Compound Communities: Fortifying Socioeconomic and Racial Barriers in South Texas Border Towns

Sifuentes, A.M. Foiles

doi:10.1111/nad.12027

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The well-off residents themselves were found to be largely unaware of this process, experiencing it as natural and taken for granted. These findings are complemented by those from a very different study of working-class white seasonal retirees living in fortress communities in South Texas, surrounded by a wealthier, mainly Latino, settled population (Foiles Sifuentes, 2015). Here, the residents made use of overt racism to deter 'others' from moving in, as a means of obtaining, maintaining, and securing spaces of white exclusivity.…”

Section: Segregationmentioning

confidence: 84%

Gated communities revisited: defended homes nested in security enclaves

Blandy¹

2018

PPP

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This article reviews developments over the past ten years which have led to an increase in architectural and technological defensiveness of both individual homes and of neighbourhoods. It argues that this is the result of a combination of prevailing structural conditions: neoliberal state policies that bolster responsible home ownership and aim to reduce public spending; an emphasis on the market which opens the way for developers and the security, insurance and associated industries to make profits; loss of place-based community which cannot be replaced by the legal frameworks which bind the residents of private enclaves; an increase in house prices causing homes to be viewed primarily as financial assets; fear of crime fuelled by the media; and a lack of government policies to prevent the further growth of gated communities.Keywords: defended homes; gated communities; tessellated neoliberalism.The editors' invitation gives me an opportunity to reflect on gated communities and their societal effects over the past decade, both in the context of a generally more fearful and individualistic attitude to the home and in the context of the economic and ideological policies and forces associated with this trend. In the ten years since my paper 'Gated communities in England as a response to crime and disorder' was published in PPP, this form of housing has proliferated across the world. Research into gated communities and the issues they raise has followed suit, and there are now so many relevant publications that it would be impossible to cite them all here. Much of this research has been descriptive and very context-specific, but there have been some comparative publications which help us to understand the different drivers for the spread of gated communities in different countries, and to consider whether it is possible to draw any general conclusions (see, for example, Bagaeen and Uduku, 2015). Rowland and I then started to notice that many single homes were becoming fortified. As well as enclosed housing developments behind barriers, with legal arrangements for self-governance (i.e. gated communities), many ordinary suburban homes now display security features such as lockable electronic gates, spike-topped walls and fences, internal and external iron grilles at the windows, burglar alarms and CCTV. The concept of defensive homeownership was developed for our recent book (Atkinson and Blandy, 2017) and I will draw on some of those ideas to argue that fortress homes and

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Section: Segregationmentioning

confidence: 84%

Gated communities revisited: defended homes nested in security enclaves

Blandy¹

2018

PPP

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“…Meanwhile, she continues the contrastive use of spatial deixis, paired with salient contrasts in person deixis, that was observed in the previous section: again, "there" meaning Matamoros (spoken by the distant, quoted "I" in line 48) is bookended with "over there," meaning wherever Araís imagines the article's reception. Note, however, the movement from relatively more distant to more proximal spaces in the following strip of narration: Someone from Minnesota or Canada might read the story-someone with no prior knowledge of the border, perhaps, or one of the many "snowbirds" from the Midwest and Canada who winter in the Rio Grande Valley, often with minimal involvement with the local Mexican-American population (Foiles Sifuentes, 2015). But someone from "not even that far" (45) might also read the story and come away with a distorted view of Matamoros, as Araís sees it, from the town of Roma, about two hours west of Brownsville/Matamoros, or even from McAllen, a major city about one hour to the west.…”

Section: →39mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Too Much Cream on the Tacos”: Narrative and Moral Personhood in Transfronterizo Experience

O’Connor

2018

AMAE Journal

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Building on prior analyses of storytelling in migrant and transnational contexts (e.g. Baynham, 2014; De Fina, 2003; Haviland, 2005; Warriner, 2013), this article draws on research with transfronterizo (border-crossing) university students in South Texas to explore how transnational speakers use narrative to craft moral arguments in trying times. The article focuses on a single, lengthy narrative from a transfronteriza undergraduate named Araís in order to demonstrate how her narrative practice contributes to her “ideological becoming” (Bakhtin, 1981). That is, the analysis shows that the structural, textual, and dialogic features of Araís’s narrative are connected both to her emergent, dialogic understanding of her self and to value projects, or efforts to (re)shape the social world, implied in her narrative (Agha, 2015). The analysis illuminates the ethical affordances of transfronterizo narrative—i.e., the opportunities that storytelling offered transfronterizo students to evaluate their own and others’ actions in moral terms. Based on this analysis, I suggest implications for our understanding of narrative and moral personhood among transfronterizo students and other migrant and transnational subjects.

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“…Middle class homeowners in suburban gated communities make use of two mechanisms for maintaining whiteness and white privilege: the fear of others and the desire for niceness , which combine to inscribe racist assumptions on the landscape (Low, 2009). In contrast, the working-class white seasonal retired residents of fortress communities employ overt racism to exclude the wealthier, predominantly Latino, settled population that surrounds them (Foiles Sifuentes, 2015). There are many ways of obtaining, maintaining, and securing spaces of white exclusivity.…”

Section: Author Response To Comments On Domestic Fortress By Elsa Notmentioning

confidence: 99%

Book review essay

Rosenfeld

2017

Urban Studies

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Compound Communities: Fortifying Socioeconomic and Racial Barriers in South Texas Border Towns

Cited by 3 publications

References 43 publications

Gated communities revisited: defended homes nested in security enclaves

Gated communities revisited: defended homes nested in security enclaves

“Too Much Cream on the Tacos”: Narrative and Moral Personhood in Transfronterizo Experience

Book review essay

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