Infrastructuring the social: Local community work, urban policy and marginalized residential areas in Denmark

Abstract

This article develops the concept of infrastructuring the social by analyzing the uses of local community work in Danish marginalized residential areas. Infrastructuring the social is a concept to describe how spaces are designated as problematic and marginalized and then remade through the creation and materialization of normative and instrumental relations. The article empirically demonstrates how infrastructuring the social works through enacting relations between residents, local community workers and professionals from municipalities, relations which are used to move people along normative trajectories. These trajectories are meant to transport people out of problematic areas, and into closer contact with “regular society,” such as Danish institutions, education, and the labor market. Infrastructuring the social is thus enacted from the outside in, imbued with the normative imperatives of the welfare state, seeking to rework the agency of residents and improve the marginalized residential area. The concept of infrastructuring the social nuances the trope of the “network” by highlighting the normative imperatives embedded in making relations, and goes beyond frameworks of governmentality by highlighting the practical messiness and on-going work of everyday governance.