Revisiting the established-outsider constellation in a gentrifying majority-minority neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

The phenomenon of majority-minority cities refers to increasingly ethnically diverse neighbourhoods where everybody belongs to a minority group.Simultaneously, another phenomenon parallels this majority-minority formation and that is gentrification, leading to an inflow of white middle-class residents into neighbourhoods which were previously predominantly occupied by residents with a migration background. Neighbourhoods that 30 years ago experienced a ‘white-flight’ and were subsequently almost exclusively inhabited by migrants and their descendants are now experiencing a ‘comeback’ of young urban professionals and middle-class young families who purchase (un)affordable housing in these gentrifying neighbourhoods. This creates an interesting condition for not only the migrants, but also their descendants who were often born and raised in these neighbourhoods and have lived there for over 30 years. Using Elias and Scotson’s established–outsiders model, this article shows that, while claiming the neighbourhood as their own, descendants of migrants are experiencing a loss of their established status and feeling like an outsider in the face of the changes brought about by gentrification. Using semi-structured interviews with residents with and without a migration background, this article shows how gentrification has different implications for people living in majority-minority settings at the intersections of social class and ethnicity.

KEYWORDS:

• Majority-minority cities
• gentrification
• diversity
• established-outsider
• second-generation

Introduction

In 2020, a Dutch documentary called ‘Terug naar de Akbarstraat’ (Back to Akbarstreet) aired on Dutch television illustrating the transformations experienced in an Amsterdam neighbourhood over the course of nearly 20 years. What made the production so striking was its longitudinal view: the producer had visited the same neighbourhood in the new-west area of Amsterdam for eight months in 2002 to document the changes experienced in this neighbourhood following the arrival of high numbers of migrants, resulting in a critical three-episode documentary called ‘De Akbarstraat’. ‘Terug naar de Akbarstraat’ from 2020 portrayed how the neighbourhood and its inhabitants had since fared. Taken together, the documentaries sketch the transformations taking place in many neighbourhoods in large western cities, such as Amsterdam, which have experienced considerable migration since the 1970s. This migration has transformed not only the demographics but also the housing market, schools, and businesses in the areas. In the case of Amsterdam, it has led to the phenomenon of ‘white flight’ where many working-class white residents left the neighbourhoods where migrants came to live in large numbers. In the year 2002, when the first Akbarstraat documentary was shot, these neighbourhoods were in majority populated by residents with a migration background. Nowadays, not only certain neighbourhoods but the city of Amsterdam is a majority-minority city, where no ethnic group forms a numerical majority (Crul and Lelie 2019). Looking at the younger generation, the future of Amsterdam also predicts a majority-minority city (Crul and Lelie 2021). However, another force has been paralleling majority-minority formation, namely gentrification.

Since the late 1990s, the Dutch government has been undertaking a ‘state-sponsored gentrification’ whereby the government actively increases privately-owned housing in neighbourhoods characterised by social-rental tenure (cf. Uitermark and Bosker 2014, 221). This investment has resulted in a sharp decrease in social rental housing and an increase in purchased housing in many neighbourhoods where residents with a migration background formed the majority (Musterd 2014).

According to Uitermark and Bosker (2014), such interventions only end up deepening segregation as they lead to the dislocation of low-income groups from areas where economy is booming. Hochstenbach and Boterman (2015) argue that the regulated housing market ensures a form of marginal gentrification in the case of Amsterdam, meaning that because social housing still remains in gentrifying/gentrified neighbourhoods low-income residents aren’t all together pushed out and displaced. Despite this more nuanced view in which gentrification does not immediately lead to the displacement of old residents, several studies point out that power relations in gentrifying neighbourhoods, which can take the form of discrimination and racism (Kadioglu-Polat 2020), exclusion (Mayorga-Gallo 2014), or more in general complicated ethnic and social class relations (Aptekar 2019; Bridge, Butler, and Le Galès 2014) are to be taken into account.

These power relations are especially relevant since overall the ‘gentrifiers’ who arrive in majority-minority neighbourhoods are not the white residents who claim that migrants do not belong in there, as they are aware of the multi-ethnic composition. Generally, they display positive attitudes towards ethnically-diverse settings (Crul et al. 2023a; Schut and Waldring 2023), consume diversity in the neighbourhood (Jackson and Benson 2014; Zukin 2008) and no less than 1 out of 4 are in a mixed union (Crul, Lelie, and Song 2023b). Despite these positive attitudes, gentrifiers do not seem to interact much with the established residents of the neighbourhood (Crul and Lelie 2021; Kraus 2023). Other authors (Aptekar 2019; Bridge, Butler, and Le Galès 2014; Kadioglu-Polat 2020; Mayorga-Gallo 2014; Tissot 2014) confirm this picture and pose the question what gentrification and the majority-minority setting together imply for inter-group relations relative to overt and covert power dynamics in such neighbourhoods.

Using Elias and Scotson’s (1998) established–outsiders configuration, we uncover how residents with and without a migration background living in a gentrifying majority-minority neighbourhood can simultaneously feel like an established and an outsider in their neighbourhood relations. Using qualitative interviews, collected under the scope of the Becoming a Minority (BaM) Project, we show how power relations associated with class and ethnicity play a role in the way the established/outsider paradigm plays out for residents. We argue that gentrification forces and the phenomenon of majority-minority cities create a setting where categories of belonging are constantly shifting while power relations continue to be salient.

