Who’s to blame? Segregation, policy and stigma in Swedish editorial discourse

• Critical research on residential segregation has long emphasised issues of inequality and discrimination as crucial factors for its production and reproduction. Equally, research on spatial stigmatisation is recognised in scholarly debate as a highly problematic practice which not only shapes policy interventions but also affects the residents of targeted areas. With the ambition of problematising the relationship between residential segregation and stigmatisation, this article analyses printed newspaper editorial discourse in order to critically examine constructions of place. News media has been argued to be a key agent in the practice of stigmatisation, which makes editorial statements highly significant when it comes to how the newspaper perceives the importance of stigmatisation. In addition, the theoretical framework of residential segregation as a process based in structural inequalities provides the basis for identifying stigmatisation of poor and racialised neighbourhoods as an often neglected but indispensable piece of the puzzle. It is argued here that editorials’ neglect of practices of stigmatisation reproduce and simultaneously hide power relations inherent to processes of inequality.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

stigmatisation

segregation

policy

neighbourhood

media

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)