‘If I tell them that I live near the neighborhood, they’re like, oh are you poor?’ Differences in young people’s reactions to territorial stigma in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland

Geographers have long been interested in how place is a crucial element of exclusion in society. In this study, we examine the reactions to neighborhood stigma of two groups of young people whose lives are intertwined with a stigmatized neighborhood at different levels. The first group lives, goes to school and spends leisure time in the neighborhoods and the second group goes to school there. Theoretically, we draw on Wacquant's concept of territorial stigmatization and Pryor and Reeder's taxonomy of different types of stigma: public stigma, self-stigma, and stigma by association. Our ethnographic data comprise interviews with young people (aged 13–15) and daily observations from two schools located in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland. We found three differences in stigma reactions between the two groups of young people, which were intertwined with spatial and social inequalities. The first difference arose from the uneven ways in which they struggled with neighborhood stigma. The second difference related to disengagement from the source of stigma, by detachment either from certain places or from the entire neighborhood. The third difference emerged in the different ways in which they used the neighborhood normalization strategy, to indicate neighborhood similarities or differences.