Former Fellows

The project aims at investigating the processes, mechanisms, institutions and politics that (re)produce and maintain spaces for marginalized social groups, Roma in particular in Central and Eastern European countries. I intend to present how national and supranational politics affect and define changing patterns of segregation through local policies, practices and institutions. My aim is to understand the situations and conditions of marginalized social groups in complexity: focusing not only on individuals and their neighbourhood but more importantly on the organizations that structure their lives, the system in which these organizations are embedded. These organizations operate and structure neighbourhood conditions, mediate the impact of macro-level factors or affect the well-being of individuals, and this way also form the features of the given neighbourhood, ie. the pattern of spatial and social exclusion. The research intends to compare the changing patterns of segregated neighborhoods are influenced by central governmental policy and local urban politics, but also determined by the demographic, socio-economic processes embedded in the social history. I assume that in accordance with, or in contrast to national politics, urban policies strengthen social and spatial boundaries between different parts of the city and between different social strata affected by class and ethnic relations.