In this article we examine the dominant assumptions that immigrant youth living in the working-class suburban areas in Oslo, Norway are marginalized and angry. We argue that there is no proof that immigrants living in the Oslo suburbs are alienated from society. Nor do we see any indications of some form of mobilization among this group. This dominant assumption is linked to a larger misperception about “ghettos” in Oslo. The idea, that there are “immigrant ghettos” in Oslo, has similarities with, and draws on public debates about “immigrants” in other European cities and a broader international scholarly discourse. In this paper we show that teenagers and young adults in the most materially deprived areas in Oslo are not socially isolated, but actively participate in crucial mainstream institutions and arenas. We show that these youths have ideals, values, and ambitions that closely duplicate those of most Norwegian teenagers and young adults. We conclude therefore, that the young people labeled as “immigrants” are not only integral members of Norwegian society, but co-producers of it.

This article examines the experiences of people with physical and visual disabilities encountering inaccessible urban spaces in highland Ecuador. I draw on the notion of “embodied space” to explore how people with disabilities have begun to contest discourses of contagion, exclusion, and pity through collective action and spatial tactics aimed at constructing more inclusive spaces, such as community centers or public plazas. Through ethnographic analysis of both conflicts over transportation systems and public rallies aimed at social awareness, I argue that Ecuadorians with disabilities face new forms of socio-spatial exclusion as they challenge legacies of isolation and stigma.

In 2003, Columbia University announced its plan to expand its Morningside Heights into a 17-acre area of West Harlem known as Manhattanville. The University's expansion plan called for the acquisition and demolition of all but three buildings in the project's footprint and the construction of a state of the art campus over a roughly 30-year period. This article examines the discourses, debates and politics surrounding the project and, in particular, the University's demand for exclusive control of the site and ultimate pursuit of eminent domain. To that end, university officials claimed that the expansion would bolster the city's knowledge based economy and, as a consequence, serve the “public good”—a requirement for the exercise of eminent domain. By contrast, critics of the project argued for a mixed-use redevelopment plan that would include affordable housing and other community-defined amenities.

Like many cities in the Midwestern United States in recent years, Kalamazoo, Michigan has experienced profound social and economic restructuring, resulting in significant job losses, poverty, homelessness, hunger, and racialized inequalities. Despite these conditions in Kalamazoo, many are attempting to improve social conditions by engaging in a wide range of activities such as downtown development projects, investments in education, living wage movements, entrepreneurial training programs, anti-racism advocacy, among many other initiatives. In this paper, we analyze these well-intended efforts by drawing upon Slavoj Žižek's (2008, 2009) insights on violence in today's world. We suggest that the focus on what is perceived to be reasonable, or realistic, is maintained by and helps to maintain, the normal workings of capitalism which appear as inevitable, natural, or altogether invisible. In other words, relations of exploitation remain in the realm of the REAL.

In the United States foreclosure crisis since 2007, millions of homeowners have strived but failed to hold onto homeownership. This crisis threatens to unsettle the myth of the American dream and deep-seated cultural beliefs about the self as a moral, political, and financial subject. On the whole, mainstream narratives blame homeowners for their predicaments or at least hold them responsible for the consequences of the housing bust. This article examines how homeowners, housing professionals, and activists in Michigan confront narratives of blame and flawed foreclosure prevention programs. Michigan has been pivotal in the formation of beliefs about the American dream, evidenced in the blue-collar middle class, as well as being emblematic of deindustrialization and the foreclosure crisis. Confronting a multi-layered crisis, homeowners, housing professionals, and activists in Michigan produce narratives of suicide, walking away, or strategically defaulting on the mortgage. These narratives present moral critiques of lenders, enact and challenge tropes of blame, and imagine ways to recapture (albeit constrained) agency.

This article examines how a former Polish industrial town reinscribes its past and reinvents its public image in the context of simultaneous political and economic changes. Nowa Huta was originally built as the country's model socialist town. Then, following the collapse of the socialist government and the adoption of democratic and neoliberal economic reforms, it experienced both deindustrialization and political marginalization on account of its association with the previous regime. This article examines current initiatives aimed at revitalizing the town's economy and public image. It argues that the process of reinventing and revitalizing Nowa Huta has many parallels with deindustrializing cities across the North Atlantic. At the same time, in Poland this process is additionally inflected by the country's socialist legacy. The article thus aims to elucidate how processes such as deindustrialization, globalization and neoliberalism are worked out in concrete places and with relation to local politics and histories.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous nation, extending 5,000 km west to east. Its grand myth of national becoming, the Revolution of 1945, intended to weld together a disparate colonial patchwork, stands in uneasy contrast with the spatial unevenness of its actual history of national integration. Socially speaking, there are two Indonesias: a central Indonesian heartland that owned the revolution and much other mobilizational activity before and since, and an eastern Indonesian periphery that heard about these things from afar and was otherwise preoccupied with its own affairs. Yet Indonesia is united. This paper explores the role of mediation in the “action at a distance” problem of political power. The brokers who brought eastern Indonesia into the new nation came from small towns in the region. The paper traces the biography of one of the main nationalist organizers in one small provincial town in eastern Indonesia at the time when the nation was born. He and his fellows opened doors for central government officials and for fellow locals wanting government jobs. Untroubled by demands from local civil society, they bequeathed factional bureaucratic politics to the town, rather than democracy.