Interplay between representing ‘others’ and experiencing peripherality: ethnographic study in a Swiss valley

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the lived and situated peripherality of Val-de-Travers, a Swiss valley located on the border with France, articulates with experiences and representations of difference. It ethnographically investigates how the presence of people assigned to different social categorizations of difference – in this case, refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux—intersects with place-based representations and experiences of other long-term residents. In doing so, this article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the complex interplay between the micro-processes of categorizing and representing ‘others’ and the macro-hierarchies of place.

KEYWORDS:

• Representation
• difference
• periphery
• social organization
• social categorization
• others

Introduction

Since Barth’s pioneering work in 1969, a multitude of authors have explored the ‘social organisation of difference’ in specific localities. While most of these studies have investigated processes of ethnic differentiation (Baumann 1996; Wessendorf 2013), others have proposed broadening the spectrum of analysis by working on additional markers of differentiation, such as race, religion, gender, class, duration of stay, and type of mobility (Dahinden 2013; Elias and John Scotson 1994; Vertovec 2021). These studies reveal how boundaries between groups (Lamont and Molnár 2002; Wimmer 2013) are situationally constructed in everyday interactions informed by diverse political, social, and economic contexts.

However, these approaches, often mobilized in migration and ethnic studies, tend to be applied to cities (Berg and Sigona 2013; Guma 2019) or urban neighbourhoods (Wimmer 2004), leading several authors to protest the urban bias in this literature (Schmiz et al. 2022). ‘Small’ and ‘peripheral’ places seem to have been neglected despite their inclusion in processes of diversification and transnationalisation (Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2018). Furthermore, a peripheral – or peripheralised (Wirth et al. 2016) – position in the regional, national, and global political economy should not be overlooked. Indeed, following Stacul (2003) and Banack (2021), this position may influence the way ‘difference’, understood as socially constructed categories (Vertovec 2021), is experienced and represented.

Drawing on several months of ethnographic research conducted in Val-de-Travers, a valley of 12,000 inhabitants situated on the Swiss/French border, this paper introduces the notion of ‘peripherality’ as a critical dimension of boundary work. Peripherality is not a fixed or permanent attribute but is constructed through multiple interconnections between places – some centralize while others peripheralise (Wirth et al. 2016) – and what may be considered a periphery at one scale could be a centre at another scale, challenging conventional notions of geographic hierarchies (Paasi 2004). As such, the peripherality of place and its implications are constantly being redefined and renegotiated, and this paper explores the ways in which peripherality relates to the micro-processes of representing ‘others’.

Val-de-Travers is of interest in studying such dynamics, as the valley’s geographical, political, economic, symbolic, and demographic peripherality (on a national and cantonal scale) intertwines with the daily dynamics of its occupants’ social categorizations. As presented elsewhere (Charmillot and Dahinden 2022), most inhabitants of Val-de-Travers – be they foreigners or Swiss – may be perceived as members of the local imagined community if seen as economically and socially supporting daily life. However, others are assigned to stigmatized categories (Tyler 2020). These others consist of refugees housed in centres or apartments in the valley; cross-border workers living in France and working in Switzerland; and ‘cas sociaux’ [‘social cases’]¹ in serious social and economic precarity, who are often considered drug addicts dependent on social welfare. Although these categories are subject to stigmatization at other scales – for example in social (England 2008), economic (Bolzman, Pigeron-Piroth, and Duchene-Lacroix 2021), or racial (Radford 2016) terms – in Val-de-Travers, their representations are inextricably linked with experiences and imaginaries of peripherality.

While acknowledging that other categorizations of difference exist in the valley, I focus on refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux to demonstrate the role of peripherality in long-term residents’ representations and experiences of difference. I illustrate how the everyday uses of these diverse categorizations of difference might intersect and serve common goals and interests. The aim of this article is therefore not to determine who is a member of a particular social group but rather to explore how these social categorizations, which result from intertwined and multiscalar dynamics of boundary-making and bordering, are experienced and represented in relation to the lived and situated peripherality of Val-de-Travers. As such, long-term residents do not always reject the peripherality of the valley but instead often claim it as an attribute of an imagined community that the production of ‘difference’ can reinforce a feeling of belonging to.

This article accordingly explores everyday experiences and representations of difference and highlights the subtleties and ambivalences of the valley’s cohabitation. Investigating such tensions allows for nuancing stigmatization processes and understanding their entanglement with representations and experiences of a peripheral local order. In short, I am interested in how the valley’s long-term residents produce and adapt these social categorizations and how they use them to negotiate other boundaries, including those concerning the valley’s lived and situated peripherality.

In what follows, I first theoretically articulate the social organization of difference framework with the peripherality of Val-de-Travers. I then briefly present the context and process of data collection before delving into my analysis. I subsequently explore the diverse representations of difference that emerge in Val-de-Travers and examine their underlying meanings and origins. To approach shifting representations of the social categorizations of difference, I mobilize three categories of analysis: ‘familiar stranger’, ‘space invader’, and ‘peripheral figure’.

Articulating the social organization of difference and peripherality

This study approaches the social organization of difference in a specific place. Vertovec argues that ‘each context or scale – nation, city, or neighbourhood – will have its own historically produced social organization of difference’ according to three dimensions: configuration, representation, and encounter (2021, 1290). In his model, configurations refer to the structural conditions within which people carry out their lives, representations concern the conceptual ordering of the social world, and encounters pertain to actual human interaction. He formulated a framework for exploring how difference, understood as socially constructed categories, is experienced, (re)produced, and represented in everyday interactions, which are themselves situated in broader economic and political configurations.

Vertovec’s framework draws extensively on the literature of boundary work – the creation, maintenance, and transformation of social and symbolic differentiations between groups (Lamont and Molnár 2002; Wimmer 2013). Within this body of work, several researchers have adopted a ‘site-specific approach’ (Fox and Jones 2013, 390) – applying to cities (Glick Schiller, Çaglar, and Guldbrandsen 2006), neighbourhoods (Wimmer 2004), or small towns (Dahinden 2013) – to explore the differentiating factors mobilized in the daily discourses and practices. Based on these findings, scholars have recommended approaches that do not reproduce ethnicity (Fox and Jones 2013) and migration (Dahinden 2016) biases and instead advocated a reflexive use of nation-state-based categories (Dahinden, Fischer, and Menet 2021). These approaches acutely illuminate how difference is produced and experienced locally and how it is embedded in social, political, and economic contexts.

However, research has not directly addressed how lived and situated experiences of peripherality intersect with local representations and experiences of difference. ‘Peripherality’ echoes the commonly and locally used notion invoked to define Val-de-Travers as situated geographically, economically, socially, and politically in an asymmetrical power relationship with dominant ‘centres’ – the city and canton of Neuchâtel (Jelmini, Vaucher, and Engelberts 2008). Val-de-Travers is classified as one of the four regions of this Swiss canton. It is the least populated – with only 7% of the canton’s inhabitants – and constitutes three political municipalities and eleven villages. The valley was an important watchmaking and industrial centre at the beginning of the 20th century and had nearly 19,000 inhabitants. However, its population has declined in recent decades and currently stands at 12,000. Incomes are on average lower than the national average, and the valley struggles to attract new residents from surrounding localities.

Importantly, the socio-economic aspects of the valley’s peripherality (or peripheralisation) are well recognized and documented. Yet, I do not solely conceive of peripherality through such indicators, as is sometimes the case in the literature (Wirth et al. 2016, 63). Instead, I view it as a complex and contradictory set of experiences and imaginaries that are subject to perpetual reinterpretation. While it might represent a form of ‘distance’, ’isolation’, and ‘socio-economic deprivation’ (Brown and Hall 2000), these characteristics can also be appropriated or contested by political agents, economic actors, or local populations to (re)orient region-building (Paasi and Metzger 2017) and highlight the positive aspects of the periphery regarding, for instance, the quality of life, financial attractiveness, or close-knit interpersonal network (Coquard 2019).

Therefore, exploring ‘peripheries’ does not mean exploring ‘given places’, but rather investigating how people define and appropriate a peripheral sense of place, in my case in relation to diverse processes of categorizing and representing ‘others’. I argue that lived and situated experiences of peripherality influence local dynamics of ‘stereotyping’ – discourses that ‘reduce, essentialise, naturalise and fix “difference”’ (Hall 1997, 258). For example, in Val-de-Travers, the presence of refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux is occasionally represented as a stereotypical illustration of the region’s peripheralisation. This does not necessarily mean that these people are presented as ‘outsiders’ (Elias and John Scotson 1994) but rather as emblematic figures of the periphery.

In Val-de-Travers, the notion of peripherality is also associated with a certain ‘materiality’. In contrast to the neighbouring ‘centre’ – the city of Neuchâtel – the region is characterized by scattered housing, a limited transportation network, and a low population density in public spaces. These spatial layouts influence the moments and situations in which different groups are exposed to the view of others (Ulceluse, Bock, and Haartsen 2022). As demonstrated by Licona and Maldonado (2014), the meanings of visibility and invisibility extend beyond mere presence or absence: they often have different connotations and are associated with different imaginaries. While the visibility of certain people is experienced as positive, the visibility of others can be negatively charged and reinforce various stigmas.

