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Belonging in working-class neighbourhoods: dis-identification, territorialisation and biographies of people and place

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  • Jenny Preece

Abstract

This article draws on repeated, biographical interviews with 18 households to explore how people construct a sense of belonging in two post-industrial neighbourhoods in the ‘ordinary’ urban areas of Grimsby and Sheffield, UK. It argues that experiences of low-paid, precarious work undermine the historic role that employment has played in identity construction for many individuals, and that places perform a crucial function in anchoring people’s lives and identities. Three active processes in the generation of belonging are elaborated. Through identification, dis-identification and the micro-differentiation of space, people constructed places in order to belong with others ‘like them’. Residents also internalised the symbolic logics of places through their daily movement, territorialising space as they learned how to be in particular environments. Finally, places were temporally situated within relational biographies and experienced in relation to past and imagined futures. Places fulfilled an important psycho-social function, anchoring people’s identities and generating a sense that they belonged.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenny Preece, 2020. "Belonging in working-class neighbourhoods: dis-identification, territorialisation and biographies of people and place," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(4), pages 827-843, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:57:y:2020:i:4:p:827-843
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098019868087
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Lawless, Paul & Tyler, Peter & Overman, Henry G., 2011. "Strategies for underperforming places," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59236, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Paul Watt, 2006. "Respectability, Roughness and ‘Race’: Neighbourhood Place Images and the Making of Working‐Class Social Distinctions in London," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 776-797, December.
    3. Khaled Alawadi, 2017. "Place attachment as a motivation for community preservation: The demise of an old, bustling, Dubai community," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(13), pages 2973-2997, October.
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    2. Silver, Daniel & Silva, Thiago H, 2021. "Complex Causal Structures of Neighbourhood Change: Evidence From a Functionalist Model and Yelp Data," SocArXiv wprf8, Center for Open Science.
    3. Jiazhen Zhang & Jeremy Cenci & Vincent Becue & Sesil Koutra & Christos S. Ioakimidis, 2020. "Recent Evolution of Research on Industrial Heritage in Western Europe and China Based on Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-15, July.
    4. Señoret, Andrés & Ramirez, Maria Inés & Rehner, Johannes, 2022. "Employment and sustainability: The relation between precarious work and spatial inequality in the neoliberal city," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).

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