This dissertation adopts a jointly ethnographic and historical approach to study shifting racial formations and configurations of inequality in the metropolitan U.S. South. Specifically, it analyzes how immigrants and working poor populations are reshaping the social life, privatized spaces, and conservative politics of Atlanta’s white suburbs. It focuses on Sandy Springs, a majority-white and affluent area located ca. 15 miles north of Atlanta. In 2005, Sandy Springs incorporated as an autonomous municipality, ending a three-decade battle to obtain fiscal and political autonomy from Atlanta and majority-minority Fulton County. Shortly thereafter, Sandy Springs became nationally and internationally well-known as the first large municipality to outsource the majority of its services to a private corporation. Today, the area is characterized by a rapidly urbanizing landscape and an increasingly diverse population, with working poor African American, Latinx, and other immigrant residents constituting ca. 41% of its nearly 100,000 residents (US Census 2010). How does a municipality built on secessionist, anti-urban, anti-welfare stances deal with the growth of poverty and diversity within its boundaries? How have its neoliberal governing strategies and “colorblind” racist framings shifted over the years, adapting to the changing nature of its population? I answer these questions by combining long-term ethnographic and archival research (2010-2016) with media and document analysis so as to offer a jointly institutional and on-the-ground perspective on this four-decade long process of “city” making. Each chapter examines this process from a different angle, considering government privatization (chapter 1), welfare (chapter 2), education (chapter 3), gentrification and neighborhood redevelopment (chapter 4). On the one hand, I uncover the purportedly race-neutral strategies and discourses that white homeowners and politicians have used, over the years, to control the growing presence of minority residents, seeking to refashion their subjectivities and simultaneously remodel their neighborhoods. On the other, I examine various responses to these institutional strategies as articulated by a heterogeneous group of Latinx counterpublics—including working class mothers and youth, and nonprofit activists. Through their counter-narratives and tactics, these groups challenged commonsense understandings of race, space, poverty, and activism in Sandy Springs, creating new modes of belonging and political participation for black and brown suburban residents. In conclusion, I take these activist mobilizations as evidence that new nonwhite, non middle class identities are emerging at the heart of white suburbia, unsettling the intertwined relationships of race, property, and privilege that have historically shaped its politics and landscape.

Creator

• Lanari, Elisa

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-w1wa-zf29

Subject

• Ethnic studies
• Cultural anthropology

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:14799
• etdadmin_upload_684799

Keyword

• US South
• Latinx
• gender
• political economy
• race/racism
• suburbs

Date created

• 2019-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright