Fear of contamination drives spatial confinement of stigmatized minorities

Evidence

As Wacquant argues, slums and ghettos are social mechanisms of ethnic and racial confi nement , ‘aimed at enclosing a stigmatized category in a reserved physical and social space that will prevent it from mixing with others and thus risk “tainting” them’ (ibid., p. 153). The symbolic fear of contamination, pollution, keeps people like the Roma in their place, in dehumanized and dehumanizing locales such as urban landfi lls. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 617

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to the sacrifice article’s argument about how societies use ritualized mechanisms to maintain stratified order — space/spatial confinement as a control mechanism parallel.