ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of how to conceptualise and understand the multiple relationships between marginality and cities and regions. It argues that understanding the production and reproduction of marginalisation requires engagement with a range of different theorisations of urban development and regionalisation that have developed over the last twenty years. These debates on the nature of socio-spatial relations have demonstrated the need to recognise the organisation of socio-spatial relations in multiple forms and dimensions rather than privileging one single dimension. The discussion presented here considers the notion of marginalisation and marginality in relation to places, territories, networks and scales, drawing upon the framework set out by Jessop et al. (2008). The conceptualisation of marginalisation across these multiple dimensions identifies and enables the study of marginality in diverse contexts ranging from geographically peripheral rural areas through to the marginalised spaces located in the most economically prosperous city-regions. However, it also presents a particular methodological challenge; one which requires investigating the historically specific and contextually embedded geographies of social relations to understand how in practice different dimensions of marginality are mutually constituted and relationally intertwined.
