After deindustrialization, in the midst of urban transformation: the case of Paşabahçe

Abstract

This study scrutinizes Paşabahçe borough which had witnessed deindustrialization as a prominent social change and came to be threatened with displacement due to the rise of neoliberal urbanism. The specific characteristic of the district has been that once it was a blue-collar worker basin where generations of factory workers were the main current in the production of a self-sufficient and integrated space in its social and economic life. However, in the realm of working life, deindustrialization meant the end of the specific occupation of being a factory worker and the appearance of multiple, fragmented, and even derogatory job positions. The people are kept in this working life by the pressure of unemployment. In this context, the stories of the factory workers were about decline, dispersal, and defeat of the community and place, since plant-closures were experienced as dissolution of place in economic, social, and cultural means. The place and its inhabitants have been left with the ruins of the factory buildings waiting their arrangement in the new urban politics, since the production of space in the district that dated back to the fordist phase of urbanization became superfluous with plant-closings. Concurrently, the urban fabric of Paşabahçe has been in the process of a complete transformation, as the gated communities have been developing at the higher elevations and urban transformation projects has been stepped in. In this context, this study concentrates on the experience of these prominent changes in which the inhabitants perceive dispossession. As the plight of the borough has been observed, people seem to gain a kind of critical awareness on the class strategies operating in this process. Correspondingly, this study also examines the response of people to this dislocating process and their means and limits of solidarity and resistance. The appearance of a rupture between generations according to age and migration is an important determining factor. The generation of migrant factory workers and their close community have different repertoire of events and different “sense of past.” Thus, their “appeal to past” under the constant threat of displacement should be considered with its potential contributive effect to a novel organization, yet, the process is open. iii