RUDDY KINGFISHER MANUSCRIPT REVIEW HISTORY … · marginalized communities of urban ghettos,...

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This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.

RUDDY KINGFISHER MANUSCRIPT REVIEW HISTORY MANUSCRIPT (ROUND 1)

Abstract Consumer identities are frequently forged through positive affiliations with brand communities, yet many consumers live in economically and socially marginalized communities. This study examines the identity projects of poor consumers in a trailer park community using in-depth interviews and field observations of consumption practices within their private homes and public neighborhood. We expand the theoretical understanding of identity politics by examining how poor consumers negotiate negative and ascribed identities under material constraints in ways that both expand and restrict their possibility for constructive social action. Consumers resist negative identities, such as “poor trailer trash,” through consumption activities that construct a surprisingly wide range of meanings for their home. Rather than uniting around traditional bases of identity politics, these people negotiate consumer identities that sometimes align but are often in conflict and antagonistic with their neighbors as they engage consumption-oriented and spatial practices to contest the meaning of park living.

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Consumer researchers have long stressed communities as important sources of identity and explored a range of communities including brand communities (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001), subcultures of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander 1995), micro-cultures of consumption (Thompson and Troester 2002), and hyper-communities (Kozinets 2002). Consumers join these groups to identify with similar others around shared goals and consumption activities and differentiate themselves from non-members. These communities are mostly sites of affiliation and positively contribute to individual and collective identities (Hummon 1990).

But how do consumers construct their identities when they live in more marginalized communities where consumer identities are negatively ascribed? Individuals create their selfhood through and within the communities where they physically live (Gotham and Brumley 2002; Morley 2001). Consumer researchers have begun to examine these ordinary places of dwelling, such as the family home and neighborhood (Epp and Price 2008; Schau, Gilly, and Wolfinbarger 2009). Yet few consumer research studies examine consumer identity construction within marginalized communities of urban ghettos, subsidized housing developments, and other racially and socio-economically segregated areas (Hill 1991; Hill and Stamey 1990; Ustuner and Holt 2007). In such contested zones, the negotiation of individual and collective identity develops around the shared material and social hardships that are an integral part of these geographies of injustice (Mitchell 2003; Soja 2010). While past research examines the creative self-expression of consumers (Kozinets 2002; Thompson and Haytko 1997), poor consumers have considerably more at stake as they struggle to resist the sometimes crushing weight of negative social identities ranging from “welfare queens” and “drug addicts” to “trailer trash” and “freeloaders” (Collins 2000; Hurley 2001).

Studies of consumer resistance do examine contested meanings that arise in specific locations. Consumers form temporary communities to open places of resistance against conventional market dynamics (Kozinets’ [2002] Burning Man Festival). Consumers react to hegemonic national brands and create permanent third-places by consuming local competitive alternatives (Thompson and Arsel 2004). Street artists use graffiti to contest the meaning of public places as shared goods (Visconti, Sherry, Borghini, and Anderson 2010). Consumer researchers also examine more traditional retail spaces taking a more celebratory view of agency within spectacular retail environments (i.e., ESPN Zone Chicago in Kozinets et al. 2004]. Divergent meanings can emerge within the same festival shopping mall as consumers create utopian places (Maclaran and Brown 2005). Similarly, Karababa and Ger (2011) investigate sixteenth and seventeenth century Ottoman coffee houses as a place where its meaning is contested by multiple stakeholders including coffee house dwellers, marketers, the Ottoman state, and Islamic preachers.

Just as communities and nation states adopt, preserve, and defend their collective sense of being (Harvey 2006), neighborhoods can be filled with conflict, resistance, and ideological turmoil as people fight over the uses and meanings of social space (Foucault 1977, 1986). This paper examines how economically impoverished people struggle to assert their consumer identities within a stigmatized neighborhood of a trailer park. Drawing on a critical theory of space (Harvey 1990, 2000, 2006; Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1996, 2010), we extend this theory by examining the consumption practices used by consumers to contest the negative ascribed identities that arise in such marginalized neighborhoods. As our findings make clear, private and public consumption practices play a vital role in understanding the spatial practices that give rise to the meaning of home and neighborhood. We also expand the current conceptual understanding of

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identity politics by examining how poor consumers negotiate negative identities under material constraints that widen some consumers’ horizons for social mobility and collective action but also serve as a constraint on social action for other consumers.

First, we briefly explicate critical and postmodern theories of the production of space. Next, the socio-historical construction of trailer parks and trailer park identities is reviewed as important to understanding the current struggles between people who produce neighborhoods for profit and people who consume neighborhoods for value in their daily lives. Based on an interpretive field study, we explore the spatial politics of identity construction within this marginalized community and the five distinct socio-spatial identity groups that struggle to assert various meanings of trailer park life.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

The Production of Space

Perhaps the most prominent critical scholar of space is French neo-Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre. Lefebvre (1991) sought to avoid the reductionism found in explanations of social phenomena as binary oppositions of agency-structure, subject-object, or center-margin. Instead, he proposed that being emerges in the trialectics of the historical, the social, and the spatial, which must be understood as inextricably interconnected. As Soja (1996, 73) states, “We are first and always historical-social-spatial beings actively participating individually and collectively in the construction/production—the “becoming”—of histories, geographies, and societies.” In Lefebvre’s theorization, this trialectics of being is used to attack the idea that space is an unimportant setting for social activities. Instead, social relations always occur somewhere and this place has historical meaning that shapes the dynamics of production and consumption. Lefebvre uses the term, “the production of space,” to capture this trialectical relationship; people produce places, places produce people, and this production has both historical and social meaning. For example, Penaloza’s (2001) investigation of Western stock rodeo shows is social, historical, and spatial; while participating in various social activities within the physical place of the stock show, consumers negotiate past and present Western ideals of individualism, competition, and family/community attachment.

Lefebvre assumes that a place does not just contain social relations but is a vital medium through which social relations occur. Alternative places arise as mediating grounds whereby diverse social relations arise among consumers and between consumers and producers. Liberatory consumption opportunities are born in places like Burning Man festivals (Kozinets 2002) or local coffee shops (Thompson and Arsel 2004). San Francisco is a setting where gay partners can embrace affectionately, but this same behavior is “out of place” in Wyoming (Gieryn 2000). Finally, place is a product of social relationships. People not only produce and consume places, but through their activities they give place meaning. Place is “a constitutive dimension of social life that shapes life experiences, social conflict, and action” (Gotham and Brumley 2002, 267). Independent homeless people who infrequently live in shelters, for instance, contest the meaning of shelters as alternatives of last resort. Preferring the autonomy and independence of the street, they view shelters as sites of social control, surveillance, and diminished dignity (Foucault 1977; Hill and Stamey 1990).

The production of space occurs at the intersection of two conflicting views and uses of spaces: abstract space and social space. Abstract space is more like geometric space that is devoid of social or cultural meaning and can be measured and mapped (Gieryn 2000). According

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to Lefebvre (1991), abstract space arises as important within the bureaucratic and rationalized approaches inherent in modern capitalism. Within capitalism, abstract space has exchange value that is essential for the movement of capital. In the same way that human labor is commodified in labor markets, abstract space is a commodity that can be fragmented, quantified, rationalized, and homogenized in real estate markets (Brenner 1997; Clarke and Bradford 1998). It is within the real estate market that land with its unique flora and fauna, or a particular sentimental meaning, can be cut into homogenous parcels, leveled, priced, and sold as uniform lots. Through this commodification, Lefebvre argues that violence is done to space since its unique characteristics are destroyed to increase exchange value. In addition, abstract space forces social relations to be more homogenized ensuring the undisrupted control and management of the space. For instance, the largest urban gardening site in the United States was sold by the local government to a developer that led to a contentious legal battle in Los Angeles County. Upon winning, the developer leveled the gardens to increase the land’s exchange value.

In contrast, social space comprises the everyday lived experiences of the people who inhabit, consume, and produce spaces. (This notion of social space is consistent with our definition of place.) Social space is endowed with use value for the people who are part of this space. Returning to the urban garden example, local Latino farmers had tended lots for years, developed an intimate and personal relationship to this land that they used to feed their family, and forged an intergenerational connection to the land (The Garden 2008). People inhabit neighborhoods and engage in communal activities not to gain a profit but to produce and consume use value for themselves and their neighbors.

Consequently, an inherent conflict exists then between abstract and social space in modern capitalism. Both private and public interests struggle to organize, control, and regulate space, and thereby social relations are never neutral but goal-directed (Tajbakhsh 2001). Complex socio-spatial dynamics exist at the local, regional, national, and global levels that are overlapping, conflictual, and contradictory. In the management of space, public and private interests often generate contradictions between exchange and use value, local and regional demands, dominant and marginal needs, and the spaces of production and consumption, to name a few (Brenner 1997; Soja 2010). In the struggle to resolve these contradictions, social space and its use value is often damaged to protect abstract space and its exchange value. This ongoing conflict between use and exchange value and the fight to control space yields ideological socio-spatial struggles in everyday life. For example, in a redevelopment of a public housing project in New Orleans, Gotham, Shefner, and Brumley (2001) explore the conflictual relationships that exist among various stakeholders striving to control the space. While local policy makers assumed that residents would support a redevelopment project, the low-income residents sought to defend these social spaces that were saturated with significant social and symbolic capital.

The Trialectics of Social Space and Spatial Inequalities

Building on the work of Lefebvre, Soja (1996) seeks to highlight the potential of social spaces to be radically open to human imagination and thus inspire social and political action. He articulates three approaches to space within geography but, of course, this critique can extend to the social sciences in general. Firstspace captures materialistic-objectivist treatments of social space as real, open to objective and accurate measurement, and understood as mechanistic and deterministic in its influence on human behavior. Spatial knowledge is reduced to what is real, measurable, and open to the senses (Soja 1996). Social spaces then include everyday physical and routine movements and practices of people in spaces ranging from home, work, and leisure

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spaces to transportation systems and networks ensuring the flow of goods and capital. Firstspace establishes order and continuity in social life by providing daily spatial routines and urban/rural hierarchies including suburban sprawl, gentrification, and geographies of privilege—such as gated communities and privatopias (Soja 2010).

Secondspace captures idealist-subjectivist approaches to social space as the pure product of agency and the human imagination. Social spaces are mental projections as envisioned by designers, writers, artists, or urban planners. Spatial knowledge is reduced to our ideas about space. Space is abstract and includes conceptualizations of space that are organized by concepts, metaphors, symbols, discourses, and codes (Soja 1996). Thompson and Tian’s (2008) informants who were editors of Southern lifestyle magazines are producers of secondspace. By using the tools of commercial mythmaking, such as advertising, discursive tactics, and ideological representations of public figures, the editors shape consumers’ collective memories and create an aspirational vision of the South as a place that is in line with their business goals. Secondspaces are powerful since they represent “a storehouse of epistemological power” (Soja 1996, 67).

Finally, thirdspace involves a fusion of these real and imagined spaces with the lived use of space. Yet this is not a Hegelian synthesis of the objective-subjective binary vision of social space. Instead, it is the idea that social space can be dis-ordered and reconstructed to escape the closure of space and its potentially totalizing effects. Thirdspaces are social spaces as experienced by the users of space that are directly lived, constantly changing, and unruly. While these alternative social spaces use, alter, and build upon the ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ aspects of existing social spaces (thus, escaping extreme relativism), spatial knowledge is continually expanding and open to revision (thus, this view aligns with postmodern projects; Soja 1996). This conceptualization of social space as a thirdspace is most relevant to consumer researchers because it is the site where the actual users of space live, shape and are shaped by social space, and construct new meanings, such as the social spaces used by families (Epp and Price 2008) or the social construction of the workplace by employees (Tian and Belk 2005).

This interdependent trialectics of the real, imagined, and lived is where the workings of power can either constrain or enable people (Foucault 1986). Thirdspaces may be dominated by fear and repression when unjust geographical development occurs based on interests that negatively shape these social spaces (Harvey 1990). Consider the banlieues of Paris located at the city’s edge and home to low-income immigrants (Soja 2010), the racially-segregated inner city ghettos suffering from structural disadvantages and social isolation (Smith 1995), or the deportation of homeless people from public places to ensure safety and preserve order (Mitchell 2003). Social spaces may reflect the security focus of those people who are more powerful and resourceful (Soja 2010). Areas must be sanitized and patrolled to attract investment and tourism and thereby increase exchange value (Harvey 2006).

Yet the meanings of these social spaces are not fixed; thirdspaces may be re-appropriated and re-configured by their inhabitants as places of possibility or counter-spaces (Foucault 1986; Harvey 2000). Political scientist James Scott’s (1985, 1990) work on Malay peasants untangles these everyday forms of resistance. The poor peasants utilize the “weapons of the weak” to impinge, contest, and deny the demands of landowners through imaginative spatial practices, such as squatting, feigned ignorance, and subtle sabotage. Similarly, Collins (2000) documents the ways African American women construct safe places through the creative appropriation of everyday sites such as family, workplace, and church. Challenging dominant cultural stereotypes of “mammies,” “jezebels,” and “welfare mothers,” these women affirm positive socio-spatial

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identities by re-appropriating familiar zones as safe places where they can exercise positive identities, such as a giving mother, hard working employee, or responsible citizen (hooks 1990). Ustuner and Holt (2007) similarly document individual and collective identity projects undertaken by third generation Turkish women. Resisting their mothers’ authentic villager identity, these poor women appropriate the city lifestyle and view it as a transformative identity project that liberates them from dominant representations of the poor as the “culturally inferior other.” Similarly, our trailer park residents struggle within the historical and social construction of the park as a stigmatized place yet they work to rupture these meanings to assert new visions in their everyday use of space. We review the construction of trailer parks as marginalized and contested community to provide context for our empirical study of an actual trailer park community.

The Trialectics of Trailer Parks as Marginalized Communities

Mobile homes are the most common form of unsubsidized affordable housing in the United States. The term ‘manufactured home’ is preferred by the industry and legislatively refers to homes built off-site that comply with the 1976 HUD code (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) to regulate the quality of construction and installation. Mobile home (or trailer) is the more commonly used name but technically this term refers to homes built before the HUD code (Apgar, Calder, Collins, and Duda 2002). [We will use these names interchangeably.] Over 22 million Americans or about 8% of the population live in mobile homes (NCSL 2007). Mobile homes are more concentrated in rural southern areas. For example, new mobile home sales in 2009 were 69% in the South, 13% in the West, 10.3% in the Midwest, and 6.7% in the Northeast (US Census, 2009). The history of the trailer industry is one of consolidation driven by the need for increased efficiencies through economies of scale. Sales peaked in 1998 and throughout the 1990s mobile homes were from a quarter to one third of all new purchases of single-family detached homes (Apgar et al. 2002). In the last decade, aggressive lending practices caused many low-income consumers to move into fixed site homes, which led to a drop in new mobile home sales (Burkhart 2010).

From a socio-spatial perspective, mobile homes are largely stigmatized as a substandard dwelling for poor people. During the Great Depression, trailers were used by transient and immigrant blue collar workers and were physically located in poorly maintained trailer camps on the outskirts of towns. The first negative stereotypes of trailer parks emerged as “crowded rookeries of itinerant flophouses” (Hart, Rhodes, and Morgan 2002, 9). However, after World War II, more working class families sought mobile homes spurred on by the rise in mass production and positive promotionals of this modern lifestyle. For working class Americans, mobile homes presented an affordable opportunity to realize the middle class ideals of private home ownership and upward social mobility (Hurley 2001). As a lived space, 82% of mobile home owners are currently satisfied with their homes (Consumers Union 1998).

Yet a tainted image of trailer parks and their residents continues unabated today despite their popularity among low-income consumers and improved construction and installation standards (Beamish, Goss, Atiles, and Kim 2001; Berube 1997). First, mobile homes, with their unconventional appearance and factory-built design, generally fail to satisfy typical ideals for American site-built homes that are rooted in a community. Wallis (1991, 21) argues that many middle class people wonder, “How can people who live in houses on wheels honor a commitment to community?” Mobile homes are also widely perceived as unsafe dwellings vulnerable to hurricanes and tornadoes (Fothergill and Peek 2004).

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Some of these perceptions are accurate. Despite the improved quality of materials used in the construction of mobile homes after the HUD code, many mobile homes are still built with hazardous construction materials that include pollutants (i.e., formaldehyde) and flammable substances (MacTavish, Eley, and Salamon 2006). A third of mobile homes inhabited today were built before the new HUD code and most mobile home parks are set on the cheapest, disaster-prone real estate due to exclusionary zoning. In addition, a number of mobile homes incur structural damage during improper transit and installation process (Consumers Union 2005). Some land-lease parks, such as mobile home parks in Oregon, do not allow residents to build foundations. These factors increase the vulnerability of mobile homes to natural disasters.

However, other popular perceptions are inaccurate. While manufactured homes are first transported to a site, they are relatively immobile; less than 1% of mobile homes are actually moved because of the significant cost of transporting them (between $1500-5000), the lack of available sites due to zoning laws, and restrictions that forbid older homes by trailer parks (West 2006). Moreover, mobile home residents are not transient; mobile home communities have turnover rates of 2-4% when compared to rates of 50% for apartment dwellings (Rowe 1998) and about 60% of trailer owners live in their parks for over ten years compared to site built home owners residing an average of six years (Burkhart 2010). Finally, some double-wide mobile homes now have features associated with site built houses (e.g., vaulted ceilings) and can be so well sited thanks to various spatial additions (e.g., cement foundations, brick façade, and car ports) that they blend unnoticed into the local neighborhoods (Beamish et al. 2001).