Gentrification in Amsterdam

Amsterdam has a rich tradition of social-rental housing. In the 1990s, this tradition shifted as social housing was believed to cause concentrations of problems and segregation (Uitermark 2003). Since then, the sustainable growth achieved in social housing until 1995 faced a decline due to the forces of neoliberalisation (Musterd 2014). As the aim was to tackle segregation and to increase social mixing between ethnic and social class groups, a state-led gentrification process kicked off as investments were made to increase the share of higher-income households in areas with a weak market position. This restructuring policy aimed to prevent segregation and neighbourhood decay through selectively promoting gentrification in deprived neighbourhoods (Sakizlioglu and Uitermark 2014). Hence a rapid increase in owner-occupied housing has been observed by tenure conversion from rent to ownership (Musterd 2014). From 2010 to 2020, social-rental housing shrank from 49 to 40% in Amsterdam (online citation).

Hochstenbach and Boterman (2015) argue that the state-led gentrification process in Amsterdam renders it an example of marginal gentrification where it is structurally still possible for low-income residents to move into a gentrifying neighbourhood due to its remaining high share of social-rental housing. They argue that this definition is more fitting for Amsterdam than stage-model gentrification where spearheading gentrifiers gradually displace or replace the previous established residents completely (Sakizlioglu and Uitermark 2014). Instead, marginal gentrification often leads to co-existence of both groups and does not necessarily lead to complete displacement and transformation of the neighbourhood, even though that is a plausible outcome as well. Uitermark and Bosker (2014) argue that the state-led intervention, while aiming at social-mixing, did not succeed in this goal and ended up deepening segregation as it gradually instead of more rapidly leads to the dislocation of low-income groups from areas where economy is booming.

Whether gentrification leads to social mixing is often questioned in the literature, as previous studies showed that the contact between newcomers and more established residents usually remains limited (Davidson 2012), even when the newcomers describe themselves as diversity seekers (Blokland and van Eijk 2010). Furthermore, co-existence of groups with distinct income levels and purchasing power (high-income house owner vs. low-income social-house renter), creates other power dynamics in the neighbourhood that demand further scrutiny. Nevertheless as Bridge, Butler, and Le Galès (2014) argue, social mixing is taking place in one way or another in the diverse cities and research is needed to focus on how this interaction is shaped.

Social mixing and power relations: the established-outsider configuration

Social mixing in diverse and gentrifying neighbourhoods has received much attention from scholars over the years. At the beginning of this millennium, Butler and Robson (2001, 2003) focused on middle-class engagement in Brixton, London, to better understand social mixing in a gentrifying neighbourhood. The authors chronicled the lack of contact between working class and black residents on the one hand, and the diversity seeking middle classes on the other. They described the various groups of residents as ‘social tectonics’, meaning that they behaved like tectonic plates moving past each other in their daily interactions. Based on more recent research in Peckham, Jackson and Butler (2015) revisited this finding as they observed more engagement by middle-class residents and more complicated interactions. Middle-class residents were found to display a mixture of feelings: celebrating diversity on the one hand, controlling and transforming the space in line with middle-class taste on the other (Jackson and Benson 2014).

This controlling of diversity by middle-class residents also comes to the fore in work done by August (2014) and Tissot (2014). Both authors show how neighbourhood or residential management in gentrifying neighbourhoods was characterised by the level of control exercised by middle-class gentrifiers, who simultaneously overtly express their appreciation of diversity (Tissot 2014).

How middle-class gentrifiers experience and behave in the neighbourhood is but one side of the coin. On the other side, we find for example Paton’s research (2016) which uncovers how working-class residents experience little control vis-à-vis the transformations that come in unison with their gentrifying neighbourhoods. Kadioglu-Polat (2020) studied the perspective of Turkish-German entrepreneurs and residents and what their experiences with gentrification are. Her study uncovers how the gentrification processes relate to prior forms of prejudice and discrimination present in neighbourhoods, and exposes how power relations shape the interactions between residents. This perspective illuminates the role of national level politics in shaping local inter-group relations (see Wallace and Favell 2023).

Understanding how interactions between social or ethnic groups are shaped in diverse cities and neighbourhoods, and how (more and less overt) power relations, negotiations, and dynamics play a role herein, is what multiple studies show (August 2014; Blokland and Nast 2014; Mayorga-Gallo 2014; Tissot 2014). To further unpack these power relations, negotiations, and dynamics, we turn to Elias and Scotson’s (1998) established–outsiders configuration which provides a theoretical model to study inter-group relations where power imbalance is central to the analysis.

The established-outsiders model emanates from a study done in a UK community, where a sharp friction and consequent distinction was found between the old (established) and the new (outsiders) residents, despite their similarity in terms of ethnicity, race, nationality, religion and class-background (18). According to the authors, the main dividing line between the two groups of residents was, that the established group lived in the neighbourhood for up to two or three generations and had built strong social cohesion amongst each other with shared norms and values, while the outsider group consisted of newcomers to the neighbourhood from all over the country, lacking the social cohesion which defined the established group. In what followed, the older residents perceived the newcomers as a threat to their existence and by means of stigmatisation (practical workings of power) casted them as outsiders.

