Geographies of (un)ease: Embodying racial stigma and social navigation in public spaces in a reluctantly super-diverse city

ABSTRACT

Combining insights from sociology, geography, and race-ethnicity studies, this exploratory study examines how young middle-class Moroccan-Dutch men navigate geographies of (un)ease and the subsequent coping strategies they employ in public spaces of Rotterdam. Drawing on 12 semi-structured walking interviews in Rotterdam, our findings reveal that (un)ease is not only affected by the types of surrounding bodies and the amount of attention directed at these bodies, but also by spatial and temporal factors, such as day-night, quietness-liveliness, whiteness-racialization, immobility-mobility and familiarity-unfamiliarity. Furthermore, we mapped the men’s geography of (un)ease, showing how stigma is spatially situated in relation to different neighborhoods. In contrast to previous studies, respondents did not seem to only opt for conflict avoidant strategies as their main coping strategies utilized were ignoring, avoiding, reforming and contesting.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial stigma
• (inter)embodiment
• spatialization of stigma
• coping strategies

Introduction

Drawing on walking interviews, this article addresses how young middle-class Moroccan-Dutch men navigate geographies of (un)ease and the subsequent coping strategies they employ in public spaces of Rotterdam. Previous research suggests that the bodies of Moroccan-Dutch young men are likely to be read differently than white Dutch bodies, as the “iconic figure of the Moroccan youth” is “at the center of circulating anxiety about the present and future of the Dutch nation” (De Koning, 2016, p. 111). In media, policy, and police discourse, this iconic figure is explicitly linked to second- or third generation Moroccan-Dutch young Muslim men causing problems—from nuisance to crime—in disadvantaged city neighborhoods (Bonnet & Caillault, 2015; De Koning, 2015; Roggeband & van der Haar, 2018). While this is a social construction, consisting of different characteristics—social class, gender, age, religion, location and ethnicity, it is primarily read in racialized terms, one that can be read off the body (De Koning, 2016, p. 112). As a result, their bodies are stigmatized, considered strange and suspect, and can therefore incite fear (Ahmed, 2000; England & Simon, 2010). How bodies are read influences how they can move and be in space (Ahmed, 2007). Anjaria and McFarlane (2011, p. 6) have referred to social navigation as the manner in which “people make sense of and work their way through diverse urban environments, often in contexts of deep political, economic and social inequality.” A key—yet understudied—concept in such navigation is a sense of ease in moving through urban spaces, while creating a sense of identification with people, places, cultures and material objects (Lahad & May, 2017; May, 2011).

This study makes two key contributions at the intersection of race, stigma and space. First, existing scholarship on the racialization of Muslims in the Netherlands “mainly focuses on a critical analysis of the dominant discourses about Muslims, and not on the ways in which Muslim youth negotiate and experience racialization in and through their everyday embodied practices in public spaces” (Van den Bogert, 2021a, p. 60). Indeed, bodily and spatial components of stigma are frequently overlooked. Furthermore, current studies have primarily focused on the coping strategies people employ in institutional settings and the social contexts that trigger certain strategies over others (Bouabid, 2018; Moroşanu & Fox, 2013). By researching the everyday experiences of young Moroccan-Dutch men, we uncover the social borders and restrictions of urban spaces (Fiske, 1998; Hancock et al., 2017), while exploring the spatial and bodily coping strategies provide insights into the different realities people face and how racial inequality is manifested in public spaces.

Second, geography scholars have been more attentive to these dimensions, but here little attention has been given to understanding how being feared is perceived by those stigmatized as dangerous, i.e., young Moroccan-Dutch men (Day, 2006; Pain, 2001). Feminist geographers have published ample research on the role of fear in women’s geographies. But how women’s fear controls their use of public space as well as the racialized others’—who are often excluded from public space as a result—has remained understudied (Herbert & Beckett, 2010). Moreover, a sense of ease is arguably key in belonging and is often a white privilege i.e., white bodies are frequently considered bodies-at-home and therefore naturally feel at ease and in place (Ahmed, 2000). Yet, we know very little about the situatedness of being at ease.

Rotterdam makes an interesting case to study the intersections between race, stigma, and space. Demographics show that Rotterdam has become as a majority-minority city, where more than 50% of the population have a first- or second-generation migration background. People of Moroccan descent are one of the largest racially minoritized groups (Scholten et al., 2019).¹ However, the geography of Rotterdam shows clear patterns of residential segregation (Blokland, 2003). Neighborhoods in the west and south of the Nieuwe Maas river offer comparably cheap housing and have a low socioeconomic status. These racialized neighborhoods have often been stigmatized as “unsafe” (Van Duin et al., 2011). Moreover, the local government has introduced policy initiatives—including a stop on the influx of “disadvantaged households” (read: lower classes, migrants) into certain neighborhoods while promoting to attract “desired households” (2016 Housing Vision) and state-led gentrification that burden racially minoritized groups under the Urban Vision 2007 (Uitermark et al., 2007). Hence, Rotterdam, second city of the Netherlands, has been described as reluctantly super-diverse (Scholten et al., 2019).