As such, articulating the social organization of difference alongside the lived and imagined experiences of peripherality aids in demonstrating that the everyday dynamics of categorizations are not always obvious and political. Such dynamics are also ‘subtle, implicit, and nested into the everyday web of interactions among individuals’ (Wimmer 2013, 4). Building on this, this paper aims to nuance studies on insiders – outsiders relations (Elias and John Scotson 1994) by demonstrating that this dichotomy is too hermetic to capture the complexity and fluidity of social relations and representations. Instead, I address how the latter are situationally (re)produced, contested, and transformed (Rogers and Steven 1995) according to contexts, spatial settings, and individual and collective interests.

In other words, this paper investigates how social categorizations of difference constitute significant resources for (other) processes of boundary-making situated in specific time, space, and scale.

Methodology

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2021 in Val-de-Travers, where I lived in a village for three months in addition to my regular visits. In addition to undertaking observations in meeting places, such as parks, train stations, sport facilities, cafés, and bars, I also volunteered for a local organization, teaching French twice a week to beneficiaries of various social services. This ethnographic data was complemented by 40 interviews with people occupying various positions in the valley. Most of the semi-structured interviews were conducted with long-term residents, with people working in social institutions (e.g. social workers), and with people active in the local public administration (politicians or civil servants). I also had the opportunity to conduct a focus group with refugees, complete three semi-structured interviews with cross-border workers, and participate in food distribution for people in conditions of socio-economic precarity.

These interviews and observations focused on different experiences of everyday life and on my interlocutors’ varying mobility practices and trajectories. Furthermore, I collected and analysed public documents, local newspapers, minutes of public and political meetings, websites, and Facebook pages. I decided to primarily focus on long-term residents who neither identify as nor are assigned to the categories of refugees, cross-border workers, or cas sociaux. Of course, the contours of these social categorizations are far from clear; authors have demonstrated how ‘people can and do shift between and across categories’ (Crawley and Skleparis 2018, 59). The people I refer to have different characteristics regarding gender, professional activities, age, and national origins. This heterogeneity is useful not only in understanding the nuances of how the social categorizations of difference are employed but also in highlighting the dominant (and shared) discourses of the valley’s long-term residents. Through this analysis, the perspectival nature of categories becomes evident: the process of categorization is always derived from social position, historical perspective, and personal or collective interests (Gillespie, Howarth, and Cornish 2012).

The data analysis began with a global analysis (Flick 2009), which revealed the main categorizations of difference used by my interlocutors. I then targeted specific passages, coding and classifying the results in order to explore in more detail the discursive uses of these categorizations.

Val-de-travers: a journey through the valley

Between two mountain ridges, Val-de-Travers is relatively flat and is threaded by a main road that serves the valley’s principal villages. Arriving from the neighbouring city of Neuchâtel, the elongated village of Travers appears, closed asphalt mines at one end. This site had been exploited for 274 years and not only exported asphalt to London, Paris, or New York but also attracted foreign workers from Italy, France, and Spain. A few hundred metres away lies the current industrial zone of the village of Couvet, dominated by an American pharmaceutical company and a large Swiss watch company. Further on, at the entrance to the village, a huge, abandoned factory appears. This building reaches as far as Couvet train station, close to where a refugee centre is located. Continuing through the valley, one might notice railway lines running adjacent to the main road that are widely used by commuters, students, but also the refugees who travel daily to the various villages or Neuchâtel. The train sets the rhythm of these flows and, once or twice an hour, several people and pupils appear, who then disperse into the streets. In Fleurier, the most populated village, there are several cafés and a shopping street where the stores and restaurants are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss, but also Thai or Algerian. Next to the train station, there is a public garden where some people, known locally as cas sociaux, meet and drink together. From Fleurier, the road rises through two small, rather agricultural villages, to eventually cross the border to Pontarlier, a French town of 17,000 inhabitants. A large proportion of this town’s inhabitants are French cross-border workers, many of whom drive daily to Val-de-Travers.

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As trivial as they may seem, these past and present mobilities matter: they have made the valley socially diverse. People of diverse ethno-national origins have lived there for decades (Jelmini, Vaucher, and Engelberts 2008) and have participated in shaping the contours of an imagined community of Valley-ers (Charmillot and Dahinden 2022). A feeling of belonging to this collective is also reinforced by an (experienced or imagined) interconnectedness between the inhabitants. This web is consolidated by the small population and the substantial number of organizations, particularly those concerning sport and culture, that link the region’s population (Kaeslin 2013). This journey through the valley also reveals a particular spatial order in which refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux are embedded.

