Reconsidering neighbourhood communality through the lens of intersectionality : resident and authority perspectives

Abstract

This article examines how neighbourhood communality emerges and is restricted by a range of conditions, a topic that has received increasing attention in current research yet remains unresolved. The concept of communality provides a lens through which to examine how a variety of intersectional factors related to the informants’ social status affect the perceptions of the sense of community in the study’s focus neighbourhoods in Vaasa, Finland, where interview materials were gathered. The analysis scrutinizes the ways in which local institutions, the environment and residents interact with the three types of narration gestalts – inclusion, recollection and segregation – construing the idea of communality in the studied neighbourhoods. The study combines actor-network theory with intersectionality to gain insight into how and where people come together and interact. It became clear that the target neighbourhoods and people who live there are marginalized and seen as ‘others’ because of their socioeconomic status and other demographics.