Heimat Wilhelmsburg: Belonging and resistance in a racialized neighborhood

Abstract

ABSTRACT Considering how Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg has been stigmatized for decades, and recently targeted for redevelopment, you would hardly guess from the outside that the neighborhood is beloved by racialized long-time residents, and considered to be a warm, welcoming Heimat: a space of belonging, where you do not have to justify your presence. This identification is tied to the neighborhood’s racialization; the qualities that have been labeled as problems to be transformed through social mix make it a space of relative safety and security, in a context in which many residents experience attempted exclusions from German identity. Based on interviews with racialized long-time residents, contextualized within racialization in Germany, the racialized displaceability embedded in social mix policy, the contested meaning of Heimat, and the experiences of Wilhelmsburg residents with migrantization, I argue that this emphatic claim is a strength that is threatened by the current process of social mix gentrification.