Re‐scripting Place: Managing Social Class Stigma in a Former Steel‐Making Region

Abstract

Following the closure of the steelworks in Teesside, North‐East England, this paper focuses upon social class inequality and the re‐scripting of place. The study explores local responses to programmes such as Benefits Street and Location, Location, Location filmed in Middlesbrough. The study contributes to transnational debates on urban territorial stigmatisation in three ways. First, by extending the gaze from “spectacular” sites of multi‐ethnic urban unrest, to consider seemingly “mundane” post‐industrial peripheries. Second, by identifying how the recipients of spatial stigma might demonstrate agency through various acts of popular resistance including place re‐inscription. This includes developing alternative narratives of place, through commemorating Teesside's rich industrial heritage, supporting ex‐steelworkers, and challenging governmental stigma and media geographies declaring Middlesbrough to be a “benefits town” and the “worst place to live in the UK”. Third, by considering the unfolding of place as event, where contingency, complexity and unpredictable constellations and re‐inscriptions might emerge.

On the Stickiness of Territorial Stigma: Diverging Experiences in Amsterdam’s Most Notorious Neighbourhood

“…Moreover, in negotiating territorial stigma, the materiality of place was found to play an important role. Residents in the newly constructed housing projects mobilised the built environment to re‐inscribe place as an ordinary, suburban neighbourhood (Cairns ; Nayak ), functioning as an additional identity marker that served to distance them from negative cultural stereotypes. In this respect, the benefits of urban renewal are clearly unequally distributed: not only is stigma often used by governing actors to justify area‐based interventions, displacing social renters and attracting more affluent residents (De Koning ; Kipfer ; Tissot ; Tyler and Slater ), these new residents also disproportionally benefit from material improvements because it enables them to develop counter‐narratives against blemish of place.…”

“…This counter‐narrative provides them with hope and a sense of agency to cope with stigma. Similarly, based on his study of a stigmatised former industrial town in North‐East England, Nayak (:944) concludes that residents may “speak back to dominant regimes of representation” by re‐inscribing place with more positive meanings.…”

“…For example, Marja described extensively how living in the Bijlmer means you have to be able to interact with “all sorts of residents”, contrasting herself with “less worldly” people who are “uncomfortable with difference” . At the same time, these residents also try to abate racial stereotypes by re‐scripting place identity (Cairns ; Nayak ). They systematically describe their neighbourhood as “mixed”, “multicultural” and “colourful” rather than “dark” or “black”.…”

The other side of coastal towns: Young men’s precarious lives on the margins of England

“…You won't get it, you won't get it at all round here. (Darren, aged 21) I am not working at the moment [March 2019]. No one will be hiring at the moment because it's so dead.…”

“…Always economically relatively precarious as tourism is a seasonal trade, largely reliant on low-wage labour (Beatty and Fothergill, 2004), their economies suffered from the rapid growth of cheap foreign travel from the 1970s (Gale, 2005; Rickey, 2009; Rickey and Houghton, 2009; Shaw and Williams, 1997; Walton, 2000), although economic change and decline varies by location and time, as specific coastal resorts are differentially affected. Resorts in north Devon, for example, suffered from the closure of branch railway lines in the 1960s, whereas on the north-east coast, the closure of the steel works on Teesside in 2015 severely affected resorts already in trouble (Nayak, 2019). More generally, low levels of investment, rising poverty, housing problems as large Victorian properties, previously occupied by visitors, need maintenance (Smith, 2012; Ward, 2015), problems of high rates of drug abuse, community issues connected to recent government policies of housing refugees and asylum seekers in these towns and outward migration of the more educated population have resulted in the coincidence of high levels of social and economic deprivation (House of Lords, 2019; Reid and Westergaard, 2017).…”