Huggins, Richard (2017) ‘Problem people’ and ‘problem places’ : territorial stigmatisation and ‘The Leys’, Oxford. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This study examines the concept of territorial stigmatisation and both the extent to which a specific community has experienced this process and the impact it has had on them. The thesis critically examines the ways in which policy, academic and other forms of representation have worked to socially construct social housing estates and those who live there as, predominantly, ‘problematic’. The study also explores how officially produced data – in the form of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation and the 2011 Census also work to construct this area as one of deficit. The study employs semi-structured, qualitative interviews with a diverse sample of twenty residents of a large, peripheral housing estate in Oxford that has experienced territorial stigmatisation over a number of decades. The study presents an analysis of the rich data drawn from these interviews which examines the views and experiences of these residents and how they account for this stigmatisation, how it impacts on their lives and their community and the extent to which they present alternative and oppositional readings of where they live. The thesis demonstrates that the stigmatising narratives of the Leys are problematic because of the responsibility they seem to place on the residents for their own exclusion and deprivation. However, the thesis also demonstrates that while this estate has experienced long-term territorial stigmatisation, residents’ responses to this experience are more complex, nuanced and reflective than some literature suggests.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Public housing -- Oxford (England), Poor -- Interviews -- Oxford (England), Oxford (England) -- Census, Sociology, Urban -- Oxford (England)
Official Date:	January 2017
Dates:	Date Event January 2017 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Lambert, Cath ; Carpenter, Mick
Extent:	307 leaves
Language:	eng

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