Theoretical framework

Race as floating signifier and stigma

Following Hall (2021), we consider race a floating signifier—a discursive fact as opposed to a biological one—that classifies culture and informs practices of meaning-making. Yet, its meaning is never fixed, as it changes with shifting relations of difference. To many people, the visibility of race on the body makes race a commonsensical reality. The obviousness obfuscates the intricate and complex cultural systems that have constructed these relationships between the body and social and cultural spaces (Hall, 2021). Hence, race as a floating signifier concerns the reduction and distinguishing of the other through visual markers, including skin color but also other physical and cultural markers, such as clothing, language, and beliefs (Selod & Embrick, 2013). In the context of the Netherlands, Moroccan youth has been framed as “the ultimate problem group,” where “Moroccan has become a racialized, essentialized catch-all concept that implicitly subsumes other social categories such as religion and class, synonymous with ‘Muslim,’ regardless of self-identification as Muslim, and assuming lower-class status” (Van den Bogert, 2021a, p. 59). Yet, as popular Dutch discourse understands race to be strictly biological, Muslims are not seen as suffering from racism (Wekker, 2016).

We draw on the concept of stigma to further explore the embodiment of race, or how race “is seen in or on the body” (Howarth, 2006, p. 443). Stigma references “bodily signs that were designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier” (Goffman, 1986, p. 11). Goffman (1986) also attempted to generalize stigma as encompassing invisible attributes, redefining it as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” (p. 3), reducing a whole person to a discounted, tainted one. What makes an attribute discrediting depends on the relationships between people; the abnormal is defined by comparison to the normal. People who are discredited often face a spoiled identity; there is a conflict between how they see themselves and how the outside world sees them (Goffman, 1986). Through socialization and internalization, the stigmatized can see themselves through the eyes of the “normal” and thus comes to know where they stand in “the order of normal-stigma positionalities” (Tyler, 2018, p. 750). In the Netherlands, the Muslim is racially stigmatized through religious, gendered and classed bodily practices, such as wearing a fur-coated jacket (Çankaya, 2015) or driving a scooter instead of a (“proper”) Dutch bike (Kuipers, 2013, p. 29).

The conceptions of race as floating signifier and race as stigma have relational underpinnings, which are necessary for understanding the weight public interactions can have on the stigmatized sense of self and how stigmatization is enforced upon the stigmatized. Additionally, they both further our understanding of the norms that prescribe how bodies are allowed to be. However, according to Tyler and Slater (2018), there should be more attention in stigma scholarship to geography (space), and how it shapes stigma in everyday contexts. We attempt to overcome this gap in the next section.

From the racialization of space to a geography of (un)ease

Public space plays a crucial role in the lives of young people. Yet, there is considerable disagreement amongst scholars over what public space can do in overcoming racial stigma (Ye, 2019). One the one hand, cities provide co-presence and togetherness, where people meet strangers through short-lived, fleeting encounters (see also Swartjes & Berkers, 2022). Public spaces work as “an arena of social difference, where various social groups—who may be complete strangers to each other—encounter each other and, intentionally and unintentionally, have to deal with each other’s presence” (Wijntuin & Koster, 2019, p. 282).

On the other hand, public space is always contested and imbued with (normative) meaning (Ye, 2019). Hence, public space is often racialized, i.e., a process whereby socially constructed, historically specific, and hierarchical meanings of race are ascribed to spaces (Tuttle, 2022, p. 1529). This is not a “natural” result of the numbers of “bodies” but a complex assemblage of policymaking, media framing, policing and racial profiling, and residential segregation, as we discussed in the introduction. Such racialization of space affects the “perceptions and practices of where individuals may or may not go, how they expect to be treated and how they may actually be treated …” (Tuttle, 2022, p. 1529).

In the Netherlands, public space is often defined as secular, implicitly constructed on the basis of whiteness, to which the Muslim is seen as a threat (Van den Bogert, 2021b). However, within majority-minority cities such as Rotterdam, some spaces are differently racialized compared to others, affecting the social navigation of racially minoritized people. First, white spaces are characterized by the majority presence of white people, in which racially minoritized people are typically absent, not expected, or marginalized when present (Anderson, 2015). When boundaries are transgressed, racially minoritized people are treated as “space invaders” (Puwar, 2004), as bodies out of place, as dirty, uncontrollable, and dangerous, a threat to the homogenous community (Ahmed, 2007). They face constant scrutiny, uncertainty about their status and being put back in their “rightful” place by citizens and the police, with the latter fulfilling the role of border guard in the production of white spaces in the city through racial profiling (Çankaya, 2015).