Limited contact and long-term cohabitation: familiar strangers

Refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux are part of the valley’s local order: they represent people who have been living or working there for many years and those one might encounter in public spaces (e.g. refugees on the train, French cross-border workers on the road, and cas sociaux in the public garden). These social categorizations represent both social difference and geographical proximity.

In recent years, the Val-de-Travers region had two cantonal centres for refugees, each with a capacity of 80 places, but one closed in 2005 after a decline in asylum applications in Switzerland. After a certain amount of time spent in cantonal centres, refugees are transferred to apartments in different localities in the canton. Currently, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Sri Lanka are the principal countries of origin for asylum-seekers in Switzerland. As in other European countries, the issue of asylum has polarized public opinion since the 1980s, and the rhetoric of ‘fighting the abuse’ of asylum laws has become a dominant framework of public debate (Leyvraz et al. 2020, 9). These discourses are associated with a ‘racialisation’ (Michel 2015) of refugees, itself reinforced by a ‘securitisation’ of migration policy in which public discourse portrays refugees as a threat to the security of the country and its citizens (Stünzi 2018).

The number of French cross-border workers in the Val-de-Travers economy has increased considerably since 2000. After the Swiss – European Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons came into force in 2002, the share of cross-border workers rose from 9.5% in 2005 to 23% in 2020,² and they currently number approximately 1,300 in the valley (DEAS 2021). The category of frontalier [French term for cross-border worker] is difficult to determine. It is a simplifying term, often poorly defined in everyday language (Bolzman, Pigeron-Piroth, and Duchene-Lacroix 2021, 10), that may refer to a cross-border work permit (the G permit) or simply to people who regularly cross a border (Bolzman, Pigeron-Piroth, and Duchene-Lacroix 2021, 10). For the purposes of this article, the category of frontalier, as used by my interlocutors, refers to (presumed)³ French people, living in France, who work in Switzerland. These mobility practices are largely explained by economic differences between Switzerland and France (significantly higher salaries in Switzerland, lower cost of living in France). This category is increasingly present in public discourse due to the frontalier’s growing number, the politicization of the issue, and their importance to the Swiss economy. In the canton of Neuchâtel, 48.5% of cross-border workers work in manufacturing industries, principally watchmaking (Pigeron-Piroth 2021, 131).

The percentage of people on social assistance was 7.2% in 2020, and the region’s social assistance service had approximately 750 recipients. Importantly, certain inhabitants occasionally conflate drug addicts, people on social assistance, and others who do not depend on social services but who have behaviours which are locally considered ‘inappropriate’, ‘deviant’, or ‘marginal’. These are the individuals to whom I refer to with the (permeable) category of cas sociaux. This category, which a recent documentary presented as highly stigmatized (Bakhti and Jeannet 2014), is employed with much caution in media and political discourse but occupies an important place in everyday life. It is used to designate, under the same umbrella, people or groups who are confronted with complex and persistent social problems and who disrupt dominant norms regarding physical appearance, the use of public space, the (absence of) professional activity, and the consumption of intoxicants.

These categories of difference thereby seem to correspond to what different authors have called ‘familiar strangers’ (Paulos and Goodman 2004): Valley-ers recognize that refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux live or work in the valley, but encounters tend to be fleeting, although they may happen repeatedly over time. The fluidity of the relationships and the weakness of social ties with other long-term Valley-ers may be explained by various factors: the scattered nature of housing, mobility practices (cross-border workers live in France and work in Switzerland, refugees have not chosen to live in Val-de-Travers and spend a large part of their time outside the valley), legal and economic situations that restrict access to public goods and services, or various forms of (stigmatized) precarity.

However, the degree of familiarity with these social categorizations varies significantly among the valley’s inhabitants, and notably so regarding refugee centre or social services employees and people who meet cross-border workers at their workplace. Furthermore, several associations – often composed of retired volunteers – have established activities, occasionally with the support of the municipality, such as monthly meals cooked by ‘migrants’, food distribution for disadvantaged people, and arrival kits to encourage cross-border workers to shop locally. While these activities provide daily support (such as food distribution) and help create a sense of familiarity among different population groups, they do not seem to blur symbolic boundaries. Not only does the asymmetry of social relationships remain (such as in helping relationships), but stigmatization may also be exacerbated by categorizing individuals as recipients (or non-recipients) of support (Fraser 1998), regardless of their length of stay. Therefore, the representation of the ‘familiar stranger’ emphasizes a certain level of familiarity with (persistent) differences.

