Global Appeal: Colorblindness, Neoliberalism, and Neighborhood Branding

Abstract

Using content analysis of Buffalo media and 20 semi-structured interviews, I document the use of immigrant entrepreneurialism as a neoliberal urban governance strategy. Racism evasiveness is central to this strategy. I observe that immigrants and refugees are treated as symbolic capital as part of a neighborhood branding strategy that involves parlaying diversity into material benefits. I call this strategy global appeal. Buffalo’s resurgence is a feel-good story that draws on neoliberal market logics, colorblindness, and diversity ideology. These stories allow Whites to evade racism when discussing neighborhood renewal and racist comments. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, Bell’s concept of neighborhood frames, and Beeman’s theory of racism evasiveness, I argue that immigrants and refugees are used as symbolic capital to construct a neighborhood brand. This is part of a strategy of roll out neoliberalism that relies on two neighborhood frames: revitalization and diversity. The revitalization frame credits immigrants and refugees with contributing to the neighborhood through homeownership, entrepreneurialism, and school enrollment. The diversity frame celebrates people of different races, cultures, and ethnicities coming together while both evading and obscuring racism.

Demolition, Division and Displacement: Examining the Preservation of Whiteness in Rotterdam Municipal Housing Policy

“…Rotterdam is an example of the term ‘superdiversity’, what Scholten et al (2018) define as ‘when diversity itself has become so ‘diverse’ that one can no longer speak of clear majorities or minorities’ (p. 2). In this way, Rotterdam proves an interesting case study; examining whiteness in this city, where the neoliberal, marketable ideal of ‘diversity’ (Rabii, 2023) has been reached, further contextualises issues of race and racism in the modern world.…”