Commercial Gentrification, Ethnicity, and Social Mixedness: The Case of Javastraat, Indische Buurt, Amsterdam

In this paper, we investigate the ethnic politics of commercial gentrification. We discuss how ethnicity is conceived of, managed by, and integrated into urban policy; and how the changing ethnic composition of the neighborhood is perceived and lived by entrepreneurs with different ethnic and class backgrounds. We employ the notion of “mixed embeddedness,” coined by Kloosterman et al., to understand the changes gentrification brings about for ethnic minority entrepreneurs and to explain their responses to these changes. Using the case study of a gentrifying street in Amsterdam, namely, Javastraat in Indische Buurt, we draw on an analysis of ethnic packaging at the policy level as well as in depth interviews with ethnically Dutch and ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Our findings shed light on how ethnic minorities survive and manage commercial gentrification on their doorsteps as well as the complexity of social mixedness in gentrifying neighborhoods.

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