notes on contributors

Defne Kadıoğlu

Defne Kadıoğlu is a researcher at Malmö University’s Institute for Urban Research at the Urban Studies Department. She conducts research in the field of housing inequality, racial and territorial stigmatization, gentrification and urban policy.