Second, in the United States of America, the ghetto is typically seen as Black space where the state has largely withdrawn from (Anderson, 2015; Uitermark et al., 2007). Such spaces have hardly existed in Rotterdam. Yet, several boroughs have been “officially” qualified as “problem areas,” as low income inner-city neighborhoods consisting of social housing with high concentrations of racially minoritized people (Doucet & Koenders, 2018). These neighborhoods often carry a territorial stigma (see Smets & Kusenbach, 2020), negatively influencing how people connect to, evaluate, and protect these spaces. Although they are frequently ruled by street codes, these racialized spaces are also places where racially minoritized people do not have to continuously adjust, where they may be more at ease.

Third, there are spaces that feel unclaimed and relatively open, despite not being one’s “own” space. For example, Anderson (2015) describes more “neutral” places where diverse strangers meet and thereby humanize each other. Jones et al. (2015) researched the appeal of franchised cafés (like Starbucks) whose commercial blandness—and therefore its familiarity and ordinariness—sometimes allows these spaces to be reconfigured as available for people of diverse backgrounds, as semi-public spaces. They enable a type of civil inattention in which cultural difference is “acknowledged and accommodated with superficial levels of engagement but without avoidance or sanction” (Jones et al., 2015, p. 658). Hence, encounters in or with such spaces can lead to overcoming stigma (Mahtani, 2014).

What these white, racialized, and neutral spaces reveal is the importance of feelings and emotions in making sense of space (Davidson & Milligan, 2004; Thien, 2005). Scholars have often discussed urban spaces as driven by feelings of (un)safety (Bannister & Fyfe, 2001; Mehta & Bondi, 1999). This however only tells part of the urban story. First, ample research has been done on the geography of fear of the white and “vulnerable” female subject, neglecting how the fear of the racialized other can “lead to exclusion from public space of those who are seen as threatening” (England & Simon, 2010, p. 203). Second, fear and feelings of (un)safety are extreme emotions, lacking subtlety in understanding everyday interactions. Last, the geography of fear is attuned to female subjects, but it cannot be said to resonate with masculine subjects who are more likely to reject vulnerability (Connell, 1995). In our understanding, (un)ease concerns the level of comfort one feels in a space, both mentally (how relaxed can one be) and bodily (how in or out of place one feels). Thereby, (un)ease is much more a habitual emotion people experience on a daily basis (Lahad & May, 2017). Consequently, we propose speaking of a geography of (un)ease to be attentive to the nuances in race relations in people’s everyday lives.

Coping strategies and techniques

The primary focus of most stigmatization literature is on coping strategies (see Bouabid, 2018, for a recent overview). Such strategies may attempt to challenge stigmatization by reforming—attempting to change the system of discrimination—and contesting—emphasizing one’s own roots and contesting prejudice. They may aim to deflect stigmatization by: passing—trying to be seen as “normal” in order to take advantage of the “normal” status; avoiding—ignoring—denying or discounting discrimination in order to deflect conflict or show one’s immunity; exploiting—using racial identity to exploit others; and conforming— to avoid discrimination or to advance oneself. Each strategy includes many different coping techniques. For example, the technique of changing your name to hide racial stigma is used as part of a passing strategy (Bursell, 2012). According to Bouabid (2018), Moroccan-Dutch men are resourceful in how they use “specific or different combinations of coping techniques or strategies in different stigmatizing situations” (p. 361).

The coping strategies discussed above often focus on mental techniques and strategies that are frequently researched in settings like work or school where there is interpersonal contact through language (e.g., Fleming et al., 2012). However, this study is situated in public space where the body, its position, and how it occupies space impacts the everyday experience of stigma—feelings of (un)ease. Drawing on urban geography, we bring in several spatial techniques that may be used to cope with the unease of stigma: the avoidance of certain spaces; being extra territorial in one’s own neighborhood; attempting to claim more space; learning to navigate neighborhoods similar to one’s own; and appropriating central areas in the city through consumption (Fiske, 1998; Hancock et al., 2017). In particular, tactics by which one attempts to claim or traverse space are not without difficulty as they mean overstepping boundaries (Oppenchaim, 2011). These techniques illustrate that stigmatization also impacts how one can move one’s body through space—mobility—which is often ignored in the literature on coping strategies (see Tuttle, 2022).