The set-up of the study, where the groups in question have neither ethnic and racial nor social class differences, shows that the established-outsiders model serves as an analytical framework to analyse power differences between groups. As these power differences are relational, the established-outsiders model has, for example, been used in migration studies (Eve 2011; Meier 2013; Pratsinakis 2018, 2021) to help understand how ethnic group interactions take shape. The power balance that comes with these interactions isn’t static; Meier (2013), as well as Lever and Milbourne’s (2017) studies, show the temporal nature of established-outsiders relations, and how over time, who is considered established and who is considered an outsider can change, due to changing rules in the neighbourhood (Meier 2013) or due to gaining higher economic status (Lever and Milbourne 2017). Pratsinakis (2018) therefore cautions that power should not be seen as a fixed possession of one group. Neither should we omit to pay attention to the power dynamics within groups.

As the established-outsiders constellation makes power differences central to understanding inter-group relations, we will use the model to understand how gentrification within a majority-minority city setting shapes the inter-group relations and residents’ identification, as well as the experience of feeling like an established and whether this feeling changes and people start feeling like an outsider.

Methods

For this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted in the Transvaal neighbourhood located in the eastern part of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In this section, we will briefly describe the history and current demographic composition of the neighbourhood. We will then elaborate on how we collected the data and how we went about coding and analysing the data.

The Transvaal neighbourhood

The Transvaal neighbourhood was constructed following the housing act of 1901, and it was among the first areas built by housing associations with a large portion of social housing (Teernstra 2014). Carrying the signature of ‘Amsterdam School’ architect Berlage, the neighbourhood buildings, streets, squares, and public gardens were planned and built for working-class families. The area then hosted a large Jewish population which was to be deported in the second world-war and became a rather deserted area (ibid). During the 1970s and 1980s, the Transvaal neighbourhood again became populated due to the arrival of labour migrants from Morocco and Turkey. As these labour migrants largely stayed in the neighbourhood, having families and raising their children there, residents with a migration background are now the longest-serving dwellers of the Transvaal neighbourhood. Looking more closely at the ethnic profile of the group of people with a migration background living in the neighbourhood, we see that 59% has a migration background. The largest group has a background from Morocco (16,3%), followed by people from Surinam (7,9%), Turkey (6,7%), and the Antilles (1.2%). 27,1% of the residents with a migration background comes from various other countries, while 41% of the residents of Transvaal are people without a migration background (O&S 2020).

Like many areas in Amsterdam, the Transvaal neighbourhood has been impacted by gentrification and urban transformation. During the 1990s, the municipality observed a deterioration in the neighbourhood’s conditions, coupled by high unemployment and increasing crime rates and set a state-led gentrification in motion (Hochstenbach and Boterman 2015). Many social-rental dwellings were transformed into privately-owned housing, which were purchased by mostly high-educated, high-income middle-class people without a migration background. In 2005, the percentage of residents without a migration background was 34,6. In January 2020, this percentage had increased to 40.8% (O&S 2020). In line with the changing demographics, gentrification is also reflected in the neighbourhood’s consumption spaces: between the local shops owned by those with a migration background, one now finds many hipster coffee houses or niche restaurants.

Data collection

This study evolved out of the ERC funded Becoming a Minority (BaM) project, which aimed to understand how people without a migration background deal with becoming a minority in their neighbourhood. For the qualitative part of the study, the Transvaal neighbourhood was selected because of its demographic make-up: it is a majority-minority neighbourhood where no single group with a migration background dominates numerically (O&S 2020). We thought this particular feature of the neighbourhood to be of importance, as the variation of ethnic backgrounds might prevent the possibility of one ethnic group standing out as ‘the established’ based on sheer numbers.

The residents without a migration background were approached and selected in (semi-)public spaces in the neighbourhood such as squares, streets, local shops, and stores. Next, we used snowball sampling to obtain more respondents. Our sampling resulted in 19 respondents without a migration background, aged between 25 and 55 year, whom in late 2019 and early 2020 were interviewed using a semi-structured topic list (Crul et al. introduction-in-this-special-issue). As a comparison group, seven interviews with residents with a migration background were conducted. For this, we selected second generation, meaning that they were born and raised in the Netherlands with parents from abroad and are the locals of the neighbourhoods (Keskiner 2019).

We used qualitative semi-structured interviews since these allowed us to obtain rich and detailed information while also allowing our participants the opportunity to address other relevant issues beyond the interview guide (Tracy 2019). While the BaM project was focused on the experiences of those without a migration background in the majority-minority settings, interviews with second-generation respondents, revealed very interesting patterns regarding the transformation of the neighbourhood, changing inter-ethnic relations and gentrification. All interviews were voice-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A thematic analysis was conducted where the transcripts were coded by using the qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti and inductive open coding techniques.

Results

Below we present four vignettes; two respondents with and two without a migration background. In each vignette, we address the factors and dynamics that led our respondents to feel like established and/or an outsider. While our first two respondents, Azra and Adam, talk about being born and having lived all their lives in the neighbourhood as factors making them feel at home (thus like an established), respondents without a migration background and who do not come from the neighbourhood also feel at home due to being from Amsterdam, or living in the area quite a long time. Yet, the passionate claiming of the neighbourhood that we see with respondents with a migration background is less evident for those without a migration background. The way the respondents experience and reflect on gentrification also varies. While gentrification leads those with a migration background to experience feelings of loss and becoming an outsider in their own neighbourhood, the profiles without a migration background diverge on their opinions. Taken together the four vignettes complement each other in painting a picture of the experiences of those with and without a migration background who live in a majority-minority setting where gentrification has gradually changed many aspects in the neighbourhood.

