PhD Defense S.A.L. van de Wetering MSc

Cities around the globe are growing. And so is urban inequality. In response to this, governments increasingly employ participatory approaches that start from the idea that urban change can only be realized together with urban residents. In this dissertation, I study how the state and citizens interact in participatory governance approaches, and what that means for the theory and practice of the governance of urban marginality.

I developed an answer to these questions based on ethnographic research in the Netherlands and France: where inequality remains a daily reality for city dwellers despite ideals of equality for all citizens. More specifically, I studied the stories, experiences and practices of urban professionals and residents within two participatory governance approaches: I followed the PACT-approach that was initiated in the Dutch city of Tilburg, and France’s national urban policy program, the politique de la ville, in banlieues in the Île-de-France region. 

The research shows that the state and citizens interacted in different ways, both in the Netherlands and France. At times, urban professionals and residents moved past one another. For instance, when state ambitions like the participation of citizens turned out differently in practice as some residents could not or would not participate. Moreover, sometimes they clashed explicitly as informal and everyday activities of marginalized residents did not fit in, and where thus excluded from, formal participatory structures of the state. Think about, for instance, youths who are hanging out on the street. However, the state and citizens also found one another: in new roles, places in the neighborhood and relationships ‘in-between’ that emerged as part of the participatory governance of urban marginality. For instance, in a ‘Neighborhood Home’ or neighborhood resident who worked for the municipality. 

Moreover, this research demonstrates that a ‘vulnerability’ or general ‘otherness’ that was ascribed to marginalized neighborhoods and residents appeared to play an important role within the interaction between the state and citizens. In the Dutch and French context, it resulted in what I call paradoxical participatory approaches in which citizens were positioned as ‘active’ and experts, but also as vulnerable citizens in need of outside help. In France, more than in the Netherlands, this ‘otherness’ was strongly associated with the stigmatization of the banlieues in which the residents of France’s ‘vulnerable’ neighborhoods were seen as deviant from a French, Republican, national ‘norm’ too.

This dissertation contributes to existing scholarship on the governance of urban marginality by zooming in on the interaction between the state and citizens. While previous research highlights cooperation or conflict in the relationship between the state and citizens, I argue that this relationship is more complex than that. The various ways in which the state and citizens interact, and the role played within this interaction by the ‘vulnerability’ ascribed to neighborhoods and residents, show that this relationship does not simply fulfill a promise of cooperation or is characterized by problematic aspects only. It is, rather, a relationship ‘in-between’. In this ‘in-betweenness’, the ‘vulnerability’ of marginalized residents and neighborhoods can be acknowledged and questioned, and it can therefore serve as the basis for how the state and citizens may govern urban marginality together. This research suggests that within that work practice, it is important to question participation as ‘the’ answer, to take a reflexive stance with regard to existing ideas about ‘active citizenship’ and ‘vulnerability’, and to take into account existing relationships ‘in-between’.