Data and methods

The data of this exploratory, qualitative study were collected through semi-structured walking interviews. Walking situates the interviews in the actual context to which it applies and thereby allows for interactivity with the environment. Additionally, walking interviews have been developed to broaden our understanding of space and mobility of humans through space, i.e., how we are constituted in different spaces (King & Woodroffe, 2017). Walking interviews are either more researcher or participant driven, depending on who decides the route (Kusenbach, 2003). In this study we initially met the participant at a location in Rotterdam where they felt at ease. The first part of the interview took place here, addressing what at ease (op je gemak in Dutch) means to them. Subsequently, we walked to a whiter space nearby that was pre-selected based on the population statistics of Rotterdam’s neighborhoods² (see Appendix for details on walking interviews). The advantages of the walking interview for this study were: (1) the opportunity for participants to show rather than describe; (2) the potential for the researcher to have increased understanding from hearing the lived experience in its actual space; and (3) the possible synchronization of bodies with different positionalities (Clark & Emmel, 2010). Moreover, they helped in bridging the gap between interviewer and interviewee. As a mixed-race person, the interviewer could identify with participants in the unease of being the other in white spaces. Although, being a woman and non-religious, constitutes a different living experience than that of the participants, the act of walking in the participant’s environment brought interviewee and researcher closer together. It reduced the power imbalance because both are adjusting their tempo to each other in a “natural” environment, thereby naturally producing rapport.

The study draws on data collected in early 2019 from interviews with 12 young Moroccan-Dutch men. A purposive sampling strategy was utilized as the participants were recruited according to predetermined criteria: young adults (18–35 years old), male identifying, a Moroccan-Dutch background, middle-class, and either lived or studied in Rotterdam (see Table 1). After recruiting the first participants, snowball sampling was used to recruit more participants. We focused on middle-class respondents for two reasons. First, in contrast to working-class Moroccan-Dutch men, most of them have to frequently traverse white spaces to work and/or study. Second, due to the researcher’s middle-class background, the respondents were predominantly from a middle-class background as well. We considered our interviewees articulate and reflexive about their positionality.

Table 1. Participant data.

	Pseudo- nym	Occupation	Age	Neighborhood one grew up in	Racialized or white neighborhood
1	Baariq	University student (medicine and philosophy)	23	Prinsenland	White
2	Omar	dancer	33	Charlois	Racialized
3	Saeed	PhD candidate (media, communicaton and culture)	28	Feyenoord	Racialized
4	Dalil	University of applied sciences student (social studies) and high school teacher	26	Spangen	Racialized
5	Jasim	Musician, employee burger restaurant and university of applied sciences student (social care)	20	Ommoord	White
6	Sami	Social youth worker	33	Roosendaal	Racialized
7	Faiz	Manager clothing store	29	Den Haag	White
8	Ahsan	Entrepreneur and university of applied sciences teacher	25	Oud Krimpen	White
9	Khaled	University of applied sciences student (social studies)	23	Crooswijk	Racialized
10	Fikri	University student (business administration, econometrics, law)	21	Rotterdam Noord	Racialized
11	Zeyn	University student (medicine)	22	Rotterdam-Oost Alexander	White
12	Yousri	University of applied sciences student (engineering)	24	Rotterdam-Zuid	Racialized

In the interviews, we addressed the embodiment of stigma by asking what the interviewees feel when at (un)ease, what kind of interactions they have with others, and their perception of how their body is read. The spatiality of stigma was incorporated by asking about the spaces and places of (un)ease, how they differentiate between these spaces, where the affective differences come from and the spaces where they have been stigmatized. Finally, we asked how they coped with stigmatization, their motivations for such coping strategies, and how they dealt with spaces of (un)ease (interview guide available on request).

Audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed, after which three coding processes took place: open coding, axial coding and selective coding. First, we marked potential elements of interest in the interview transcripts and made researcher notes and observations. Second, we summarized the fragments in as few words as possible during open coding. These codes were put into our coding tree to identify the connections between concepts. Third, we distinguished between the main categories and subcategories. Finally, we refined the codes with our conceptual knowledge and restructured the themes to better understand the interrelationships (Braun & Clarke, 2013). This resulted in three main themes: embodiment and (un)ease, space and embodiment, and coping strategies: techniques and motivations.

Places of (un)ease

We invited our respondents to meet at a place where they felt at ease. We started the interview by asking them why this specific place makes them feel at ease. For most of them, being able to be at ease has to do with a lack of certain interactions: one can feel at ease when one “doesn’t stand out” (Khaled), “doesn’t feel the stares” (Dalil) directed to one’s body, “other people pay little attention to you” (Baariq) and one “isn’t [possibly] searched for” because one looks suspect (Sami). At the same time, being purposely ignored or avoided incites unease, because it indicates one was noticed. As Khaled stated:

We’re walking down the street and there’s a woman walking past us with a backpack on her right side. You’re walking behind her and you just see, like, how she moves it to her front and holds on to it. Then you think to yourself: Why? That creates a feeling that we’re inferior compared to the rest. You don’t trust us. Or you automatically start walking on the other side of the street. Those are the signals that are picked up, even though they’re small signals, those are signals we definitely understand.

