Mindsets of marginalization: Exploring the emotional geographies of exclusion, explicit bias, and discrimination

Abstract

Stigmas and stereotypes surrounding chronically marginalized communities are widespread in most contemporary societies, and if left unaddressed, may lead to discrimination. Negative stereotypes are party due to a prejudiced public discourse that often works to dehumanize these populations and cast them as the threatening ‘other’. However, research suggests that prejudice also involves a substantial emotional component. This research paper aims to explore the emotional geographies of exclusion faced by a marginalized inner-city community in the Global South in order to better understand the mechanisms behind the perpetuation of discrimination faced by the community and to devise targeted intervention strategies that can potentially help to curb this vicious cycle. Data collection involved the administration of surveys examining explicit and implicit biases and their emotional components, taking place both in-person at the city-level, and nationwide using online distribution methods. This hybrid approach allowed for different scopes and scale of analysis as well as extensive geographic coverage that permitted for spatial representation and correlation via geostatistical techniques. Preliminary results indicate stigmatizing and stereotyping notions to be rampantly expressed towards the community, and largely driven by negative emotions, such as anger, fear, frustration, irritation, and lack of trust. These findings are important in understanding how emotional associations and stereotypes associated with place-based generalizations of an excluded space may potentially act as powerful influences that preserve and propel exclusionary processes, reinforcing marginalization of the area and its population, and has important policy implications related to inclusive development.