ABSTRACT

The perceptions of the threats of displacement have real impacts on people’s livability and affect their sense of home and belonging, their ways of relating to city spaces, and their stability and security. This chapter argues that these perceptions are not idiosyncratic feelings but are embedded in and shaped by individuals’ positioning within urban social structures. It presents a study on displacement and draws on qualitative research on the effects and dynamics of gentrification in the neighbourhood of Bushwick. The chapter argues that emotional displacement originates from what Bourdieu named misrecognition and symbolic violence. It proposes a reading of gentrification as violence and, in particular, displacement as originating in economic, racial, as well as symbolic violence via misrecognition. Two stories from long-time Bushwick residents illustrate two specific kinds of misrecognition. The stories highlights the different forms of symbolic violence and misrecognition that lie at the core of emotional displacement as it is perceived by long-time residents in gentrifying Bushwick.