Imaginaries of Problematic Places

This Open Access book examines how young people in Malmö’s Rosengård district navigate life in the shadow of urban violence and enduring stigma. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it explores the imaginaries and lived social experience around Sweden’s problematised urban areas and how stigmatising labels, such as “no-go zones”, are co-produced through media narratives, architectural design, and policy discourse. Rather than focusing on victims or perpetrators, the book foregrounds the everyday realities and political agency of marginalised youth in one of Europe’s most stigmatised urban areas. It argues that these young people are not passive subjects of state neglect or social control, but active agents of democratic life, carving out alternative forms of belonging and resistance. In doing so, the book challenges dominant frameworks that locate violence and political instability outside Europe, reframing how we understand contemporary urban life, inequality, and youth politics within stable democracies. Combining urban sociology, critical race studies, and ethnographic methods, this book provides a nuanced, intersectional, and anti-racist account of life in the proximity of structural violence, and of the creative, collective strategies that emerge in response.