One feels at ease when one receives neither more nor less attention than other surrounding bodies. Therefore, both “people minding their own business” (Faiz) and the “possibility of having spontaneous interactions with strangers” (Sami) feels comfortable. In line with May (2011), respondents feel a sense of ease at spaces that are made one’s own, where one feels one belongs. Or as Ahsan answered when asked where he feels most at ease: “At my mom’s place.”

In Figure 1, we mapped the Moroccan-Dutch men’s geography of (un)ease, showing that western Rotterdam is considered an area of ease, the city center is a neutral area and the eastern periphery is an area of unease. The districts of ease have diversity in common, both in terms of population and mixed income housing. The districts of unease are more homogenous in terms of population (white) and class. While some are still unable to feel comfortable in these places, others feel differences in levels of ease but are able to feel reasonably comfortable everywhere. Hence, the geography of ease is more pronounced than the geography of unease.

Figure 1. Geography of (un)ease.

The meeting places selected by the interviewees were mostly semi-public chain cafes or restaurants situated in districts of ease, as Jones et al. (2015) would have predicted (see Appendix). These were often situated in spaces familiar to the interviewees; they either go to work, live nearby or have had positive experiences there (see Figure 2 and Table A1). From these places of ease, we walked toward white spaces in the districts (see Figure A1 for walking routes). It was hard to reach the (potentially) most uncomfortable spaces because the geography of unease is located on the periphery. Additionally, the presence of the female researcher diminished the respondents’ unease in the spaces visited (Figure 3):

Figure 2. Starting locations.

Figure 3. Bar in gentrified white neighborhood.

I’d never go into these kind of places [a French bistrot-bar in a recently gentrified white area in Noord, see Figure 3]. These are places that when I enter, I’d already get very strange stares because I look different. Although I’m walking with you now. That does make it different. Maybe I belong a bit more now. But if I was walking with a friend who looks like me, then you do get the feeling, like, what are we doing here? (Dalil)

The researcher gave purpose to participants’ presence in these white spaces and the female body made Dalil feel as if his body was read differently.

Most interviewees walked at a steady pace. Walking around during the interviews seemed to put them at ease. It was noticeable that they became more laidback, and some began to ask questions, turning the interview into a conversation. But their unease became noticeable when we couldn’t move around. For instance, Sami immediately became alert and increasingly uncomfortable when we took cover for the rain under the fancy historical and centrally located apartments at Schiedamse Vest in Centrum (see Figure 4). He made less eye contact with the researcher and started to watch the environment. The walking interviews revealed that the geography of (un)ease is moderated by whether one can move through space and with whom one moves through it, similar to how Tuttle (2022) theorized about the linkages between race and space.

Figure 4. Taking cover from the rain under de roof of fancy appartments.

Dimensions of (un)ease

Time, space and space-time

Space and time are important factors in inciting (un)ease and affecting how (un)ease is expressed and felt. Our study brought to the fore the interwoven continua of time (day-night), space (quietness-liveliness, whiteness-racialization) and space-time (immobility-mobility, familiarity-unfamiliarity). First, whereas daylight makes everyone visible and thereby less suspect, “at night everything looks more threatening, as everything you see looks a little scary” (Dalil). Night also changes how suspect the interviewees themselves feel: “what I notice myself during the evening is I have the idea that people think that I want to hurt them or something” (Ahsan). Night is a condition that fosters feelings of unease: One easily becomes more alert about one’s own body and suspecting of others. This was also the experience with Jasim’s interview, which started by day and ended in the dark. When Jasim walked the interviewer back to subway station Blaak at Centrum, he felt the stares more pronounced than during the daytime. Whereas most of the participants perceive other men’s fear as illegitimate, the fear of women at night is understood as sensible. For this fear, our interviewees are willing to conform; they adapt their routes and distance to ease the fear.

Second, time of day is connected to the liveliness-quietness of a space because it is associated with the number of people roaming the streets:

People are more wary at night. You just notice that because there are less people on the streets. So it’s much easier to keep an eye on everyone. When you’re with 300 during the day, you can’t keep an eye on all of them. So, then you just have to let it go. (Faiz)

Faiz described how it is easier to keep track of everyone around him when the streets are quieter; he then stands out more and becomes more suspicious.

Furthermore, our interviewees described how white neighborhoods lack the “liveliness” that they are used to in their own, more racialized neighborhoods (see also Schwarz (2015) on how loudness carries a sonic stigma among white-middle classes). With Baariq, the researcher walked through the very tranquil, posh and predominantly white street Essenlaan in Kralingen (see Figure 5), where they only encountered two other people. This was a significant difference compared to the routes in the South and Northwest of Rotterdam. Here the streets were much busier. Several respondents described how they are accustomed to an active street life:

[In Morocco], people are just outside more. It’s kind of ingrained in our culture. My father was from the first generation. I’m from the second generation. And that’s still in my system. Outside, in a big family, you’ve got a car [so] every now and then we’re also outside with different cars. And you know, in the Netherlands, it’s just strange when you’re outside after 10 p.m. We often feel watched in the streets. (Sami)

Figure 5. Quiet white neighborhood around Essenlaan.

