Covid-19 and the biopolitics of stigma in public housing
Dividing Practices and Community Boundaries in Pandemic Times
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3628339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kiran Pienaar (0000-0003-4770-7882, Deakin University, corresponding author), P Kelaita (0000-0001-9468-2708, UNSW Sydney), Dean Murphy (0000-0003-2752-7091, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 167-182 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health Sociology Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1446-1242 • E-ISSN: 1839-3551 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14461242.2024.2390019 |
| PMID | 39150867 |
| OpenAlex | W4401634975 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 21 |
The COVID-19 'hard lockdowns' in Melbourne, Australia in 2020 targeted public housing estates thus trading on perceptions of risk associated with public housing as some of the most stigmatised sites in post-industrial cities. This article draws on interviews with Melbourne public housing tenants on their experience of COVID-19 lockdowns to analyse the place of stigma in residents' accounts. Pairing Wacquant et al's (2014) concept of 'territorial stigma' with sociological work on the biopolitics of stigma we consider the dynamics of stigma, tracing how it functions to delimit community boundaries and justify pandemic containment measures. Residents navigate multiple layers of stigma, including stereotypes of public housing, normative judgements of neighbouring residents, and a broader public housing system riven with structural issues. Members of these communities are both the targets of stigma and seek to distance themselves from those seen as vectors of stigma. Our participants report mobilising social distancing strategies couched in normative assessments of perceived risk based on physical appearance, presumed drug use and past conduct. We explore the implications of these enactments of territorial stigma and trace the logics of abjection that construct public housing as deprived urban zones, home to abject 'Others' perceived as threatening the health of the community
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Biology · Biopower · Criminology · Distancing · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Project commissioning · Psychiatry · Publishing · Social distance · Social science · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Medicine · Virology
Stigma and disease
Infrastructures of Care for Public Housing Residents During Covid-19 Detention
The Subject and Power
Poststructural Policy Analysis
‘Our Voices Aren’t in Lockdown’—Refugee Young People, Challenges, and Innovation During Covid-19
Behind closed doors, no one sees, no one knows’
Addiction stigma and the biopolitics of liberal modernity
This is our home’
Public housing and territorial stigma
From high-rise projects to suburban estates
Mixed tenure communities and the effects on neighbourhood reputation and stigma
Disrupting Human Rights
Bodies that matter
The uneven distribution of futurity
Televised Territorial Stigma
Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality
Territorial Stigmatization in Action
Pandemic policing and the construction of publics
Basic care as exceptional care
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |