Against all odds: poor people jumping scales and the genesis of an urban policy in Flanders, Belgium

Loopmans, Maarten; Uitermark, Justus; Maesschalck, Filip De

doi:10.4000/belgeo.15726

Cited by 10 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The extreme right party Vlaams Blok (now called Vlaams Belang) achieved its first major electoral victories in these areas. Flanders’ political establishment was shocked into action and funded local actors, in particular welfare agencies, to engage in civil renewal — by funding neighborhood centers, job programs and community initiatives, the government hoped to change the conditions giving rise to the Vlaams Blok (Loopmans et al ., ). When, in the late 1990s, the Vlaams Blok also had considerable success outside the urban core, urban policy shifted gears: while initially the focus was on strengthening social cohesion and emancipation of disenfranchised groups, since the late 1990s the government is, at least rhetorically, more committed to integrated neighborhood development, including the promotion of gentrification (Loopmans et al ., ).…”

Section: Urban Policy and The Integrity Of The Nation: The Netherlandmentioning

confidence: 97%

Integration and Control: The Governing of Urban Marginality in Western Europe

Uitermark

2013

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Drawing on the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias and the Foucauldian governmentality approach, this article outlines the political rationalities and governmental technologies pertaining to the territorial governance of urban marginality in Western Europe. Whereas many authors have suggested that segregation is key to the governing of urban marginality in the USA and perhaps the post-industrial city generally, I suggest that, at least in Western Europe, marginality is governed through integration. The argument is illustrated with examples from the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium.During the decades after the second world war, the state and its guardians could view and frame the challenges to their authority in deprived neighborhoods as expressions of residual social problems which would disappear as the welfare state expanded and urban renewal proceeded. William H. Whyte (1956: 67) captured the mood in his The Organization Man: 'The big questions are all settled; we know the direction, and while many minor details remain to be cleared up, we can be pretty sure of enjoying a wonderful upward rise'.The modernistic renewal plans of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s exemplified the ambition to achieve order by design. Any remaining deprivation or deviation could be seen as the residue of a bygone era, soon to be swept away.The onslaught of neoliberalism has changed this situation as the prospect of resolving marginality through social and employment policies has become increasingly unrealistic. Contemporary urban marginality is not residual but 'advanced'. Advanced marginality results from 'a macrosocietal drift towards inequality, the mutation of wage labour (entailing both deproletarianisation and casualisation), the retrenchment of welfare states, and the spatial concentration and stigmatisation of poverty' (Wacquant, 1999(Wacquant, : 1639. Advanced marginality represents a daily burden for its immediate victims but this article's premise is that it also poses problems for governance actors. As neighborhoods degenerate into zones of relegation, the state's monopoly over symbolic and physical violence (Bourdieu, 2000: 186) is increasingly challenged. Recent large-scale rebellions in the UK and France spectacularly demonstrate the state's inability to enlist consent or enforce order in deprived areas. The failure to properly govern also expresses itself in a myriad of other, more mundane ways -when people shrug as they hear politicians speak, when teachers cannot make their pupils listen to them, when youth claim public spaces, when trash litters the streets or when welfare agencies fail to process their case loads. In everyday conversations and media reports, the government is questioned as it fails to deliver on the promise of defending order, setting into motion a continuous search I would like to thank Neil Brenner, Walter Nicholls, Bahar Sakizlioglu, Loïc Wacquant and the IJURR referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. bs_bs_banner

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Section: Urban Policy and The Integrity Of The Nation: The Netherlandmentioning

confidence: 97%

Integration and Control: The Governing of Urban Marginality in Western Europe

Uitermark

2013

Int J Urban Regional Res

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“…However, for a full understanding of regional urbanisation politics, it will be necessary to also provide a picture of the practices of the largest Flemish cities Antwerp and Ghent. Indeed, political as well as institutional links between those two cities and the regional government have created a situation where social and political developments in these cities have had a serious impact upon policy formulation at the regional level (see Loopmans et al, 2002).…”

Section: Gramsci Hegemony and Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gaining strength with each election, the Vlaams Blok turned the 'immigrant question' into a major urban problem, thereby indirectly challenging the dominant mode of urban development that had resulted in inner-city immigrant concentration. Faced with such a potentially disruptive mobilisation and electoral threat, government parties felt forced to react (Loopmans et al, 2002;. First, the federal government installed a Royal Commissioner to investigate the immigrant question.…”

Section: Addressing the Immigrant Question Through Neighbourhood Ethnmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inspired by both analyses, a number of hasty policy measures intended to soothe the rediscovered 'urban poor' were installed at the Flemish level (Loopmans et al, 2002). First, in 1990, Flemish Government started a fund for 'the integration of the underprivileged' (Vlaams Fonds voor de Integratie van Kansarmen or VFIK), which channelled extra means for social measures to cities with a concentration of deprived and immigrant households.…”

Section: Addressing the Immigrant Question Through Neighbourhood Ethnmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Mix and Passive Revolution. A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Social Mix Rhetoric in Flanders, Belgium

2010

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Belgium's housing policy has always been instrumental in the pillarisation process. As a consequence, two competing historical models have existed: first, a model promoted by the socialist pillar based on social rental housing in urban settings; second, the model put forward by the hegemonic Catholic party, emphasising the promotion of homeownership of single-family dwellings in rural settings. When this second, anti-urban model, became the main housing model for the masses in the post-war period, its spatial layout was one of sprawl and disinvestment in urban neighbourhoods. However, from the 1970s onwards, various actors have contested this policy. In response, policy makers have turned to a discourse of inner-city social mix. However, this discourse was barely translated into practice and did not affect the hegemonic model. Following Gramsci, this paper analyses how social mix has primarily served as an instrument for passive revolution, by deviating and disempowering counter-hegemonic attacks on the leading model of suburban homeownership.

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“…This Fund was an explicit reaction against the electoral rise of the extreme-right party, the Vlaams Blok (see Loopmans et al 2003;De Decker et al 2005). The electoral success of this party was linked by social scientists and political analysts to a range of 'minor' issues that provoked discontent among residents of deprived neighbourhoods, such as street litter, feelings of anomy, intercultural conflicts, vandalism and petty crime.…”

Section: The Opsinjoren Rationale: Together For a Liveable Citymentioning

confidence: 99%