Constructing Spaces of Intervention in Gothenburg's Urban Periphery; The production of “vulnerable areas” in the City’s official documents

Abstract

This study explores the construction of the “vulnerable area” by critically analyzing the assumptions, representations, and discourses that inform official documents targeting such neighborhoods. By conducting a qualitative content analysis on local policy produced in the City of Gothenburg, this thesis finds that such texts – through their imagination of space – produce “vulnerable areas” as spaces of intervention in need of extraordinary treatment. The label “vulnerable area” implies a geographical demarcation, which allows problematization and interventions to be concentrated to, and kept within, a particular space. Measures are spatially limited to these places and aim to integrate, civilize, educate, moralize, and responsibilize the (migrant) population. In the construction of these places as criminal and insecure “parallel societies,” this thesis identifies a safety/security nexus which conflates increased security, control, and surveillance with the safety of citizens. The discourse of safety and security positions “vulnerable areas” as threats to the stability and social cohesion of “the good city” and the well-being of its legitimate members. The “vulnerable area” is thus constructed as the antithesis to the vision of “the good city,” which builds on neoliberal ideals of growth and prosperity. This thesis makes the argument that punitive strategies aimed at “vulnerable areas” are typical features of the neoliberal state, which is repressive at the bottom of the spatial hierarchy while remaining laissez-faire in relation to the holders of economic and cultural capital.