Governance of locality: the neighbourhood as place for

integration?

Willibrord de Graaf

Robert Maier

content

• The local as a place of social cohesion

• Governance and citizenship

• Local integration?

The local as a place of social cohesion

• The local (neighbourhood, district, quarter): long history as ‘natural’ bulwark for social bonds

• Social changes like suburbanisation, individualization, mobility are supposed to undermine local community

• Further discussion on cities and neighbourhoods in the context of globalization (e.g. financial and labour markets; migration; information flows):- globalization changes the local- the local reacts on the global

• Problems like poverty, unemployment, crime, bad housing, segregation are defined as manifestations of social exclusion; concentration of social problems in neighbourhoods should be combated at that level

Cities and their neighbourhoods as targets of intervention to combat the effects of postindustrial and multicultural societies

N.B. The idea of neighbourhood as a natural community is a myth

Example: The Netherlands

1980: problem cumulation areas policy1990: social innovation policy1994: big cities policy

Targets: physical (housing), economic (growth and employment), social (livability) Means: - decentralisation to cities, especially disadvantaged areas - integral approach of problems - administrative coordination - accountability and control

2007: from problem neighbourhood to gem neighbourhood

Example: European Union

2003: URBAN program- reinforcing competitiveness of cities by entrepreneurship, new technology and employment- tackling social exclusion by jobs and education, especially migrants, and by strengthening the capacity of the community to help itself- physical and environmental regeneration

integral approach, local level, involvement of local communities

Governance and citizenship

• Governance

* process of making and implementing (social) policies in states involving public and private (market/civil) partners

* process of mixing (state)bureaucratic and market principles in the policy making and implementation (the managerial state, the entrepreunerial state, new public management) (“the setting, application and enforcement of the rules of the game”, Kjaer, in: Johansson&Hvinden, 2005)

• Governance pertains to three forms of economic resources:- the market (production)- the state (redistribution)- networks (social support, social capital)

• These resources are historically and nationally used in specific constellations in order to create forms of social citizenship

• Citizenship

- status (legal position an member of state with civil, political and social rights and duties/responsibilities)

- process/practice (social constitution of rights and duties and their social distribution in institutional practices)

- identity (ways of self-identifying with membership and of being identified as appropriate acting as citizen)

• Governance relates to citizenship as creating the practices and processes of rights and duties by organizing certain actors and their relations

Governance is not a neutral form of innovative administration, but is embedded in power relations connected to the economic resources and the concomitant forms of inequality

Local integration?

• In politics and policy circles strong emphasis on the necessity to combat segregation as a means to prevent getto’s (both socio-ecomical as ethno-cultural)

• Instrument: mixing of population by mixing of housing and/or norms of eligibility for housing (income)

• Problems: - intervention in physical sphere not connected with social and economic spheres- strategy of using middle class as compensating for lack of social capital is not working

Debate between politics and social scientists

• Central question:is the neighbourhood as the place of problem concentration also the best place for solutions?

• This question is related to the existence of so-called ‘neighbourhood effects’: does living in deprived areas contribute to diminished social mobility?

• Empirical data are very ambiguous, both on socio-economic and cultural variables

• Furthermore: influences of different levels (macro-micro)

• Enormous variations between cities and neighbourhoods even in comparable welfare state arrangements:- differences in social citizenship status and practices - differences in economic development- differences in housing history, demography, religion etc.

Negating this complexity may produce contra-productive effects (water bed effect, strengthening prejudices, assimilation)

• Local governance as partnership between actors- public authorities - private actors (housing associations, project developers, shopkeepers association)- neighbourhood council- tenant platforms or other associations- churches- individuals

• Problems: - power differences between actors- responsability and accountability for process and outcome (problem of trust)

conclusion

• The local not the natural site of cohesion

• The local not the natural site for intervention to foster social and cultural integration

• (Local) governance is a form of citizenship practice in the context of inequality (outcome of the constellation of economic resources)