Urban policy, racialization & (in)security: Notes on space, politics and ideology

What are the relations among urban policy, processes of racialization and the problematic of security? In this talk, I approach this question by focusing on the centrality of racialized geographical imaginaries of danger in expert knowledge produced for urban and security policies that target racialized marginality in imperial metropoles. Based on four years of ethnographic work in Toronto, Canada, a city that is often celebrated as a leader in diversity and inclusion, I engage with the transformed continuity of colonial thought and ideology in the making of Toronto’s “immigrant neighbourhoods” (areas of urban deprivation, populated by majority non-White residents) as spaces of racialized ungovernability, as spaces that are simultaneously in need of securitization and tutelage. I underline the central roles of urban policy, liberal multiculturalism and liberal humanitarianism in this process of making. In doing so, my aim as a critical researcher committed to social and racial justice is to draw attention to the imperative of engaging with the productive power of the state in normalizing racism and racialization. The case of Toronto makes visible how territorial stigmatization, securitization and racialization heavily build upon the liberal humanitarian ethos of compassion, inclusion and empowerment. I conclude by highlighting the lessons we can take from Toronto for engaging with these questions in the European context. This talk is based on my recently published book, Fearing the Immigrant: Racialization and Urban Policy in Toronto (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).