Challenging Narratives of ‘Native Flight’ in a Small Town. Reflections on Moral Economies and Space

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in the case of Salt, a small town located next to Girona (Catalonia), this paper analyses the everyday negotiation of the emerging „superdiverse‟ reality outside the metropolis, yielding a specific focus on the role of space. Via an analysis of the social production of space in this rural-urban locality, accounting for the contested understandings of space and belonging, the dominant narrative of „native flight‟ is challenged. In fact, often research on social problems in poor neighbourhoods ignore the deep connections between everyday interactions in space and the inherent structural tensions, due to ethnic, racial, class and/or gender inequalities. Instead, in this paper focus is put on the vernacular groupings put in practice in the specific context of a small town thereby revealing how the dominant narratives neglect how this is embedded within the „social production of space‟.