Symbolic vs. neighbourhood politics: stigma, diversity and collective anti-gentrification resistance on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate

This thesis examines how institutionalised stigmatisations used to justify regeneration/gentrification schemes, shape the collective agency of different intersectional groups segregated in Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate - a racialised, yet ethnically diverse, London council estate. Literature on the gentrification of British neighbourhoods

has noted the impact of stigma (a form of symbolic politics), on the experiences and actions of residents, while US-based studies in Black communities experiencing gentrification have evidenced that neighbourhood politics are mediated by intersecting social relations. Yet, there has been little engagement between these two bodies of literature. Using Intersectionality Theory, Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic power and practice, and Stuart Hall’s concept of decoding, this research addresses this gap,  focusing on anti-gentrification resistance in a ‘Black’ British inner-city neighbourhood through an inclusive approach that

draws on the accounts of previously ignored minority groups. A robust, intersectional methodological approach is employed, which utilises an intersectional framework to

prioritise residents’ narratives, while situating them within the wider context and scales of stigma. Resultingly, I evidence how experiences and practices of collective resistance are contingent on interactions of intersectional identity with: 1) Broadwater Farm’s stigmainduced

symbolic landscape; 2) the social exclusion of certain stigmatised migrant groups, and: 3) experiences of impending dispossession for groups whose aspirations are

instinctively informed by their stigmatisation as ethnic minorities. By acknowledging the diversity of (British inner-city) neighbourhoods (mis)represented as ‘Black’, a key finding of this study is that stigmatisations are experienced disparately based on the entanglement of one’s intersectional identity with situated socioeconomic, cultural and spatial realities. Furthermore, the conditions and intra/inter-racial tensions that disparate experiences

encompass, has impeded inclusive, collective anti-gentrification resistance on the estate. I conclude by detailing how multiplicity in initiatives aimed at fostering collective antigentrification resistance across diversity is necessary if ‘the Farm’ is to remain in place.