In racialized neighborhoods, community life takes place outdoors more often than in white districts. The lack of liveliness in white neighborhoods is experienced as intimidating as one stands out more easily and subsequently triggers suspicion of them. In these places, some are fearful that their bodies—masculine, young and Moroccan—are considered “wrong bodies,” making them a possible suspect, resulting from racialized stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch youth.

Furthermore, participants distinguished between white, racialized, and neutral spaces. The number of white bodies can make them feel uncomfortable because they stand out, and specifically because they stand out as the strange body among other bodies. Some interviewees described a similar impact in places that are too homogeneously “Arab”:

I, myself, am Moroccan, but I don’t like places where there are only Moroccans. I have the same with the Dutch and Turkish. I love a mix - then there’s just a completely different atmosphere, more relaxed. That’s the only criteria I have, that places just have to be mixed. (Faiz)

By contrast, racialized and neutral spaces are mostly able to give participants a sense of going under the radar: “I feel at ease here [Rotterdam Central Station] because I am anonymous. The moment that I am in a place where, yeah, the major portion of people is fair or white, then I often feel looked at or I feel uncomfortable” (Dalil). The blandness and business of neutral spaces allow interviewees to go unnoticed and therefore experience more freedom in their expressions (Jones et al., 2015). The racialized spaces are the spaces where respondents feel at home, with the surrounding bodies reflecting their body; therefore they also do not stand out and thus experience fewer social controls (Ahmed, 2000). Coincidentally, white spaces are not only more homogenous in the type of bodies that dwell there. When walking the Boompjeskade (Centrum) with white skyscrapers overlooking the riverside (see Figure 6), Saeed described how white spaces are also more homogenous in their architecture and socioeconomic class. This makes many of the white spaces uncomfortable, because they represent an elitist, exclusionary space.

Figure 6. White towers, homogenous architecture.

Third, there is a difference between white spaces and other spaces in the (lack of) mobility through space that the respondents are allowed (Ahmed, 2000). In white neighborhoods, they are able to feel calm when they are mobile. A sense of unease arises when one stays still:

The longer you stay somewhere, the more opportunity you give people to confirm something: they’re chilling for a very long time, what are they doing? If I walk past a neighborhood a few times, people can start to think “he’s checking houses to break into,” It’s all related. Time’s just a reason for people to take action about it, because if I stay there super long, then they have the chance to call the police. And if I’m still there, if I’m there too long, then I’ll have to deal with that. While if I’m there momentarily, I probably won’t have to deal with it. (Sami)

Time and mobility are interwoven in this fragment. A lack of mobility means spending more time in one place, which in turn, makes Sami feel under scrutiny. In his perception, a Moroccan-Dutch man is not allowed to take up white space for too long, risking surveillance and subsequent harassment by the authorities (see Fiske, 1998; Çankaya, 2015). By comparison, “staying” is one of the prime modes of being in racialized spaces (hangen in Dutch).

Finally, familiarity with a space is an important factor for feeling at ease. White spaces generally seem more intimidating because these spaces and the rules of conduct are less known. Entering these spaces can feel “like a threshold” (Zeyn) that one needs to step over. For example, Zeyn was hesitant to hang out with Dutch guys as he assumed “they would just sit and drink beer all the time.” As in Oppenchaim’s study (2011), these boundaries mean some interviewees rarely go somewhere that they have not been previously, because the familiar feels the most comfortable: “If I’d suggest to [my Moroccan friends] going to a completely different place, then they’d already have a certain, maybe aversion to it, without having even tried it once, because they don’t know what to expect” (Faiz). The Mexican restaurant Faiz chose to meet at would not have been an option, because it would have been out of their comfort zone. In line with Jones et al. (2015), franchised cafes (e.g., Starbucks) with standard, predictable formulas are accessible for these men, no matter the location, because they come with clear expectations. Nevertheless, the factor of (un)familiarity is a timely factor. Over time, some participants reported becoming habituated to the uncomfortable white spaces, especially because they have spent more time in these spaces and the accompanying social rules. As is exemplified by Baariq’s starting point the Erasmus University Rotterdam, located in a white neighborhood (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Coping with (un)ease

Techniques

Stigmatization requires coping strategies to navigate racialized spaces. As outlined, public interactions are often non-verbal and ephemeral, so we highlight bodily and spatial coping techniques to understand the use of coping strategies in public space. First, interviewees made bodily adjustments to conform or pass. They switched their language to a “civilized” Dutch accent (similar to DeBose, 1992), they changed their facial expressions by smiling more and adjusted their clothing to look less suspicious. For instance, Sami removed his fur collar to avoid stigma. In many instances, interviewees conformed to the spatial preferences of their white friends to avoid discomfort in the group. In places of unease, another bodily coping technique is to be part of a gathering of white bodies as this renders one’s own body less suspect and give access to unavailable (white) spaces.

