Oral Presentation by Maria Alba¹, Susana Batel¹, Andrés Di Masso²
¹ ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal ² Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
TIME: Thursday, 16 July, 10:30 – 12:00
Location: Room 2
Session: 18
Abstract
Driven by neoliberal urban planning policies and increasing global mobilities, gentrification and touristification currently pose major challenges for cities in Southern Europe. In Lisbon, specifically, the unsustainable rise in housing prices and the transformation of neighbourhoods into sites for tourism-led consumption are reshaping how communities experience their everyday places. These processes lead not only to the physical displacement of residents, but also to symbolic forms of dispossession, including experiences of dislocation, defamiliarization, as well as the disruption of people-place relations and community bonds among those who are able to stay in the affected neighbourhoods. In this ongoing research, we adopt a critical psychosocial approach to examine a touristified neighbourhood in Lisbon’s historical centre – Mouraria – that has been associated with diverse representations over time, from popular and traditional to multicultural and cosmopolitan. Our aim is to analyse how representations of Mouraria spatially unfold and are (re)produced by different actors over time, and how they intertwine with past and present mobilities. Drawing on a critical realist framework, we perform a Thematic Analysis of media materials and institutional documents, such as urban regeneration plans, to assemble a Mouraria Archive, spanning from the end of the Portuguese dictatorship to the present day. We argue that this historical and spatial approach enables tracing how representations of place are appropriated by actors holding uneven social power over time, and how these materialise in the territory. Moreover, we explore how specific symbolic aspects of Mouraria are mobilised under competing representations of the neighbourhood, and with what consequences for the (re)production of situated social exclusions. Overall, this study contributes to critical psychosocial research by highlighting how power dynamics shape the social construction of places in contexts of urban change, and by informing more socially just urban policies.