Territorial Stigmatization in Democratic and Authoritarian Contexts – A Comparative Review

Territorial stigmatization, as both a concept and practice, reflects and reinforces the unequal mechanisms of governance and the paradoxical dynamics of exclusion and dependence among social groups. It does this by reshaping public fear toward “othered spaces” within diverse urban landscapes and intensifying the marginalization and stigmatization of these spaces. This review draws on literature from seven fully democratic countries and from China as a representative authoritarian context, to address three key questions: What are the causes, processes, and outcomes of territorial stigmatization? What are the core differences? And how are these differences shaped by the institutional characteristics of democratic and authoritarian systems? The findings reveal that territorial stigmatization assumes entirely different roles, forms of expression, involved actors, and impacts across causes, processes, and outcomes; such differences are based on divergent institutional features, namely, public consent in democracy and discursive monopoly in authoritarianism. This comparative review encourages reflection on the application of urban concepts originating in the Global North to Global South contexts, drawing attention to the importance of distinct institutional backgrounds that are often treated as default conditions in existing literature. Additionally, it provides suggestions for expanding the theoretical application of territorial stigmatization in future research.