Reading Wacquant in Oakland: Poor people’s movements and the state

In ‘Class, ethnicity and state in the making of marginality: Revisiting territories of urban relegation’, Loïc Wacquant argues that the state is central to the production and maintenance of racialised urban marginality. This rejoinder draws upon recent work on territory to extend Wacquant’s relational analysis to the everyday operation of state antipoverty programs. I use an early War on Poverty community development program in Oakland, California, to demonstrate that poor people’s movements engage and subvert attempts to govern urban space. I argue that antipoverty programs are not the direct implementation of repressive state policies on the ground but programs of government, characterised by contradictions, unexpected slippages and multiple political agendas.