Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss.

The Wilhelmsburg neighbourhood of Hamburg, Germany is characterized in local media as a problem neighbourhood. Many of its residents are racialized people struggling with low incomes, unemployment, and less formal education than average in the city as a whole, exemplifying what Razack (2002, p. 6) calls the “spatiality of the racial order in which we live.” Wilhelmsburg is also the focus of a massive urban planning and architectural project, the Internationale Bauaustellung (International Building Exhibition, or IBA) Hamburg 2007-2012, comprising 50 building projects that aim to transform the neighbourhood. In this thesis I use Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore IBA Hamburg’s public education materials, arguing that IBA Hamburg produces Wilhelmsburg and its residents as racialized, problematic, and in need of intervention to bring them into the future metropolis. Residents are targeted for integration through education, the effects of which are disciplinary and reproduce an unequal racial order of citizenship.

The Wilhelmsburg neighbourhood of Hamburg, Germany is characterized in local media as a problem neighbourhood. Many of its residents are racialized people struggling with low incomes, unemployment, and less formal education than average in the city as a whole, exemplifying what Razack (2002, p. 6) calls the “spatiality of the racial order in which we live.” Wilhelmsburg is also the focus of a massive urban planning and architectural project, the Internationale Bauaustellung (International Building Exhibition, or IBA) Hamburg 2007-2012, comprising 50 building projects that aim to transform the neighbourhood. In this thesis I use Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore IBA Hamburg’s public education materials, arguing that IBA Hamburg produces Wilhelmsburg and its residents as racialized, problematic, and in need of intervention to bring them into the future metropolis. Residents are targeted for integration through education, the effects of which are disciplinary and reproduce an unequal racial order of citizenship.