Let's be Honest, Resident Participation and Inclusion in Hamilton's Neighbourhood Action

This research is a qualitative case study of a collaborative, resident-led community development initiative in Hamilton, Ontario. The study investigated how the initiative, known as Neighbourhood Action (NA), engages residents in identified neighbourhoods in collaboration with local service providers, city staff, and community developers. NA is an attempt to respond to levels of concentrated poverty in the identified neighbourhoods, and forms parts of evolving responses to social, economic and racial inequity in cities across North America. Focusing on the period of operation from 2013-2015, this study explores who participated in Neighbourhood Action, how participants addressed issues of social difference and inequity, and how barriers to participation were challenged and/or reproduced. Framed by critical theory and using critical discourse analysis, the study used interviews, participant observation, and focus groups coupled with an analysis of official project documents. Despite a well-articulated mandate of inclusion, NA stakeholders struggled to elicit diverse and meaningful participation, specifically from low-income and new immigrant residents. The study sheds light on the complex processes of exclusion that operate in participatory, community development projects, which are often premised on exclusionary discourses of class, race, and neighbourhood change. The findings also illustrate how citizen-led initiatives aimed at empowering low-income communities can be both sites of exclusion and sites of mobilization and resistance. The need to interrogate official mandates of inclusion is also highlighted by the study, acknowledging that they can obscure the reality of exclusion and be complicit in classist and racist discourses. In identifying these tensions, the research offers implications for research and practice in urban communities.