Interestingly, for people who do not encounter refugees, cross-border workers, or cas sociaux in their private lives or through voluntary or professional activities, contact occurs primarily in mobility: on the train, on the road, or when crossing the public garden. In these spatial settings where ‘difference’ becomes ‘salient’, the representation of what Puwar (2004) refers to as ‘space invaders’ emerges, which I explore in the subsequent section.

(Im)mobilities and visibility: space invaders

The spatial settings I explore in this section are understood as nodes or entanglements of varying circulations that expose different people to the view of others. My interlocutors referred to ‘visible cues’ (Wimmer 2013, 65) in these ‘contact zones’ (Lawson and Elwood 2014) that facilitate the categorization of people. These visible cues, such as skin colour, French licence plates, and physical appearance, contribute to the crystallization of differences and can act as semantic barriers hindering or preventing dialogue between groups (Gillespie, Kadianaki, and O’Sullivan-Lago 2012). People who carry these visible cues – which can only be hidden at great cost (Wimmer 2013, 65) – expose themselves unwittingly and unconsciously to being perceived as ‘invaders’. Of course, these cues are situational and hold slightly different meanings and imaginaries in other places, such as urban areas.

The visible markers that refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux carry immediately activate an imaginary of suspicion that can be mobilized ‘in the logics of sidelining repulsive profiles’ (Coquard 2019, 105, my translation). This can contribute to an illusion of unity through the creation of symbolic others in contradistinction to such adoptive identifications as, for example, white, Swiss, or taxpayer (Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002). To illustrate this, I explore various discourses encountered in relation to roads, trains, and the public garden.

As described above, the whole valley is threaded by a main road which connects it with the French town of Pontarlier. The large amount of traffic at rush hour annoys some inhabitants. The car is the most common means of transport for French cross-border commuters, and their ‘trips’ do not go unnoticed in the region: identified by their licence plates, they are blamed for the traffic. Philippe, a man from France who has been working in the valley for almost 20 years, shared his experience:

When I get into the car with French licence plates, people sometimes honk their horns and some even give me the finger. People cut me off; they make us understand that we are not welcome.

Nathan, a young man from the valley, confirmed a certain irritation: ‘Cross-border commuters on the roads are annoying. Every morning you see the column of cars and it’s not pleasant’. Some inhabitants present themselves as ‘powerless witnesses’ of this flight of income to France – powerless in the sense that local actors have little leeway to change migration policies and company recruitment processes.

Jérémie told me that ‘except on the roads, you can’t really know who is and who is not a cross-border worker’. According to him, these people would be rather invisible ‘outside their cars’ because they speak French and are ‘white’. The licence plates therefore take on an important symbolic role; they are often the only element that allows identifying cross-border workers, and they ‘represent’ the flight of income to France. Without this visible sign, cross-border workers disappear into local companies or ‘merge’ into the population. They are therefore mediators of ‘powerful temporal imaginaries’ (Dalakoglou and Harvey 2012, 65) that depict cross-border workers as ‘profiteers of Swiss income to live on the other side of the border’ (Richard, 75-year-old man). This representation is stereotypical, but it also reveals the sincere concerns of some Valley-ers concerning the local economy (Charmillot 2023).

Trains and stations are also often presented as contact zones where different population groups are exposed to each other. In Couvet, the refugee centre the cantonal authorities operate is located next to the station, and residents benefit from a public transport pass for the whole canton. Thus, the refugees, who often travel to Neuchâtel for administrative, medical, or private reasons, move predominantly by public transport. For refugees, skin colour seems to act as the dominant visible cue categorizing them (in this case, as refugees). Several local commuters and students told me they had ‘met black people from the centre’ during their journey from Neuchâtel to Val-de-Travers. While several people related ‘positive experiences’, such as Céline, who told me that she often ‘enjoyed talking to people from West Africa because [her] son-in-law is Cameroonian’, others shared with me ‘problematic encounters’. Sarah, a woman in her 30s who grew up in the region, told me that she had been bothered several times by refugees on the train. Sarah said that she is not opposed to the presence of refugees in Val-de-Travers, but it was not always ‘pleasant’ on the train.

Although experiences are diverse, the arrival of refugees on the train seems to ‘disrupt’ the mobility experiences of Valley-ers. In a space historically dominated by white people – the train line running through Val-de-Travers is over 150 years old – the arrival of ‘non-white’ people does not go unnoticed. They are promptly identified by other users, and the colour of their skin, as with the licence plates of cross-border workers, gives rise to various powerful imaginaries and stereotypes (Hall 1997). In this case, the visible signs do not refer to economic considerations but become the symbol of ‘danger that triggers fears’ (Leitner 2012, 838). The racialization of refugees in Val-de-Travers seems to be based primarily on ‘security’ aspects, as illustrated by Julie, a 30-year-old woman who grew up in the region:

I have seen some refugees when I take the train—it’s true that it’s not reassuring and often they don’t speak French. Sometimes they called to me to ask me a question. It happened sometimes on the last train, at 11:30 pm, and I got suspicious, especially when I don’t understand the question. And well, often it was nothing. But in Val-de-Travers, on the last train, there is nobody and often no controllers.

