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ABSTRACTThe Danish social housing sector is currently being restructured by national strategies that seek to combat so-called ‘parallel societies’. These strategies entail especially two things: (1) tearing down and/or privatizing social housing in marginalized and vulnerable neighbourhoods and (2) repressive strategies of governance which focus on ethnic minorities, restricting their choices of schools, kindergartens and interactions with social services. Our argument in this article is that despite strong attempts to enforce top-down repressive and discriminatory policies, the ‘ghetto’ continually ‘strikes back’ in a double-sense: Firstly, the Danish policies meant to combat ‘ghettoization’ and ‘parallel societies’ re-create these as statistical (and governable) categories, and secondly, local housing organizations, community workers and residents engage in a struggle from below where they employ tactics to resist the most repressive elements of these urban policies. We show through empirical examples from different neighbourhoods in Denmark, how this struggle from below generate resistance in three forms: they rework classifications and understandings of the neighbourhood; they attempt to generate resilience and increase coping of marginalized groups in the face of punitive state policies; and they mediate recent tendencies to a more punitive state, and mediate and translate active forms of resistance of residents, thereby rewriting scripts of citizenship. We argue that these forms of resistance attempt to change state space production from within.

Purpose: There is a growing importance for public facilitation of corporate social responsibility and involvement of civil organizations in securing territorial cohesion and development. In the present article, the authors focus on how we are to understand a locally sensitive organization of territorial cohesion in the Danish context. Traditional sociological concepts and standardized area-types used for administrative purposes have turned out not being very helpful in understanding the interrelation between inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion. The authors argue for a processual and relational approach to urbanization. Design/methodology/approach: The present article is based on interview material and policy documents from three Danish case studies representing urban, suburban and rural forms of settlement. The case studies are part of a cross-European research project. Findings: The authors show how territorial governance play a key role in the strategies of densification/de-densification facilitating shielding capacities of collective efficacy, and reversely that bottom-up innovations are crucial for the ability of territorial governance to mobilize territorial capital and mediate in effects of territorial inequality. Spatial imaginaries legitimize these efforts to organize cohesion. The spatial imaginaries work as common frame of references for the interplay between strategies of (de)densification and collective efficacy, and they activate particular balances between growth agendas and everyday life. Originality/value: These findings represent an original perspective on how and why urbanization impact on places in a more specific and variated way than often portrayed as it highlight how social capacities tied to place might work with or against existing social, economic and cultural structures shaping territorial cohesion.