Azra

Azra is a 32 year-old second-generation Turkish-Dutch woman born and raised in the Transvaal. She lives in a social-rental house with her two children and her half-Dutch half-Turkish husband. While she feels very much like an established in the neighbourhood, the new neighbours and her interactions with them also make her feel like an outsider occasionally.

Azra presents her established status with various examples: she is born and raised in the area, she is very familiar with people in the neighbourhood. She also knows how to deal with people, younger or older, with or without a migration background. Being second generation, hence with migrant parents, creates on more than one occasion situations in which Azra takes on a bridging function between the neighbours with and without a migration background:

Yes I can adapt very easily to the Dutch neighbors and I can adapt very easily to people who do not speak a word of Dutch. I sometimes visit them or they sometimes call. I know all the neighbors in both blocks, just to have a chat.

She talks about intervening with neighbours’ children with a migration background on the street when they misbehave since her neighbours without a migration background find that difficult and they ask her help. She describes knowing how to approach these kids and how they also recognise her as an authority figure. According to Azra, she uses a method that the boys recognise from home:

Look they threw down a really big pot of paint in the square one time, the kids. I knew, this is not (something) what our kids would do … Then I went for a walk around and I spoke to some children and I looked at them very angry and I said I would call the police. Then they said ‘sorry we did it’. Then I said ‘you are going to clean it up NOW and you can see how it goes’. They got it all clean, but if my neighbors had asked, they wouldn’t have done it. With things like that they come to me very quickly, but when other things are discussed about the neighborhood or something they don’t involve us.

Azra ends her talk by underlining that her involvement is demanded in a selective way by neighbourhood residents without a migration background. There are matters in which residents without a migration background, being mostly home owners, do not involve or even inform her about meetings about the building or spaces surrounding it:

Things about the neighborhood. For example, where the containers should be, or where the seesaw will be. Or where the sandbox is going to be, with things like that. Look we are the only tenants and these are all buyers. And then I don’t get involved even though I’m from the neighborhood. I come one street over and I know all the neighbors in the neighborhood. If there’s something going on, it’s ‘hey Azra do you know whose car that is?’ Then I can very quickly say that neighbor lives at # ..down the street. Because I’m from the neighborhood. Those are moments when I think: hmm, I do belong, but not completely.

This condition makes Azra question her belonging and status in the neighbourhood. She underlines that this has to do with the status of the neighbours, who are mostly highly educated, have high incomes and have recently purchased a house with a very high value to move into the neighbourhood. This creates a power difference between the neighbours, according to Azra, and therefore the neighbours are acting selectively:

I have really thought about it once and for all, hey I’m going to say something like ‘ I’m sorry, but I think that people should listen to what I think about it. I am also part of the street and I belong there too.’. I didn’t do that because I thought: they think that she is a tenant. Look, they all have homes of very high value, and she can’t afford that or she isn’t that educated. That goes through my head quickly. (They will think) They are a little less. While I can articulate myself well. I speak the Dutch language well. I am very hospitable. I consider myself even more hospitable than my neighbours. With me everyone can always ring the bell, come and go. With them it is always by appointment.

Azra couples the high economic status of her neighbours with their excluding behaviour and together this gives her the feeling that they think ‘less of her’. Again she underlines that they do not have a right to do that, because she is also Dutch, speaks good Dutch and is a very accessible and hospitable neighbour. Yet even when she is made part of initiatives, she talks about the power differences between neighbours and how it influences the outcomes of the actions. She talks about an incidence regarding the future of the courtyard. According to Azra, the private home owners, who mostly have kids, wanted to convert the courtyard to a greenspace, while renters wanted to use it as a parking space. The problem was that all home owners also had their own privately-owned parking space, while the social-house-renters do not have that and needed that parking space. Azra, despite the fact that she is a social-house-renter, has purchased her own parking space and since she also has small kids, it fitted her better to use the courtyard as a greenspace. Hence Azra (as the only tenant) was part of the initiative ran by home owners where they managed to mobilise and get their plans accepted and the courtyard was turned into a greenspace.

Despite the fact that Azra was made part of the initiative and the outcome also fitted her interest, she was still concerned about how things were done, mostly excluding the voices of the renters:

Yes they take things upon themselves very quickly. They feel responsible very quickly. People always call out, they feel so responsible because of their home. They live in a beautiful home, they live on the square. Those homes, you can look at them on Funda (a Dutch real estate website) they really go for [gesture high]. The buyer doesn’t ring my doorbell easily, or they have a VVE (Association for homeowners) meeting when everybody is together. What happens then, I have no idea because I never get involved.