Still, trailer parks are communities contested by neighbors and local policy makers. Traditional home owners believe their homes lose exchange value when located near trailer parks (Wallis 1991). The economic impact on surrounding property values depends on factors such as proximity to the mobile home park, the maintenance of the park, park characteristics (i.e., seasonal, rental, lease, or cooperative park), and the type of trailers. Because suburban politics are driven by the needs and demands of traditional home owners, local policy makers continue to use restrictive zoning laws to force mobile home parks to the literal margins of rural towns (Salamon and MacTavish 2006). Although some studies find that mobile home parks do negatively impact the value of adjacent properties (Munneke and Slawson 1999), other studies either demonstrate that trailer parks do not negatively affect the neighboring land values (MaRous 1996) or they find mixed results (Hegji and Mitchell 2000; Wubneh and Shen 2004).

In addition to these spatial tensions, a tribal-like social stigma is attached to mobile home park dwellers (Goffman 1963). Popular culture, ranging from television shows, such as Cops and My Name is Earl, to popular movies, such as the Wrestler (2008) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), portrays trailer parks as crowded and dirty settings of social pathology that are populated by people who are ignorant, addicted, promiscuous, or criminal (Kusenbach 2009). Mobile home communities are marginalized as “white trash icons” violating American norms of aesthetics, domesticity, morals, and middle class values (Berube 1997). Several empirical studies, however, challenge these negative stereotypes. In an ethnographic study of a mobile home park, MacTavish and Salamon (2001) demonstrate that residents work as hard as, if not harder than, their middle class counterparts to make ends meet. Most trailer residents embrace traditional small town values such as the importance of communal ties, reciprocity, raising good children, and respecting neighbors. McCartney (2010) found that the crime rates in Omaha mobile home parks were not necessarily higher than the rates in other housing communities. The prevailing stereotype of most mobile home tenants as young and crime-prone people is also false. Almost

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half of the mobile homes in the U.S. are occupied by people who are fifty years old and older—a lower crime demographic (Burkhart 2010).

In sum, mobile home parks have a long history of being marginalized communities that are spatially relegated to the fringes of towns and cities and persistently reinforced as socially undesirable and even deviant terrains. Closer examination, however, suggests that many of these stereotypes are incomplete and sometimes false.

METHODOLOGY

We conducted eighteen months of fieldwork relying primarily on formal interviews and informal observations at a trailer park that we call, Lakeside Park. Since our goal was to explore multiple life worlds within a marginalized social space, qualitative field research was best suited to understanding the sensitive issues surrounding living in resource constrained environments (Burawoy 1991; Hammersley and Atkinson 1983).

Initial contact began by working with a volunteer organization who offers services at Lakeside. These interviews provided an introduction to the community. For example, we learned how outside volunteers perceive the park community. Later we found that this “identification by others” is an important aspect of the park residents’ identity construction as they either challenged or ignored such ascribed identities (Melucci 1996). For example, even these well-intended volunteers offered negative portrayals of community life:

They are poor. It’s a culture, it’s generational. They have no education, no money, no resources. You know, their grandmother did it, their mother did it and now they are doing it. There is no structure for the kids. They just make poor choices….Junk food and cigarettes, they just make poor choices…It is very difficult for these kids to find success and when you give them the opportunity, they don’t know what to do with it…It’s like a poor soap opera here, you don’t need to watch reality TV (Crystal).

Useful insights were gained, such as finding out about police training exercises being held in the park. Crystal, a middle-class volunteer in the community, was shocked to find “full SWAT-team attired policemen and heard gunshots yet the residents of the park were not notified of such trainings.” No resident even commented on the training exercises or their appropriateness.

Since the park management was a gatekeeper to park residents, we worked through management to secure permission to study the park. Both the volunteer organization and management helped refer potential informants. We used snowballing and network sampling to recruit beyond these initial contacts (Lee 1993), which resulted in a sample of 24 trailer park residents representing 20 households (see the Table). We sampled for diversity on several criteria, such as socio-economic status (i.e., working poor, poor on welfare, female-headed households, couples vs. families), owners verses renters, and tenure at the park. Moreover, we sought residents who were both engaged and disengaged in the park, which helped illuminate theoretical nuances across different levels of agency. For example, our key informant was a park resident who lived in the park for almost 30 years and was actively engaged in the community while other informants had recently arrived and disliked living in the park.