Julie’s experience on the train with refugees seems to reinforce their ‘otherness’: they don’t speak French and some of them travel at late hours, which might raise ‘suspicion’ and feelings of ‘unpredictability’ concerning their practices. However, not only refugees can be the target of stigmatizing discourses on the train. Cas sociaux on public transport are also recognized by visible cues – in this case physical appearance (the most frequently invoked elements being tattoos, the company of dogs, and alcohol consumption) – that carry strong connotations. Sarah continued her discourse by also mentioning them:

In Couvet, there are a lot of people who are dependent on social services; they are very recognisable because I always take the train, and they also take it to go to Fleurier to get their welfare payments in the centre, and then we feel a little sorry for them. They stick together. They are always drunk.

Some Valley-ers told me that there is an ‘overrepresentation’ of unpleasant encounters. Deni, a man in his 30s working for the municipal authorities, admitted that ‘most of the time there is no problem’ and that these people ‘stick together’ without necessarily disturbing other passengers. Nevertheless, this does not prevent visible cues from producing powerful stigmatizing imaginaries, as illustrated in the following exchange with Sophie, a 40-year-old woman who has lived in the valley all her life:

Sophie: In the valley, people always say that the Couvet train station or the public garden are nasty places. You shouldn’t go there.

Interviewer: And do you know these people who hang out in these public spaces?

Sophie: …Mmh, no, they’re not people I know. I have the impression that some of them are not from here. Then there are a few well-known guys. We’ve seen them for a long time, people with tattoos that we recognize. There are figures who become part of the valley.

Her discourse is interesting because it reveals a certain ambivalence: on the one hand these people are repulsive, identified through their tattoos, and portrayed as space invaders; on the other hand, they become ‘part of the valley’ increasing the ‘environment’s readability, predictability, and familiarity’ (Felder 2020, 687). As mentioned by Sophie, cas sociaux are also associated with the public garden in Fleurier. In this park, with its benches and a playground for families, people meet when the weather is pleasant. As this place is close to an institution that supports drug addicts, part of this population tends to use the park. Several interlocutors, including Julien, a 25-year-old man who grew up in the region, complained of their presence and expressed it as a form of ‘invasion’:

Basically, it’s a garden for children in the village. I used to go there when I was young. And now it’s a place where some people drink and turn the music up. The municipality can’t do anything, nor can the police, because they don’t hurt anyone. So, they leave them alone. I come by every day; they are always already there. Anyway, it’s disturbing.

According to Julien, the presence (and visibility) of these people is disturbing because they transform the quiet order of the garden into a place of ‘noisy depravity’. Various inhabitants made complaints to the commune to prompt the latter to take measures to avoid possible ‘incivilities’. A member of the communal council responded as follows:

Yes, these people drink and smoke; yes, they loiter and hang out; yes, they sometimes have dogs, tattoos, and are hirsute; yes, the taxpayer can object to them idling while they get up every morning to work. The reality is that the public gardens in our commune are not unsafe. It is rather that part of our population feels insecure about these ‘marginalised people’. (Minutes of the General Council, 22.6.2018)

The municipal councillor moderates the nuisance but admits a form of ‘non-conformity’ with the ‘place-ballet’ (Buttimer and David 1980) – in this case, getting up in the morning to go to work. Because of their deviant behaviour, cas sociaux appear ‘clumsy’ and ‘out of place’ (Cresswell 2014, 64). Viviane, a retired woman who has been in the region for almost 40 years told me that those who hang out on the benches in the public garden are associated with social services and represent individuals ‘who live off grid’. The garden’s benches seem to embody a space with an imaginary Tyler calls ‘the abject figure of the welfare scrounger’ (2020, 190).

From this section, it emerges that the road, the train, and the public garden represent places where stereotyping dynamics occur. When ‘difference becomes salient’ through visible cues, refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux appear as space invaders. In accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined (politically, historically, and conceptually), they are situationally circumscribed as ‘out of place’ (Puwar 2004, 8). In Val-de-Travers, security issues (for refugees), non-contribution to the local economy (for cross-border workers), and inappropriate behaviour in public space (for cas sociaux) are the main dimensions that feed into the dynamics of stereotyping.