Next to a buyer-renter dynamic created in the living space, inter-ethnic contacts between the neighbours also fuel the established vs. outsiders divide in unexpected ways. First of all, Azra talks about many neighbours getting along quite well and that there is a nice atmosphere in the living complex. There are initiatives taken up by a particular resident without a migration background (who is a home-owner) in cooperation with a resident with a migration background to bring the neighbours together. These initiatives include Christmas dinners and a yearly neighbours’ lunch. Not everyone participates but she does. Yet there are also (subtle) incidents that make Azra feel uncomfortable as a Muslim:

I don’t drink alcohol but I do smoke. My husband sometimes drinks a beer but I have no alcohol in the house and never drink. From my faith I don’t drink alcohol, but I do smoke so that’s actually not good either. But every time they ask me ‘do you want a beer? oh no you don’t drink’. They are not respecting who someone is. You’ve known me for almost four years now, you know everything about me, you know my parents. You know my in-laws. You come and go. If there’s anything, you’re the first to raise the alarm. I’m like ‘yes neighbor, you know for 4 years now I don’t drink.' My husband drinks a beer once in a while so you can offer it to him. So on Christmas Eve everyone is drinking wine so then it is ‘hey Azra, do you want a glass of wine. Oh no you don’t drink.' I find that very unpleasant sometimes.

Since these questions come at nice moments of social get-togethers, Azra doesn’t want to react very harshly or negatively as she fears it will ruin the atmosphere. She says she feels like they are trying to ‘change her mind’ which makes her feel not accepted the way she is.

Adam

Adam is a 28-year-old Moroccan-Dutch second-generation young man, born and raised in the Transvaal. At the time of the interview, he was unemployed and lived in a social rental housing with his parents. Adam’s interview kicks off with his reflections on the changes in the neighbourhood. Adam is very conscious about the forces of gentrification and how they, on the one hand, not only make the neighbourhood a safe place but, on the other hand, are also making the neighbourhood ‘whiter’ and more attractive for the incoming residents without a migration background. Moroccan bakeries are rapidly disappearing and instead the fancy cafes are opening. Knipprath (2023) shows how the nature of urban spaces influences the boundary formation among residents. Adam doesn’t feel comfortable to sit in these new cafes because they are mostly populated by white people without a migration background. There is also the financial aspect of not being able to go along with and be involved in the changes:

I would also like to live on (recently built shopping center & residence) but it’s not possible. To be honest, all the people who came to live there never lived there before. I don’t know where they came from, probably outside Amsterdam. Because they can afford it.

I:

What is it like to live in a neighborhood like that?

A:

I think it is a bit unfair. They could also build a very large apartment to house 100 families who want to stay in the neighborhood. But they don’t do that. They make very nice single-family homes and things like that.

Adam sees the previous residents (with a migration background) leaving the neighbourhood as the social rental housing is declining in offer. According to Adam, the newcomers are high-income groups and his friends are leaving the area:

A:

We used to hang around but we don’t do that anymore. So I only see them (friends) when we meet up in the Bijlmer [different majority-minority neighborhood in Amsterdam], but that’s it. One works, the other is married, one went to live there. They would prefer to live in their own neighborhood in the east, but they can’t because there is nothing there.

I:

They would prefer to stay in the Transvaalneighborhood?

A:

Sure but if you have no house and you have no choice, you go and live in Zaandam [small city close to Amsterdam]. But then a student does come or new neighbors do move in because they can afford to pay 1500 euros a month, so to speak. You can see that.

Adam is disappointed about the fact that his friends are not able to stay in the neighbourhood anymore because they cannot afford to. He uses the word ‘unfair’ to explain this process and thinks that it is a conscious policy-goal:

When they started 12 years ago or something like that, then they already had in mind we are going to build these homes for this target group. They had been working on it for a long time, I can draw that conclusion. It didn’t come out of the blue. There are people who discussed: there should be some whiter people in the neighborhood, some neater people. Throw this in that so it becomes more attractive. I have no idea. Look, if I had spoken to someone from the municipality, it went this way and that, then I could have my own opinion about it … Honestly, I can’t change anything. I am nothing in society … My voice doesn’t count. They don’t listen.

In his response, it becomes clear that Adam is made to feel like an outsider in his neighbourhood due to the politics of the municipality and with the decline of social housing and consumption spaces. He thinks his voice does not count in the eyes of policy makers, yet another sign of him losing his established position. His words convey a discourse of powerlessness. When asked about others, he says if one owns a house, one may have more say in what happens in the neighbourhood but Adam doesn’t provide specific examples. Yet he thinks this is a purposeful planning for transforming a poor neighbourhood, which he thinks that Transvaal still is. When asked about his inter-ethnic relations with the neighbours, he complains about how the newly moved-in high income residents, ignore him and do not greet him:

Fair is fair, they, I think, prefer not to talk to me I think … They don’t even greet me. Yeah, they don’t even greet me. Even though it’s my next door neighbor. You see each other almost every day, but no. Yes, it is a gesture. You come and live in my neighborhood, my street, my block. At least a ‘good day’. I would have done that if I were going to live in Arnhem and I have neighbours. Yes ‘good morning, good evening’. Just being a little bit social.

Important in Adam’s account is that he uses this story about greeting to emphasise that he is the established in the neighbourhood, he says ‘you come to “my” area yet you do not greet me’. When asked if Adam said hello, he says he expects the newcomers to come and say hello and introduce themselves. Which apparently his neighbours didn’t do. He then goes on to say that the residents without a migration background ‘who live in the neighbourhood for years’ do say hello to him and great him. So he underlines that he specifically refers to the neighbours who recently moved into the neighbourhood after having purchased a house;

Yes less social people. But also what I’m trying to explain: they might not be used to having foreign neighbours, social contact or saying hi. Maybe they are not used to it because they are not from Amsterdam. If you live in a farming village in Groningen or something and you come into the inner city – you’re not used to that. You also hear that in Overijssel or Drenthe or something like that ‘yes all those foreigners you should have nothing to do with’. Then you keep that in the back of your mind. Look, all I’m doing is jumping to conclusions. I have not spoken to them. That’s also common knowledge: many people who live in Amsterdam are not from Amsterdam. What does that mean? That the people who live in Amsterdam can no longer live in Amsterdam.

