Autochthony and the Politics of Respectability in Amsterdam New West

I will zoom in on the intersection of class and race in the politics of respectability in Amsterdam New West, where I did ethnographic research focusing on so-called ‘autochthonous’, white residents in 2010 and 2011. I argue that the boundary work that working class whites performed must be understood in connection with their specific social location vis- a-vis the state apparatus; the housing corporations; more affluent parts of the city; and their neighbors. Central to the everyday politics of respectability I encountered was the question of class, which effected people’s sense of self-worth. People’s location within the urban structure was of pivotal importance here: many of my interlocutors felt that they were under discursive attack because they lived in a stigmatized area of the city. In order to maintain the respectable and orderly conduct of things in their physical environment - including their homes - people living in public housing were forced to rely on the actions of civil authorities. Residents did not have autonomous control over the organization of their physical environment: they did not own their homes, but were dependent upon the actions and priorities of authorities and often lacked the cultural and social capital to influence the policy agenda in substantial or self-evident ways. The maintenance of a particular, desired ‘culture of control’ thus depended on public authorities like the state and the housing corporations, while many residents also resorted to discourses of alterity - including racialized ones - to make sense of individual and territorial stigmatization.