Therefore, while the representation of the ‘familiar stranger’ highlights a certain familiarity with differences in Val-de-Travers – particularly through long-term cohabitation – the representation of the ‘space invader’ instead emphasizes everyday processes of social, symbolic, and economic differentiations. The presence of refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux is sometimes regarded as disturbing the tranquillity, order, localness, and even whiteness of Val-de-Travers, reflecting some of the valley’s presumed characteristics.

Symbolic and political positioning of the valley: peripheral figures

Interestingly, the ‘difference’ of refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux also becomes salient in other situations: their presence is sometimes mobilized in Valley-ers’ discourses to illustrate the ‘peripherality’ of the place. In this case, stereotyping dynamics transpire on a wider scale relating no longer to the valley’s internal relations but rather to its symbolic and political positioning. As such, I argue in the following that these three categorizations are mobilized as ‘peripheral figures’: they are represented as emblematic of a certain form of peripherality and act as ‘common reference points’ (Felder 2020, 689) to define, positively or negatively, a peripheral sense of place.

The valley is located on the periphery of the canton of Neuchâtel and on the border with France. This situation is an explanatory factor behind the presence of these population groups, which is often mentioned in my interlocutors’ discourses. Cross-border workers are overrepresented in border regions for obvious reasons of geographical proximity. The peripherality of Val-de-Travers is also said to have an impact on the real estate market.⁴ Some Valley-ers claim that it attracts people from other Swiss regions with socio-economic difficulties, as evidenced in Coralie’s discourse: ‘In social services, there are people who come to look for a flat in Val-de-Travers because they are much easier to find at highly affordable prices. You can find things for 300 Swiss francs’. In this discourse, what has been described as ‘social tourism’ emerges (i.e. moving to peripheral places to receive social assistance and benefit from a lower cost of living). While this mobility is hardly statistically supported (Tabin 2004), it is nevertheless widespread in local discourses and reinforces symbolic boundaries towards people who would come to ‘take advantage’ of the periphery, in this case economically. Concerning the presence of refugees, as demonstrated by others, it is common practice in Switzerland to place centres for refugees in remote regions (Stünzi 2018), such as Val-de-Travers. There are various political reasons for this dispersal of asylum accommodation, but it can also be explained by the availability of financially attractive infrastructure.

Furthermore, although Val-de-Travers is increasingly recognized within the canton of Neuchâtel (Kaeslin 2013), some Valley-ers use the presence (and visibility) of refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux to claim political marginalization within the canton of Neuchâtel. Julie, for instance, claims that the cantonal authorities ‘put everything in the valley’ when she refers to the refugee centre and a centre for drug addicts. Bernard, a retired man I met in a café in the valley, believes that Val-de-Travers is the canton’s ‘trash can’: ‘All the people who are on social assistance and who Neuchâtel does not want are sent here; the housing is cheap, and the supply is more abundant’. Obviously, not all residents engage in discourses contesting political processes. Arianne, a retired volunteer committed to helping refugees, displays a certain distance from discourses opposing cantonal authorities. She told me that she does not share the view of Valley-ers that ‘resist’ the outside world and represent, according to her, a ‘loud’ minority.

However, contesting the stigmatizing use of categorizations of difference does not mean that they are not employed to define the peripherality of the valley. Liliane, a forty-year-old social worker, told me about the network of solidarity that exists in the valley and the quality of the support for refugees and people with socio-economic difficulties. She made the comparison with the neighbouring city, Neuchâtel, where the network is more fragmented, and people are more left to their own devices. In her discourse, the (in)formal support system is highlighted as a place-based characteristic. This is a reversal of the stigma with the neighbouring cities, which are reportedly characterized by a lower degree of solidarity. She also mentioned having acquaintances and family members involved with other social institutions in Val-de-Travers, which, according to her, facilitates collaboration and the exchange of information on different cases. This positive narrative of the periphery resonates with other studies indicating that peripheral(ised) places are more likely to become ‘territories of solidarity’ (Arfaoui 2020), due to their potential for ‘social innovation’ and their capacity to establish partnerships and cooperate with various local stakeholders (Ristic 2020).

Sarah, who spent her youth in the region and has moved among the different villages, stated that ‘the valley would not be the valley without the cross-border workers, the cas sociaux and the refugees’. Her discourse highlights the importance of these categories in discursive practices that contribute to the sense of belonging to an imagined community. They are ‘symbols’ of both the valley and its peripherality and, in this sense, play an important role in self-identification processes. Therefore, the categorizations of difference in Val-de-Travers are also positively appropriated at times to define what it means to be ‘Valley-ers’, an emic category also constructed as ‘peripheral’ (Charmillot and Dahinden 2022).