Secondly, our interviewees use a multitude of avoidance techniques. They avoided eye contact or contrarily looked angry as “a way to create distance between yourself and the other” (Saeed). Both, although different expressions, are a means to avoid contact with others. Spatially, some avoided certain areas and used mobility—moving from place to place—to avoid stigmatization. Avoidance not only entailed staying away from certain spaces but also actively seeking out other places, for instance Khaled visited “only migrant places” in his teens.

Thirdly, ignoring techniques can both be used in avoidance and contestation strategies. On the one hand, Faiz is actively inattentive to his environment in order to be untouched: “If you just walk there and act as if you’ve just been there for years, then you won’t as quickly incite the suspicion in people that you don’t belong” (Faiz). This is his way to avoid uncomfortable interactions with others. On the other hand, techniques of ignoring can also be an indirect way to contest stigmatization. Spatially, some participants ignore social boundaries when entering spaces of unease in order to contest prejudice, acting indeed as space invaders (Puwar, 2004). They believe that through habituation the body can become accustomed: “Keep going back because the more often you go back to somewhere that you don’t particularly want to be or that makes you feel uncomfortable, the quicker it becomes a habit” (Jasim).

Lastly, although the spatial techniques of ignoring can correspond with contestation, the bodily techniques are quite different. These mostly involve claiming space or using humor. For instance, Jasim walks firmly (in his words: “alpha”), maintains eye contact and stands his ground. Zeyn, by contrast, uses humor: “What’s he doing? Is he going to steal that bike?” Sometimes I just make it a joke and mess around with [my] bike for too long. “Another technique closely aligned with reforming and contesting is actively seeking out places where they “are so different from others” (Baariq) and try to contest stigma with the help of their white friends. This is often also done by joking about the differences in these places.

Respondents’ sense of masculinity—often macho street culture—influenced their choice of techniques as they have been socialized in the belief that fear and victimhood are not an option. They have learned from a young age: “never be scared for no one. You have to stand your ground … if someone does something to you, just do it back” (Dalil). As a result, they attempt to hide their vulnerability and can opt for the more “macho” techniques even when being conflict avoidant (in line with Connell, 1995). Consider for instance the angry look, the tough power walk and the acting like you belong techniques. But also the mental wit utilized to show one is “not a pushover” (Jasim).

Motivations

Participants’ motivations behind using such bodily and spatial coping techniques reveal the different natures of the strategies. For instance, ignoring is considered a deflecting strategy. This is supported by some participants who ignore attention they receive because they do not want to engage in conflict. However, ignoring can also be a form of silent challenging, an unapologetic stance. Instead of explaining oneself to the other, they allow themselves to just be as they are without compensating or acting differently because they are Moroccan-Dutch. In this way, one forces the other to just deal with their presence, which cannot be described as conflict avoidant. Hence, the same techniques can be utilized for different strategies. Motivations reveal that the interviewees do not necessarily resort to deflective coping strategies (Bouabid, 2018). The majority of the participants have moved on from avoidance and conformation to reformation and ignoring strategies. They seem unapologetic: calm, outspoken and not inclined to prove themselves. They do not actively seek out confrontation, but also do not shy away from being as they are. This can be considered an act of resistance because one refuses to conform to techniques that will comfort the other.

At the same time, the gender of the other is important for the kind of coping strategies they chose. They generally empathize with women, and the elderly, and deem their fears as more legitimate than that of (other) men, as they are considered more vulnerable. This corresponds to a traditional sense of masculinity in which the man should protect the woman. In these types of cases, their masculinity instigates a dilemma: should one conform their ways to make the woman or elder feel better or does one continue their own ways as they were? In most cases, the participants chose to adapt. The macho angry look or bodily posture makes way for more smiling to indicate to the other that one can feel safe. The spatial plan is adapted, and the men take a different route, in which the woman or elder has more control or in which there is more distance between them. In these cases, the interviewees shift from an unapologetic stance toward a conforming strategy out of a sense of care. Their own vulnerability is ignored to take care of the “truly” vulnerable female subject. This showcases that even in daily life the discourse of the vulnerable female subject and her geography of fear can affect their behaviors (England & Simon, 2010).

Conclusion and discussion

The article addressed how young middle-class Moroccan-Dutch men navigate geographies of (un)ease and subsequent coping strategies they employ in public spaces of Rotterdam. First, our findings reveal that feeling at ease means receiving neither more nor less attention than other surrounding bodies. It shows that stigma is a reflection of both their psyche and embodiment: respondents often mentally adopt the perspective of the other and find themselves in a heightened state of physical alertness. When reading bodily behaviors, our respondents instantly dissect the possible meanings these could entail. Our results show that their double consciousness makes them more susceptible and therefore seemingly vulnerable to bodily cues around them. As Kusow (2004) explains, the awareness of being stigmatized allows stigma to exert social control.

