Between Stigma and Resilience: Emotional Geographies and Narratives of Belonging Using the Example of Mehringplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Berlin is characterised by a high proportion of people with a history of migration, which makes the city a culturally diverse place. As in many large German cities, this diversity is reflected in a highly segregated urban structure. At the same time, the spatial separation emphasises the close link between migration and socio-economic factors. An exemplary case is the Mehringplatz neighborhood in Berlin-Kreuzberg. This district is marked by a high number of households in precarious situations and families with a migration background. One particular aspect of the marginalisation of the neighbourhood is its stigmatisation (see also Wacquant 2008). Children and young people are particularly affected, as they often have only limited opportunities to counteract this negative image. As a result, they develop their own strategies for dealing with it. While they sometimes adopt and even exaggerate the stigma of the neighborhood, in other moments, they reframe the area as a place of community, solidarity, and resilience. Despite the material marginalisation and negative public representations, they create positive, collectively shared narratives that enhance the place and turn it into a symbol of belonging and pride. In this way, they counter hegemonic discourses with positive narratives and use the neighbourhood as a reference point for their own logics of recognition and exclusion. The article examines the affective dimension of the spatial self-positioning of young residents and shows how places are charged by emotional and social experiences and how these contribute to identity formation. The findings of the study presented are based on ethnographic research that I conducted from 2016 to 2020 (cf. Zimmer 2021).

Literature

Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity.

Zimmer, N. (2021). Gemeinschaftsnarrative unter Kindern und Jugendlichen in marginalisierten Quartieren: Strategien im Umgang mit stigmatisierenden Diskursen am Mehringplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung, 9(3/4), 123-144.