Adam interprets the behaviour of the newcomers, as not being from Amsterdam, and not being used to seeing people with a migration background. He said he fears that soon the children of the new residents will not greet the neighbours with a migration background because they do not see their parents doing it. What Adam does not understand is ‘why do they move here if they are not going say hi or have a small talk’. Talking about the (lack of) inter-ethnic contacts with the newcomers, Adam claims his established status in the neighbourhood. Yet he feels increasingly pushed into an outsider position due to the recent changes.

Keesje

Keesje is our first profile without a migration background; a 55-year old woman living with her son in the Transvaal neighbourhood. Keesje has a higher education diploma but at the time of the interview she was unemployed and she lived in a rundown apartment and she had also been homeless prior to getting this place. Keesje comes from Amsterdam and she feels a strong bond with the city, so when asked she says:

I’m an Amsterdammer [person from Amsterdam]. I’m from the Kinkerbuurt [west]. And when I’m passing through the Molukkenstraat, I think yes, that’s mine. I used to go there with my grandma, she hasn’t lived there in 40 years, but the whole city is mine. I grew up in Noord [north]. The whole city is mine.

Even though she didn’t grow up in the Transvaal, she has a strong belonging to the city and also mentions her father being from the east of Amsterdam. Her identity as an Amsterdammer, which is according to her stronger than her (national) identity, is frequently mentioned throughout the interview and contributes to her feeling of belonging. Another interesting factor adding to her established feeling is the positive (inter-ethnic) relations she has built since moving to the neighbourhood. Upon arrival in this neighbourhood she met some Turkish neighbours and they quickly established a bond:

That’s what I love about the Turkish mentality. ‘Cause I’d just moved here with my son, I just plumped down here. It wasn’t my choice, at 55 years old, like – you know I’m really happy and content, I’m not playing the victim – but I hadn’t expected to end up here. I’m really happy ‘cause I have a lot of roots here in Oost, on my father’s side, so that feels nice. But we started out here during the winter months, well, there’s no one outside during that time, we’re from this corner and they’re from that corner, and we turned around the corner and honestly, the smile that appeared, a young mother with two little children, there’s a third now, and she was so inviting, and so funny, and sweet. And so was he. And it was like ‘oh, do you live here too?’ And since then it’s grown to be a real friendship. But it was because of them, they asked me.

As opposed to Azra’s interactions with some residents that make her feel like an outsider or Adam’s lack of interaction with the newly arriving residents without a migration background, Keesje’s growing trust relationship with the Turkish-Dutch neighbours makes her experience more belonging in the area. She values diversity and when asked about it, she highlights the ongoing discrimination in the labour market as a problem:

There has to be some kind of common denominator in Amsterdam, that’d be best, that [common denominator is that] everything is just mixed up. That’s important. But, when you see how difficult it is for those girls [from a migrant background] to get an internship, I just feel embarrassed. It really embarrasses me. It makes me angry, and rightly so.

Keesjes doesn’t have much other contacts in the neighbourhood. She does join a coffee morning organised by a resident without a migration background who is a home-owner and a Moroccan-Dutch resident who is a social renter. She really appreciates their effort and she also underlines some groups not joining these initiatives because of them feeling like they’re ‘the elite’. Keesje more often talks about the incoming ‘elite’; residents who come to live on her block, but who do not mix with other residents. She also mentions that those with a migration background sometimes do not participate, but she has more understanding for this group:

Say, I was Moroccan and I lived here and I raised my kids here for 30 years, and then all of a sudden there’s this: ‘oh, you don’t like me?’ Look at it from the other side, well it’s just shit isn’t it? You wouldn’t be going round offering people soup after that. But I can imagine like, ‘now all of a sudden they do want to live here, when at first they didn’t’. If you’re Turkish, Moroccan, you live here with your family, cousins, all of you, and then there’s all these … now they’ve decided they want to live here. It used to be a deprived area and now they’re doing this [laughs]. So these things need time. I get why you’re asking more about it, but I don’t have the key, the key to balance, we’re all here together, and that’s a really good thing. ‘Cause no one can dominate and criticize … 

In this quote, Keesje empathises with the residents of migrant background. She understands that the arrival of the newcomers can be frustrating for them since they lived in the neighbourhood for nearly 30 years with all their families when it was seen as a deprived neighbourhood. In that sense, Keesje is not formulating or perceiving the changes in the neighbourhood in terms of some residents becoming outsiders. She sees diversity as the common denominator of Amsterdam, yet, she is aware of the reserved behaviour of 'the elite', which aligns with Adam’s claims in terms of not greeting. However, Keesje thinks that over time people will get used to each other. When asked about whether she had a bad experience, she tells about a bookshelf which was placed on her outside wall by a home-owner without consulting her:

I:

Have you ever experienced situations that weren’t as pleasant?

