29 research outputs found
Making Trouble. Disruptive Interventions of Urban Youth as Unruly Politics
In this dissertation, I explore the political meaning of disruptive, and even violent,
interventions of youth with a migrant background in the public domain of France and
the Netherlands. I relate two qualitative case studies– carried out in one French and
one Dutch neighborhood– to a theoretical analysis of the political potential of
seemingly senseless events of civil unrest. The urban areas where my research takes
place can be characterized as deprived neighborhoods, because of their rundown
physical appearance and the range of socio-economic problems inhabitants have to
deal with. These areas, and other comparable “problem neighborhoods” have the
reputation of being a breeding ground for criminality and aggressive street culture.
Urban riots and other spontaneous disturbances of the public order which start in
such areas, and during which commodity goods are stolen, public property is
demolished and fellow inhabitants are harassed, seem to lack any political sense. Other
than countercultural or protest groups with a clear political ideology, like social
movements and identity-based interest groups, the youth involved in such events are
not seen as political agents, because no spokespeople are put forward to address the
press and no banners are carried. The emergence of such spontaneous disorder is
often ascribed by the media and politicians to the individual deviancy of the young
people involved, as became explicitly apparent in the reception of the riots around
Paris in 2005 and the riots around London in 2012. In the first reactions to these
events, young rioters were criminalized and pathologized, while the relation to the
social and political structures of the society in which they are embedded was often
overlooked
Culture Wars, Revanchism, Moral Panics and the Creative City. A Reconstruction of a Decline of Tolerant Public Policy: The Case of Dutch Anti-squatting Legislation
Squatting became illegal in the Netherlands on 1 October 2010. The paper examines the dynamics involved. Theoretically drawing on debates about culture wars, revanchism, moral panics and the creative city, it is based on participant observation in squatter meetings, debates with politicians, a parliament hearing, lobbying meetings and various informal encounters, on a survey and on a collection of documents. A key mechanism that the paper explores is the following. Strategies of resistance that seem more or less manageable in the local context of a creative city can, when they backfire, cause a moral panic on the national level. This provides ammunition for revanchist politicians