The uses of peripheral figures might serve various narratives that distinguish a peripheral place from other locations, whether related to an asymmetrical political and economic relationship with a neighbouring city or region, a supposedly higher value of seemingly unconditional solidarity, a region adjacent to a national border, or an area characterized by industrial heritage and financially appealing infrastructure and accommodation. In short, the representation of peripheral figures emphasizes the political and symbolic uses of the presence of certain population groups to define, claim, or protect the peculiarities of everyday life at the periphery.

Conclusion

This article has investigated how the lived and situated experiences of peripherality of long-term residents articulate with representations of difference and its associated social categories. The analysis offers an ethnographic insight into the complexity and fluidity of representations associated with social categorizations of difference that circulate in everyday life.

The paper has primarily focused on the perspectives of long-term residents who neither identify as nor are assigned to the categories of refugees, cross-border workers, or cas sociaux. Consequently, it has not extensively explored the discursive practices of these latter population groups. However, despite this limitation, this study highlights the importance of situated and lived experiences of peripherality in the social organization of difference. It illustrates how certain social categories are stigmatized while simultaneously being embraced within the (peripheral) local order, thus showing how the presence of, and relationships with, ‘others’ can serve as valuable resources in shaping and defining a sense of place. In doing so, the analysis demonstrates how everyday uses of social categories of difference contribute in various ways to group-making dynamics and reveals the complexities, subtleties, and even paradoxes of everyday life when documenting local experiences and representations of difference beyond dominant (political and media) discourses.

While refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux have been present in the valley for many years, encounters with other long-term residents tend to be brief and asymmetrical, although they may occur repeatedly over time. Thus, a persistent geographical proximity exists alongside a social distance, as the representation of ‘familiar strangers’ emphasizes.

Some public spaces (such as trains, roads, and public gardens), connected to local and national imaginaries of belonging and behaviour, become contact zones – i.e. places in which different mobilities intersect and where ‘difference’ becomes salient through visible situational cues. Visible cues (such as skin colour, French licence plates, and physical appearance) act as powerful vectors of essentialising difference and facilitate the dissemination (and banalisation) of stigmatizing discourses, as the representation of ‘space invaders’ emphasizes.

Furthermore, several long-term residents claim that there is an overrepresentation of refugees, cross-border workers, and cas sociaux in the periphery and mobilize their presence to complain (politically) about the cantonal authorities. Other long-term residents pretend that they are part of the valley and engage in discourses that value greater regional solidarity compared to the cities. The representation of ‘peripheral figures’ emphasizes the political and symbolic uses of ‘difference’ to distinguish Val-de-Travers from other locations. In Val-de-Travers, ‘being on the periphery’ evokes different imaginaries, shaped by subtle processes of categorizing ‘others’: whether, for instance, to underscore (a shared sense of) marginality, solidarity, or interconnectedness.

Thus, by exploring the social organization of difference in a peripheral region, this article has illustrated the importance of investigating places other than cities or urban neighbourhoods. It argued that diversifying the places under analysis permits a more comprehensive understanding of the complex interplay between the micro-processes of categorizing and representing ‘others’ and the macro-hierarchies of place.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful for the critical feedback I received from Carolin Fischer, Joris Schapendonk, Tim Cresswell, Ellen Hertz, Camilla Alberti and Simon Noori, and my project partners Janine Dahinden, Tania Zittoun, Oliver Pederson, and Anna Wyss. My thanks also go to the two reviewers, whose comments were highly constructive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR on the move), which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant 51NF40_182897. The paper is part of the project ‘Small localities at the peripheries of Europe: Transnational mobilities, diversification, and multi-scalar place making’, which is co-directed by Janine Dahinden and Tania Zittoun and involves the collaboration of researchers Anna Wyss, Emmanuel Charmillot and Oliver Pederson. This project has ethics approval from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which also approved the Data Management Plan of this research project.

Notes

1. ‘Cas sociaux’ is an informal category used in French-speaking Switzerland to refer to (and ‘stigmatise’) marginalized persons in a precarious socio-economic situation. Although it comes close to the English term social outcasts (Wacquant 2008), I employ the French term in the remainder of the article to avoid confusion in exploring the uses of this category of practice.

2. In 2020, this percentage was 13% for the city of Neuchâtel and 6.7% for Switzerland as a whole.

3. ‘Presumed’, because the nationality of the persons concerned is often unknown but inferred, particularly from French licence plates.

4. In 2018, the average monthly rent for vacant three-room apartments was 796 Swiss francs in Val-de-Travers, whereas the Neuchâtel region was 1,212 Swiss francs (DEAS 2018).