In total, we conducted 40 in-depth formal interviews. All informants were interviewed in their home to help them feel comfortable and to explore their construction of their domestic space. The interviews ranged between 1 to 3 hours and all but two informants were interviewed at least twice, which was important for building trust. The first set of interviews consisted of

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grand tour questions (McCracken 1988) and questions exploring the broad meaning of home and community, while follow-up interviews probed more deeply on emergent themes. Informants were encouraged to tell their own stories and elaborate on any topics that they felt were important. The informants were offered $20 as compensation given that their time was valuable, particularly for those people who worked two jobs to make ends meet. All interviews were transcribed by a professional transcriber.

We also engaged in two types of observation: “observer-as-participant” (e.g., taking long walks at the site and observing the use of space and daily activities) and “participant-as-observer” (e.g., volunteering at the community picnics, participating in tutoring sessions with the community children, and observing adult parenting classes) [Burawoy 1991]. Photographs helped capture more details of events, people, and the use of space. Photos taken in earlier interviews were used to encourage elaboration in later interviews. Thus, the data consisted of interview transcripts, field notes, and site photos. A hermeneutical approach was used to analyze the interview data and field notes (Thompson 1997). We engaged in two levels of analysis. We first did an intra-textual coding and analysis to understand how individual informants develop meaning for their home and the park and how they negotiate their identities. Then, we did an inter-textual analysis across transcripts to detect the similarities and differences in the ways that informants construct meaning and their identities. This analysis was iterative requiring movement back and forth between the emergent themes in the data and the extant literature. Negative case analysis was used to challenge and revise our emergent findings. For instance, one informant group challenged our interpretation and led us to further examine the boundaries of social dependency to discover subtle, individual levels of socio-spatial agency.

Lakeside Park

Lakeside Trailer Park sits on forty acres of agricultural land zoned for residential use in the 1960s. The surrounding housing market is expensive and Lakeside represents one of the few affordable housing alternatives. Lakeside houses around 350-450 people in over 150 trailers. The park is a low-income working class neighborhood that is demographically diverse with retirees, families with children, single parents with children, single adults, and childless couples. Many of the park residents are on a fixed income (i.e., government assistance) while others make ends meet by working one or more, mostly minimum wage, jobs. These jobs are within the manufacturing, retail, or service industries and offer few benefits, thus fitting the traditional profile of working-poor jobs (Shipler 2004). In addition to being financially constrained, the informants face disadvantages common to people living in poverty, including chronic illnesses, emotional problems, and addiction (Chakravarti 2006; Hill 2001). Although most informants have some health insurance coverage through the state, few have sufficient coverage, which creates additional stress as residents try to manage with limited resources.

Over half of all mobile homes nationwide are located in parks where the homes are densely concentrated and residents lease the land (MacTavish et al. 2006). Lakeside is a privately owned for-profit park run by a property management firm. While many of the informants own or are in the process of owning their mobile home, they pay rent on the lot of approximately $200 per month. No home owners association exists with democratically decided rules. Instead, home owners must follow rules created by the park owners and enforced by the management. Mobile home owners shoulder the costs of home ownership, such as maintenance and insurance, but do not realize many of the traditional benefits of home ownership (Krajick 2003).

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Historically, home ownership is associated with greater social and economic stability, but this is not the case at Lakeside. For over two years, the previous park owner sought to sell the land and during this hiatus residents were given month-to-month leases. Residents feared eviction if a land developer bought the land. Many renters lacked cash to move to the limited subsidized apartments. Many owners neither possessed resources to move their homes nor was alternative land available. One park resident said: “I was just going to put everything in storage and live in my truck. I’ve lived in it before and it’s not very comfortable… But there’s not very many options.” Moreover, the town estimated that over half of the trailers were in such poor condition that they were unmovable. A tentative proposal was put forth by a nonprofit organization and the town housing council to renovate homes and allow owners to buy their land. However, obstacles arose, such as the cost of the private land, and the town was unwilling to invest the significant resources required for sewers and roads. As one resident said, “poor people don’t matter.” This acute housing insecurity was resolved when new owners bought the park. Nevertheless, residents continue to be concerned that the land will be sold and rezoned for higher income homes (Small Town Gazette 2007a, 2007b, 2008).

