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ABSTRACT
Spatial stigmatisation – naming spaces with high concentration of poverty as a slum or ghetto – has been well covered in the critical urban geography and sociological debates. Yet, these discussions have neglected to theorise the intersection between the production of stigmatised space and the governance of its inhabitants within the context of one of Germany’s most stigmatised boroughs. By situating Berlin-Neukölln within historical processes of capital accumulation, I show how the discursive, institutional and material practices of neoliberal social policies have played a central, albeit contradictory, role in (re-)producing stigmatise spaces and subjects along racialised, gendered and class lines. This is particularly evident with regard to neoliberal governance strategies that employ and apply the power of public money to repress and integrate impoverished workers into contemporary capitalist society, or what I refer to as the ‘monetisation of socio-spatial reproduction’.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Ian Bruff, Marcus Taylor and the participants at the Erkko Symposium on ‘Rethinking Urban Poverty’, which took place at the Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland in May 2016.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Susanne Soederberg is a Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University Canada. She is author of several books, including her most recent Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population (2014).
Notes
1 While poverty is a highly contested and multifaceted term that requires geographical and historical contextualisation, the definition used in this paper is drawn from the German Social Security Code II (SGB II), which generally covers unemployed and underemployed workers under the Hartz IV reforms. Broadly, SGB II defines poverty as a level of material deprivation that it negative affects the ability of a person and/or caregiver to meet basic (physical) existential needs such as food, clothing, housing and health. See, for example, http://www.diakonie-giessen.de/de/armut.php.
2 This study is heavily based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Berlin in 2015. The fieldwork was comprised of archival research and face-to-face interviews with key policymakers and bureaucrats associated with the District of Berlin-Neukölln as well as NGOs tied to Neighbourhood Council programmes, homelessness and debt counselling agencies.
3 According to the Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt Citation2013), ‘people with migration background’ encompass all immigrants, who entered Germany after 1949, all non-German citizens, who were born in Germany and all persons born in Germany with at least one parent, who immigrated to Germany, or does not have German citizenship. The term ‘passport German’ is also used to describe this group of non-indigenous Germans.
4 The massive injection of €32 million into Germany’s most infamous school – Rütli – is an example of the amount of statal money released into improving the image of Neukölln. Many observers see the Rütli case as a success in integrating children with immigrant backgrounds, which covers 90 per cent of the study body (‘Wie die Rütli-Schule doch noch erfolgreich wurde’, Die Welt, 4 July 2014). This type of investment in the education system – including, as I discuss later, day-care facilities – has been highly uneven in Neukölln. Moreover, it should be stressed that Rütli is located in the northern reaches of the borough, catering thus to the creative class – many of whom are also immigrants, but of the relatively affluent sort (cf. Krätke Citation2004).
5 Due to space constraints, I cannot elaborate on the complexities and nuances of my particular Marxian understanding of the capitalist state. Suffice it to say here that the capitalist state is understood here as a dynamic historical social relation that is neither an autonomous actor nor a mere instrument of class rule. Due to the varied nature of its constituent components – ranging, for instance, from politicians, bureaucrats and institutions to law makers, lobby groups and so forth operating at various scales of governance – state interventions are fraught with power struggles and contradictions (see Clarke Citation1988, Hirsch Citation1995, Soederberg Citation2014).
6 At a deeper level, it also revealed tensions in the neoliberal project, which was concerned with clawing back these payments, and the state provisioning aimed at socially reproducing surplus workers.
7 What was not brought to public light was that the government’s inability to balance its budget was linked to a larger subsidisation of the wealthy in the form of tax cuts, which meant lost revenue for the state (Streek Citation2013).
8 Under this programme, participants work from 15 to 30 hours a week, and for no longer than 3 months to 6 months. Workers are paid anywhere from €1.33 to €3 an hour, and can earn a maximum of €180 per month to supplement their government aid. ‘One Euro, One Way Out of Unemployment?’ Deutsche Welle, 3 December 2004. Available at: http://www.dw.com/en/one-euro-one-way-out-of-unemployment/a-1416143.
9 The rental mirror is an index of local rental values according to the quality of dwelling (e.g. basic, middle or good) over a four-year period. As a market form of rental regulation, it aims to curtail speculative pricing on the part of landlords, that is, it limits rent increases to no more than 20 percent over a three-year period (Fitzsimons Citation2014).