The Location of Marginalised Groups in the Inner City

Abstract

In this paper certain sociospatial processes currently affecting the evolution of the inner city are considered, namely the processes of gentrification, polarisation and marginalisation. It is argued that these processes are increasing in importance as a result of deindustrialisation, demographic trends, the activities of the state, and changes in ideology; these forces then being reflected in the operation of the housing market. Marginalised groups in urban society can be categorised through their relationships to three elements of capitalist-patriarchal control, namely economic standards, social norms, and legal codes. Constraints on the residential location and activity spaces of marginal groups are examined by means of case studies of the impoverished elderly, the lesbian community, and down-and-out groups in Paris in the 1980s.

Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research∗

“…In the last few years I have read this work with great interest, but have been disappointed that geographers have paid very little attention to lesbians (but see, Adler and Brenner, 1992;Peake, 1993;Valentine, 1993aValentine, , 1993band Winchester and White, 1988). Living in a city with a large, gay male and lesbian population, I began to consider developing a research project about the extensive lesbian communities of Toronto.…”

The City Unbound: Qualitative Approaches to the City

“…The urban homeless are a visibly dispossessed minority whose marginal status in the contemporary city has rightly received much attention (e .g . Bingham et al, 1987 ;Dear and Wolch, 1987 ;Ropers, 1988 ;Winchester and White, 1988) . Not all of the work on the urban homeless can be defined as qualitative in approach .…”

“…Castells (1983, p. 140) controversially argues that lesbians are `placeless' and have more radical political goals which escape spatiality . Those studies to examine urban lesbian communities do suggest that while there may be social and political coherence within urban lesbian sub-groups, this is not necessarily expressed spatially (Wolf, 1980 ;Lockard, 1985 ;Winchester and White, 1988). Alder and Brenner's (1992) interview and action-based study of an urban lesbian community suggests that lesbians had created a residential and commercial concentration in the city but that it had a "quasi-underground character", suggesting that lesbian spatial practices are subsumed within patriarchal structures (both violent and economic) which inhibit spatialised visibility .…”

Living on the Street: Social Organisation and Gender Relations of Australian Street Kids

“…However, his labelling of slum life as culturally disorganised must be seen as a contrast with the accepted moral order (Jackson, 1984). More recent studies of marginal groups have emphasised structural factors as causes of marginalisation rather than personal inadequacy (Winchester and White, 1988).…”