Territorial Stigmatisation and Poor Housing at a London ‘Sink Estate’

Abstract

This article offers a critical assessment of Loic Wacquant’s influential advanced marginality framework with reference to research undertaken on a London public/social housing estate. Following Wacquant, it has become the orthodoxy that one of the major vectors of advanced marginality is territorial stigmatisation and that this particularly affects social housing estates, for example via mass media deployment of the ‘sink estate’ label in the UK. This article is based upon a multi-method case study of the Aylesbury estate in south London—an archetypal stigmatised ‘sink estate.’ The article brings together three aspects of residents’ experiences of the Aylesbury estate: territorial stigmatisation and dissolution of place, both of which Wacquant focuses on, and housing conditions which he neglects. The article acknowledges the deprivation and various social problems the Aylesbury residents have faced. It argues, however, that rather than internalising the extensive and intensive media-fuelled territorial stigmatisation of their ‘notorious’ estate, as Wacquant’s analysis implies, residents have largely disregarded, rejected, or actively resisted the notion that they are living in an ‘estate from hell,’ while their sense of place belonging has not dissolved. By contrast, poor housing—in the form of heating breakdowns, leaks, infestation, inadequate repairs and maintenance—caused major distress and frustration and was a more important facet of their everyday lives than territorial stigmatisation. The article concludes by arguing that housing should be foregrounded, rather than neglected, in the analysis of the dynamics of urban advanced marginality.

Territorial stigmatisation beyond the city: Habitus, affordances and landscapes of industrial ruination

“…The preoccupation with the symbolic within accounts of territorial stigmatisation (Watt, 2020) has meant a preference for specific methodological approaches that expose misrepresentations of working-class communities, trace the attribution of stigma related to stereotypes and clichés, and seek to connect discourses and perceptions to ill-informed urban policy (Larsen and Delica, 2019;Nayak, 2019). This body of literature has made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the relational making of urban marginality within the polarised metropolises of the 21st century.…”

“…A dynamic concept of habitus-in-figurations demands the analytical unification of (i) the shifting social and material position of the Valleys and its residents; (ii) their symbolic denigration, devaluation and haunting by the spectre of judgement (Skeggs, 2009); and (iii) the changing affordances and industrial ruination of the physical and built environment. It is the latter that is neglected in the take up of Wacquant's schema (Watt, 2020) and to which we turn next, as a complement to habitus formation and the possibilities a relational conception of affordances offers in more fully integrating physical space in conceptualisations of territorial stigmatisation.…”

“…In bringing Wacquant's analytical framework into dialogue with notions of deindustrialised ruination, we also emphasise the limited attention afforded to physical space in Wacquant's theorising of territorial stigmatisation (see also Watt, 2020). Like others, we contend that physical landscapes – or as we suggest later, ‘terrains’ – are ‘…real and physical rather than simply cognised or imagined or represented’ where their physicality ‘…profoundly affects the way we think, feel, move and act’ (Tilley, 2010: 26).…”

Assessing the public attitude toward low-income housing; (case study: Small- and medium-density cities of Iran)

“…Likewise, some researchers believe in the negative impact of such housing on local schools (Tighe, 2009;Price, 2017). Physical attractiveness can be related to the general attractiveness of a residential complex so that prepared green space and buildings' safety may improve outsiders' opinions and create a favorable image of that complex (Price, 2017;Wassenberg, 2004a;Watt, 2020). The seventh cognitive factor includes the moral and social relationships of residents, namely, how social relations are between residents and with other community members and whether they are good neighbors with favorable relations and committed to moral value or not?…”

“…The occurrence of some antisocial behaviors may influence outsider attitudes such as unwillingness to work, drug addiction, and crime perpetration (Wassenberg, 2004b;Motley and Perry, 2013;Nguyen et al, 2013); also, social interactions and morality of residents have been evaluated (Van Duin et al, 2011;Price, 2017;Raynor et al, 2020). Some studies have also referred to the impact of physical factors on the formation of LIH stigma, including building safety (Watt, 2020;Coulombe et al, 2018); those parts are visible to the public, e.g., maintaining the building appearance (Tighe, 2009(Tighe, , 2010Price, 2017), façade design (Tighe, 2009;Arthurson et al, 2014;Price, 2017), and unit area (Price, 2017). Those factors, which affect an outsider's attitude on a neighborhood scale, may highly vary.…”