K:

[silence] the book shelf [laughs]. I wasn’t even asked. She just thought ‘She (referring to herself) rents and I own my place, so I can decide, that’s how people think. So I’ll just put that bookshelf in front of her door and then I can have nice chats with people while I smoke a cig’. It was the way she went about it as well. So I was fed up, she should’ve asked. It was right below my bedroom window. So every time it was like clap clap clap when I’m reading a book. I’ve got an allergy and it’s trash, ‘cause when you’re living around so many people … I get so annoyed by the way people drop their trash right where the kids are playing. I just think, for God’s sake, there’s kids here, we need to keep this place clean. They should be able to run around in sandals, ‘cause there’s still a lot of playing here, the kids here really play outside. My reaction to the book shelf was an allergy and she never asked. So I was just done. I think it’s bad behaviour.

Despite her very positive take on diversity, the buyer-renter dynamic mentioned by Azra is also something Keesje experiences. Keesje interprets the placement of the bookshelf outside her window as a power issue: a buyer thinking that she is entitled to act without needing to consult a renter. It is precisely this fact that she ‘was never asked’ which bothered her.

Keesje is a white Dutch person with a higher education background. Yet she has a low socio-economic status and lives in a rental. Her experience shows that the buyer-renter dynamic is not only experienced by residents with a migration background, but also without a migration background hinting at the class dynamics. While not strongly claiming the neighbourhood, the way Azra and Adam do, as an Amsterdammer she feels very much at home and her (inter-ethnic) connections are working in favour of her established feeling.

Joanna

Joanna is a 37-year-old graphic designer coming from a family with highly educated parents and she herself also finished higher education. She was born and raised in an eastern province of the Netherlands, not in a city but in a smaller area with ‘no diversity’, as she puts it. After shortly living in the city centre of Amsterdam, with her partner (who is originally from Amsterdam) she moved to the Transvaal neighbourhood 12 years ago. They have purchased their house with a front and back garden and live there with their two children. When asked about her places of interaction in the neighbourhood, Joanna underlines that she lives in a street mostly with private housing and people who are like her ‘white, highly educated and a lot of families. Either families or yuppies’. When she is asked to reflect on the composition of her street with regards to diversity, she says:

I think it’s a bit like an oasis. There used to be, it’s gone now, around here, there used to be a preschool. My children went to preschool there and that was very diverse. Especially when my oldest first went there, he was the only blond child. And they used to organize walk-in playing time. Back then I thought: ‘Oh, that’s great, I can meet people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise’. Parents who wear headscarves and have different backgrounds. And there’s a woman who lives here. We kept seeing her afterwards as well. She was from a completely different background and I wouldn’t have come into contact with her otherwise. That happened because of those walk-ins. But that phase is fairly short obviously, when your child turns 4 and starts school, it’s over.

Joanna chose that pre-school for practical reasons: it was very close to her house. Later she and her partner chose a primary school in a different neighbourhood since they were not happy with the kind of diversity that the schools close-by offered. Joanna thought that some ethnic groups were dominant in the neighbourhood schools, and she didn’t want her child to be a ‘minority’ in his school. She also felt like a minority in the playgrounds in the neighbourhood because some groups (with a migration background) were being aggressive, so she stopped going there altogether. When asked about whether she feels at home in the neighbourhood, she relates her feeling of belonging positively to the changes brought about by gentrification:

 

Do you feel at home in this area?

J:

Yes and no. I feel mostly at home on my own street, the neighborhood’s also changed a lot. So in that sense I’m starting to feel more and more at home.

I:

What’s caused you to feel more and more at home?

J:

Just the classic gentrification I think. Like the cafes I go to, a mother who wears a headscarf probably wouldn’t go there. It feels that way to me. And not this part for example [Transvaal west]. There’s nothing there that I’d go to, I’m more like: nahh.

I:

Yes, so apart from your street, I can see most of the things you marked on the map are on this side [Transvaal east].

J:

Yes, and this one [pointing at a café] wasn’t there 12 years ago, and neither was that one [another café]. So for me that was kind of, well it wasn’t quite a ‘no-go area’ but it’s become nicer for me in that sense.

First of all, Joanna feels increasingly at home with the cafes and restaurants that arrive in the neighbourhood thanks to gentrification. This is in contrast to her feeling 12 years ago, when she and her partner considered to move to a ‘homogeneous’ residential area in the south of Amsterdam. Yet, they stayed because they wanted a ‘bit of a buzz. A bit of, well, diversity’. But since then, with the changes, she feels more at home in the area and less like an outsider, a minority:

And if we’re looking at the neighborhood in its entirety. Do you feel like you’re part of a minority group?

 

J:

I did 12 years ago but I don’t anymore. I’m not really sure whether that feeling changed that much, ‘cause we live on such a closed off street. We all know each other. You pretty much know where everyone lives. You’ve spoken to each other, or at least say hi, you know. But other than that, not so much, so you don’t notice it as much. What’s changing is that it’s getting more fun. If we want to go out for dinner we have so many options, it didn’t used to be like that.

Joanna explains her home feeling and being an established in relation to her street and knowing the people in the street. She notes that while people complain about gentrification all the time saying ‘it’s bad, everything’s getting more expensive’, she says it is creating new spaces to visit and also more safety in the neighbourhood. Regarding safety, Joanna gives the example of a shooting that happened years ago in a coffee shop which has since closed down, making way for a popular restaurant to which she and her partner often go.

