ABSTRACT
The process of spatial stigmatization is deeply embedded in the history of capitalism. Spatial stigmatization has been well covered in a variety of academic disciplines, including the advanced marginality debates in sociology and gentrification discussions in critical urban geography. This chapter shows how acts of stigmatization provide a vital backdrop for the study of displacements in both Neukolln, specifically, and urban spaces, more generally. It unsettles a dominant explanation offered by policymakers, scholars and the media for the high levels of impoverishment in Neukolln, namely: a failure of Germany’s integration policies. The chapter argues that monetized governance strategies have employed social surplus to repress and discipline disposable workers whilst reproducing their economic marginality and political powerlessness. As an integral component of monetized governance, spatial stigmatization has served to depoliticize and disappear the root causes, history and class nature of impoverishment by shifting attention to individualized, racialized and gendered frames organized around the trope of an integration crisis.
