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In the Groninger Veenkoloniën, a former peat region in the northeast of the Netherlands, persistent poverty is more prevalent compared to other rural regions in the country. Grounded in participant observations and supplemented by in-depth interviews capturing the social life history of 21 participants, this paper paints a detailed picture of the social networks and class practices of those experiencing persisting poverty in the examined town and surrounding region. In addition, we explore the relations between the rural context and lived experiences of class and poverty. Our findings highlight the complex experience as well as spatial embeddedness of persisting poverty. We find that, although the specific circumstances to which the participants are exposed vary greatly, the repercussions in terms of the characteristics of their social networks and practices are very similar. In general, the social networks of participants are fragmented and small, tightly knit, and characterized by clear power imbalances. The most formative experiences that result in the isolation of networks of poor are found to occur in the home and family situation during childhood years. We argue that poverty and the region's history are intricately interwoven resulting in a socio-spatial stigma which in turn contributes to the persistent and intergenerational character of poverty in the rural context of our study. Due to the long history of stigmatization, dismantling the socio-spatial stigma attached to the Groninger Veenkoloniën will presumably take multiple generations.

Despite research questioning the beneficial effects of social mixing interventions, urban governments continue to strive for a social mix. In this paper we examine the effects of social mixing through the concept of rhythm. We paint an ethnographic portrait of a disadvantaged area in the city of Groningen, The Netherlands, which was targeted by a social mixing intervention. We analyze everyday rhythms of newcomers and long-term low-income residents in order to shed light on the effects of the mixing intervention on perceptions of social division and disadvantage. By introducing ‘exemplary’ newcomers, the social mixing intervention improves the area in terms of e.g. livability scores and socio-economic indicators. However, looking through the lens of rhythm, we found how social divisions between advantaged and disadvantaged groups become exacerbated as a result of ‘arrhythmias’ occurring. We argue that institutional actors fail to align the social mixing intervention with long-term residents’ daily rhythms, which impinges upon that group’s right to the social production of their neighborhood. On a wider scale, we assert the social mixing intervention renders the problem of socio-economic disadvantage spatially insignificant under the guise of improved livability. Therefore, we implore future urban policy to explicitly imagine the ways in which socio-spatial interventions might affect daily rhythms of inequality within neighborhoods.