Brave New Neighbourhood: Affective citizenship in Dutch territorial governance

This dissertation deals with the prominence and promise of the communitarian citizen in current neighbourhood governance in the Netherlands in general, and Slotermeer in particular. I start from the proposition that communitarian citizens matter a great deal in Dutch national and local neighbourhood policies aimed at neighbourhood regeneration. The communitarian citizenship ideal implies a transformation in the way citizens are perceived by governments: no longer as rational, individual and calculative subjects but more prominently as affective subjects in search of attachments to something common.
I explore the background to this shift as well as its implications for the relationship between citizens and governments. More specifically, I show how this shift has a profound effect on the way citizenship is enacted by governance actors in deprived urban neighbourhoods, how it influences the type of policies designed by national and local governments, the professional practices of policy practitioners who implement these policies and the opportunities for residents to become engaged in their living environment. It influences who feels heard, acknowledged and included and who does not, and, as such, has an effect on the empowerment of some, the feelings of exclusion of others and the sense of belonging of all who are subject to this type of governance.