Twelve years ago when they decided to move to this area, she and her partner hesitated at first; because there were not many facilities. Nevertheless they still chose this house because they liked the street. In talking about her neighbourhood, Joanna mentions having good relations with her neighbours, some of which have a migration background. One of her neighbours is Czech, for example, ‘but that’s different, that’s more like the highly-educated, expat vibe, rather than the traditional foreign labourers’. She thinks the interaction is different because of religion and because ‘she doesn’t wear a headscarf’.

Conclusion

Majority-minority settings, where no group holds the numerical majority anymore is not free from power dynamics. Changes in the neighbourhood and especially gentrification processes add a layer to the power struggles and shape the personal and group level experiences of diversity. Focusing on residents without a migration background in five majority-minority cities, Kraus (in this special issue) illustrates how highly educated residents without-a-migration-background while generally holding positive attitudes about diversity, hardly interact with those with-a-migration-background in their neighbourhood. This could be because such interactions demand a minimum effort, a micro labour as Schut and Waldring (in this special issue) show. In this article, we have looked at both sides of the coin and studied the experiences of those with and without a migration background in a majority-minority neighbourhood. We have applied Elias and Scotson’s (1998) ‘established- outsiders’ paradigm to uncover power dynamics (Pratsinakis 2018) in a majority-minority setting and to make sense of factors leading to feeling like an established or an outsider.

Throughout the interviews, not only Azra and Adam but all our second-generation respondents strongly claimed to be the established dwellers of the area. They relate this position to their experiences of being born and having grown up in the neighbourhood and also having their families there for over a generation (Elias and Scotson 1998). They evidence this by stating their familiarity with the area and its ethnically diverse residents. Respondents without a migration background also feel good and at home in the neighbourhood, although they do not claim these feelings as strongly as the second-generation respondents do. While Keesje has a strong Amsterdammer identity, Joanna, originally coming from an eastern province of the Netherlands, also feels at home especially in her street, partly because of its ethnically homogenous composition. Yes, these home or established feelings are not without its challenges.

What strains feelings of being the established among the second-generation is primarily linked to the white newcomers in the neighbourhood and the transformation in the neighbourhood’s consumption spaces due to gentrification. Feelings of being the established become more ambivalent under these changes, and expressions of loss, negligence and favouritism are contradicted with the reclaiming of one’s established position (‘we are still here’). The respondents without a migration background are also aware of the changes brought about by gentrification, yet their reactions are mixed. While one group thinks that mixing has to be the common-denominator of Amsterdam (i.e. Keesje) and that gentrification is a risk for diversity, there are also residents whose feeling of home is improved with these changes (Joanna). Hence while Azra and Adam are feeling less like the established or at home due to gentrification, this feeling is improving for Joanna because of gentrification.

In understanding the power dynamics, social class is an important factor explaining the established and outsider feeling as it becomes evident in the buyer-renter dynamic (Huse 2018; Tissot 2014). While renters can be both with and without a migration background and mostly from lower income households, buyers are defined as high-educated, high-income people without a migration background (but also with a migration background with expats), who are mostly ‘not originally’ from Amsterdam and who are able to purchase a high-priced house in the area. This condition creates a status imbalance between the residents which is reflected in social relations, arrangement of consumption or other common spaces. The class dynamic becomes even more acute with the example of Keesje, who does not have a migration background but experiences this power dynamic with the bookshelf incident.

Is there also an ethnic aspect that explains the established and outsiders dynamic? Studying entrepreneurs in Berlin, Kadioglu-Polat (2020) shows that ethnic inequalities and discrimination that dominate the power relations on the macro level are also mirrored in the neighbourhoods. In our article, it is important to underline that the respondents with-a-migration background often used the concept of ‘whitening’ as a lens to define the changes in the neighbourhood. This construction of whiteness associated with the gentrifiers is not applied to the older or existing white working-class residents without a migration background. Hence, their representation of gentrification as ‘becoming white’ is not intended for portraying a generic ‘white culture’ taking over as such, instead it is their wording of how more middle-class white residents are welcomed into the area by the authorities and the market forces, through building projects and promotion of changing consumption practices, and how this in turn challenges the representation or existence of the previously established populations and diversity. These feelings are accompanied by ambivalence as the respondents also appreciate the neighbourhood becoming safer thanks to the gentrification forces, another common phenomenon that such transformations bring about (Zukin 2008). As a result, while ethnicity seems to play a role in the whitening of the area, this role intersects with social class dynamics.

By studying both groups we were also able to uncover the role of inter-ethnic relations in contributing to feeling like an established and outsider. While in Azra’s and Adam’s case, the inter-ethnic relations (or their absence) fed feelings of exclusion and feeling like an outsider, it has the opposite effect for Keesje whose feeling of home and being established is reinforced thanks to her contacts with the Turkish neighbours. In a similar vein, Joanna feels much more at home in her small street thanks to her good relations with her neighbours. Our study also showed how small talk and pleasant inter-ethnic encounters, which feature centrally in the conviviality literature, are part of the power relations fuelling feeling like an established or not. Almost all of our respondents with and without a migration background talked about the Turkish grocery store where they are welcomed as ‘neighbour’ and how it made them feel connected to the neighbourhood. Further studies can look into the role played by inter-ethnic relations in contributing to the feelings of established and the outsider.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank both the people who have commented on earlier versions of this chapter as well as our reviewers. This research project has been made possible by the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant 741532.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.