ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on how five inhabitants, Arto from the Finnish association, Lamin from the Gambian mosque, car mechanics Roland and Tore, and butcher-shop owner Tahere, have dealt with the rapid territorial stigmatisation of the old run-down industrial area and their exclusion from the future vision of the new up-scale residential area. It analyses the construction of New Kvillebcken against the backdrop of the industrial and immigration history of Gothenburg. The area is located in close proximity to the now closed-down shipyards on Hisingen, the big island north of the lv River that runs through Gothenburg. The chapter looks closely at how people whose bodies are connected to places dismissed in post-political planning rhetoric as being dirty, unsustainable and criminal deal with this emotionally. When analysing ethnographic encounters arising from this transforming industrial area, it connects to theories of post-political urban planning from a growing literature on the neoliberalisation of local governance.