Facilitating citizen participation in marginalised neighbourhoods: selective empowerment in between vulnerability and active citizenship

Residents of marginalised neighbourhoods have long been governed as a vulnerable group in need of help. Increasingly, however, they are expected to be active citizens and (co-)creators in improving their neighbourhood. While much is written about the shift towards more participatory governance, less is known about how this shift manifests in the work practice of urban professionals, particularly in marginalised neighbourhoods and in terms of citizen (dis)empowerment. This paper explores how urban professionals give shape to citizen participation in a marginalised Dutch neighbourhood. I found that they navigated between narratives of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘active citizenship’ and employed ‘selective empowerment’: a differentiated approach in which they ascribed a significant supportive role to themselves and facilitated participation within a normative framework. The research offers a more nuanced image of ‘empowerment’ than previous studies suggest, demonstrating that a discursive shift in governance approach is not automatically synchronised with urban professionals’ work practice.