The issue of eviction is a significant area of tension between the Lakeside residents and the park management. Although eviction procedures vary by state and county (Fichtner 2004), eviction is difficult for people with few resources. The possibility of being evicted on short notice, the ambiguity surrounding the eviction process, and the subjective criteria used for eviction leads to a state of “quasi-homelessness” for mobile home communities (Salamon and MacTavish 2006). At Lakeside, people get evicted when they fail to pay rent or comply with their lease. Once the management decides to evict a resident for missing rent, they issue a five-day notice and start legal proceedings if the resident does not contact management to arrange payment. This process lasts between 30-90 days but it was evident during our fieldwork that the process and outcome depend on the park management’s willingness to work with the resident.

Most residents cite affordability as the main reason for living at Lakeside. In 2008, the median home price in the nation was over $200,000, while the average manufactured home sold for $64,900 (Wodka 2009). Nevertheless, mobile home ownership is not a clear path to wealth accumulation. Initial ownership can prove costly. Consumer Union (2005) found a number of industry practices increase the price consumers pay, including failure to post sticker prices, the lack of property appraisals, and dealer financing (which increases prices by 11%). Mobile home purchases can be financed through traditional real estate mortgages if the home is located on owned land. In 2008, however, 72% of new mobile homes were not titled as real estate but were titled as personal property or were untitled (Wodka 2009). Thus, the majority of mobile home purchasers use chattel loans that treat the mobile home as personal property, much like car loans, so the homes can be repossessed. These loans also have higher interest rates and less attractive terms (Williams, Nesiba, and McConnell 2005). Mobile homes typically depreciate regardless of how well they are maintained; many owners of mobile homes have zero or less-than-zero equity five or ten years after they purchased their home (Krajick 2003). Equity in mobile homes can be built through land appreciation (Apgar et al. 2002). Since the informants in this study leased their land, little opportunity exists for them to build wealth.

FINDINGS

Producing and Consuming Space

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Generally, Lakeside informants were happy with the new management, particularly in comparison to the previous owners who made few investments in the park. For example, few streetlights existed and the roads were in poor condition when we first began our fieldwork. The new management installed streetlights, paved some of the roads, and removed the trash dumpsters from the main entrance. In these instances, an alignment existed between the owner’s interests in increasing exchange value and residents’ interest in use value. The park management wanted to “beautify the park” to attract more residents and most residents liked these improvements. But the new owners also added a system to measure residents’ consumption of water demonstrating that what can be quantified can yield greater exchange value (Lefebvre 1991). Not surprisingly, residents were chagrined over the new water fee: “…we’re not even allowed to put a, you know, the small plastic pools? We can’t even put those up. I don’t think it’s right, especially if they want us to be paying our own water bill (Emma).” These tensions over spatial practices are explored later in greater depth.

The new management also eliminated the oldest trailers and brought in new replacement trailers. The park management wants to encourage park tenants to own their trailers to “build community” and fight negative images of mobile home parks as occupied by transient “young people who are troublemakers” (Alvin, the park manager). Recently, the tenants were sent new leases and given access to loans through the park owner’s brokerage firm. The park management hopes to include all new residents in these rent-to-own or ‘tie-in’ policies. What is less clear is if new residents will understand that such loan arrangements offered by Lakeside mean that they will not have competitive financing nor be able to compare policies. Given the immobility of many of the trailers and the few alternative trailer locations, Lakeside residents would indeed be ‘tied-in.’ One resident communicates his dissatisfaction:

Most of the tenants have not gotten new leases, only talk of such. They [the management] know people will not pay and they will repossess them. One of the homes the church group repaired putting over $3000 in, the park resold it for approximately $6000.This is so wrong, they are out of control. The increases since new owners equal $60 to $80 in 4 or less years. This is ridiculous for the income bracket here. The management here makes reference to various rents in town knowing this is not practical or fair. (John)

We organized the discussion of the results around the five spatial identities that emerged at Lakeside: Nesters, Reluctant Emigrants, Community Builders, Homesteaders, and Outcasts. First, we explore the informants’ socio-spatial meaning of the trailer park. Second, within their relationship to the park, the informants forge different identities and negotiate different meanings of their personal domestic spaces (see Supplemental Reviewer Appendix for photographs).

The Nesters

The Nesters perceive themselves as highly capable people who transform often traumatic past experiences into successful lives. Their trailer is a cherished possession that marks their transition into this more secure life; still, they profess ambivalent feelings about park life.

