Geographies of Whiteness and Wealth: White, Middle Class Discourses on Segregation and Social Mix in Flanders, Belgium

ABSTRACT:

While policy makers in different parts of the world are worried about the supposedly negative consequences of spatial concentrations of ethnic minorities and/or disadvantaged people, researchers continue the debate about the desirability and feasibility of social mix. In this article, we add to this literature by focusing on the often neglected, but crucial practices and discourses of the privileged in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 74 white, middle class residents of eight different neighborhoods of the Ghent urban region in Belgium, we demonstrate that few middle class whites actually want to live in a mixed neighborhood. We also make it clear that those living in diversity do not necessarily take up the roles they are expected to take up by the advocates of social mix policies. Drawing on these findings, we propose to broaden the research agenda of studies on segregation and social mix.

Notes

These two nationalities have been chosen because they represent the two largest groups of foreigners from outside the European Union. The map is based on census data from 2001. More recent data are available, but do not include information about people who obtained the Belgian nationality. In 2000, a reform of the citizenship rules facilitated the naturalization process.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nick Schuermans

Nick Schuermans is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the KU Leuven and the Centre on Inequalities, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City of the University of Antwerp. Currently, Nick is the scientific coordinator of DieGem, an interdisciplinary research project on innovative forms of solidarity in diversity in Flanders. He also teaches critical urban theory at the Brussels campus of the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven.

Bruno Meeus

Bruno Meeus is a geographer and a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Architecture of the KU Leuven, Campus Sint-Lucas (LUCA) where he teaches sociology. His current postdoc project financed by INNOVIRIS revolves around the transnational social mobility perspectives of Eastern Europeans working in Brussels. He also teaches population and urban geography at the University of Ghent.

Pascal De Decker

Pascal De Decker is a sociologist and urban planner. He is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the KU Leuven, Campus Sint-Lucas (LUCA) and AMPR of the University of Ghent. He teaches urban and housing sociology.