Second, our research reveals that a sense of unease due to stigma, is also triggered by spatial factors. The contextualization of stigma shows that it is not only generated by other people, but also by different environments. Thereby, we can confirm Ahmed’s (2007) findings that spaces are not neutral and can take be exclusionary. Consider how white spaces make one’s nonwhite body stand out, how night makes one appear more suspect, how the indoor cultures of white spaces make the streets quieter and thus the strange more observable, and how, while resting, respondents cannot escape scrutiny and therefore their strangeness becomes more identifiable. Hence, these spatial factors connect back to the embodiment of stigma.

Third, we mapped the geography of (un)ease, which confirmed that racial stigma is spatially situated (Anderson, 2015; Hancock et al., 2017). In line with Jones et al. (2015), the most pronounced factors for distinguishing whether a public space was comfortable were civil inattention, diversity, and familiarity. In these instances, respondents’ stigma was not felt as they did not stand out as a strange body in the environment (Ahmed, 2000). They all have a comparable, strong geography of ease, but a less pronounced geography of unease. This mainly has to do with their coping strategies. For instance, those interviewees who use an avoidance strategy have a much clearer geography of unease than those who ignore or try to step over boundaries. For the latter, habituation can result in these boundaries disappearing and spaces of unease may even transform into spaces of relative ease. This leads to a less strongly bounded geography, as some areas are simply extra comfortable compared to others. Hence shifting from a language of fear to a language of (un)ease seems to offer the nuance necessary to understand people’s everyday navigation of urban space. A versatile—yet understudied—spatial navigation technique is mobility. While often used to avoid stigma by traversing white spaces, mobility has also been used to contest racialized spaces by “invading” white spaces.

The walking interview method was beneficial for contextualizing the research and putting our participants at ease. The research took place in the public spaces it examined, and in some cases this triggered memories of experiences made within these or similar spaces. Moreover, these spaces also aided interviewees in their descriptions of mental and bodily (un)ease. It was useful for the researcher to observe what they were describing. By starting in a place of ease and then walking together, the atmosphere seemed to become more laidback. Both interviewee and researcher naturally adjust their tempo to each other and become synchronized through the action of walking. A limitation of this method is that embodiment is difficult to measure directly, especially when one’s positionality differs from that of the interviewee. Consequently, we researched respondents’ perceptions of their embodiment. This, however, is affected by the coping strategies they utilize and the reflective character of the participants. Future research could attempt to perform an ethnography with participant observation or conduct walking interviews with a camera to document the interactions with other bodies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the interviewees for walking with us, the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive feedback (and patience), and Femke Vandenberg for proofreading.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joia Esmée de Jong

Joia Esmée de Jong is Creative Director for academia at Creative Desk. She graduated summa cum laude from her bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences and cum laude from her research master’s degree in Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts at Erasmus University Rotterdam. From these experiences, she learned how to research phenomena interdisciplinary by connecting different domains. In her work, the focus always lays upon power dynamics and how social inequality is (re)produced in the public sphere. These interests have led her to one of her current position in which she makes academic work more accessible to the general public with visual design and storytelling.

Pauwke Berkers

Pauwke Berkers is Full Professor Sociology of Popular Music and Head of Department at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His main research interests include social inequalities in Arts and Culture. His work has been published in Poetics, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Gender & Society and other outlets.

Notes

1. Until 2022, the Dutch statistical agency (CBS) used as a main category “people with a migration background.” We however follow as much as possible the approach of Gunaratnum (2003) which acknowledges power, i.e., that people are actively minoritized by others rather than naturally part of a minority.

2. We looked at the relative numbers of white people and racially minoritized people in the neighborhoods near the meeting locations with the Rotterdam Buurtmonitor of 2018, while being aware this is an indicator with limitations.

Appendix

Table A1. Meeting places.

Pseudonym	Meeting Place
Baariq	Starbucks at Erasmus University Rotterdam
Omar	Verhagen at Vuurplaat
Saeed	De Heilige Boontjes at Eendrachtsplein
Dalil	Starbucks at Rotterdam Central Station
Jasim	Sugo at Aert van Nesstraat
Sami	Researcher’s home/Sami’s car
Faiz	Salsa Shop at Stadhuisplein
Ahsan	Starbucks/Hogeschool Rotterdam at Dijkzigt
Khaled	Coconuts at Stadhuisplein
Fikri	Starbucks at Rotterdam Central Station
Zeyn	Bazar at Witte de With
Yousri	HAS at Vuurplaat

Interview 2 and 7 weren’t walking interviews. Interviewee 2 did not feel comfortable walking around. Interview 7 could not be conducted outside due to weather circumstances.

Figure A1. Walking routes.