Trailer Park as a Chaotic yet Familiar Space. In his autobiography, Bérube (1997) suggests that mobile home park residents evaluate themselves against their neighbors on spatial and social criteria, such as the lot size, the maintenance of their home, possessions, and social demeanor. Park tenants negotiate their identities by creating social divisions between themselves and their neighbors with distinctions, such as “white trash,” “trashy white people,” or simply “poor whites.” Kusenbach (2009, 413) also documents tactics used by residents to manage the

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stigma of mobile home living; that is, they engage in fencing to create differences through “nuanced, localized boundaries to justify their own placement on the good side of the decency divide.” The Nesters similarly engage in social comparisons, finding themselves materially blessed, such as Mary who compares herself favorably to her neighbors without cars who can only shop at the nearby market. They frown upon neighbors who fail to care for their homes and yards and whose spatial practices disrupt the daily life at the park:

They don't keep their yards up or they put too much crap in it, like up there, and, you know, come on! All you have to do is plant a couple of trees and flowers and things and just keep it clean. Some people still have their Christmas lights out. Come on! Hello? Trailer trash. [laughter] You know like they show in the movies. Let's live up to our reputation, okay?...There’s some in here that they don't want to have a job. They just want to make babies and live off the system and that just disgusts me because people like you and I are supporting them to have babies. (Amanda)

The Nesters see the trailer park as chaotic where some people fail to take care of their homes just as they fail to control unruly and unfed “wild kids saying the ‘N’ word and cussing like sailors.” But the Nesters opine most about the “crack heads” and “druggies.” Not surprisingly, they physically and socially distance themselves from their neighbors; as Tina explains, “I don’t associate with nobody. I just have nothing to do with none of them.” The Nesters socialize with a few carefully selected people who share their worldviews.

These informants support and follow the park rules. Policies that restrict the use of areas in the park are viewed as necessary even when these restrictions conflict with their own interests in deriving use value. For instance, those Nesters with children agreed with the management’s decision to remove drink machines and close the playground that “was being vandalized.” Tim supports these policies despite his own inconvenience, “Now, I’ve gotta find a way to the store. Sometimes a few knuckleheads can ruin things for a lot of other people.”

Interestingly, the Nesters do not feel threatened within this unruly setting. On the contrary, the park is where they develop and reinforce their status and identities. Even though they perceive the park is home to “big drug dealers,” “child molesters,” and “hoodlums,” the Nesters operate well within the park’s socio-spatial dynamics; frankly, they grew up in more dangerous neighborhoods. And the frequent police patrols of the park are appreciated as protecting their safety.

You know there is one positive to having drug dealers living in your park and this is what it is, there's always a cop around here, you know? I mean to some degree I feel very safe in this trailer park. (Velma)

Despite engaging in ‘fencing’ within the park, all Nesters vigorously defend the trailer park against outside attacks. They challenge the spatial ideologies that dictate the standards for acceptable dwellings and find that mobile homes fall short on these standards (Hurley 2001). Amanda says, “A mobile home just doesn't fit into the way of life for these people [referring to the town council].” Negative stereotypes of trailer life are also challenged as the Nesters compare the park to more upscale neighborhoods.

One thing that I can say is that [drugs] is everywhere, okay? It is in suburbs, it is in corporate, okay, it is in everything in life. It's in all your neighborhoods….You better believe it's in those, across the street in those big fine houses, too, okay? It might be a guy

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that might work at a university that's doing it, it might be a dentist, it might be a doctor, it might be a police officer. It's everywhere. (Tim)

While Nesters assert their differences from other park dwellers, they affirm their similarity with middle class people (i.e., auto-recognition) [Melucci 1996], as the previous reflection from Tim illustrates. In their defense of the park, the Nesters note similarities between their life in the park and typical middle class neighborhoods and, as such, seek recognition by others from outside the park (i.e., hetero-recognition) [Melucci 1996]: “…poverty is everywhere, poverty is everywhere. Some people are, a lot of people are losing their jobs, people are losing homes and things of this nature…[people with] $200,000 worth homes are starting to look at places like this to live because they are losing their $200,000 home” (Velma).

Trailer Home as an Aspirational Space of Capability and Hope. The trailer is a material and symbolic marker of the Nester’s transition from lives of hunger and destitution into a more middle class lifestyle characterized by successful consumerism. The ownership of a trailer marks the Nesters’ social progress and the trailer home is their most cherished possession (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981). When compared to their past homes, the trailer is better designed, more spacious, and possesses attractive features that bear resemblance to middle class homes, as envisioned by architects and urban planners (Soja 1996). During a home tour, married Tim and Velma chart this journey from physical insecurity to material comfort.

We sleep good at night, you know. I can lock the door, we have a nice place, we don’t have to worry about it raining because at the other place [referring to their previous home] it would rain and you’d have to put a bowl in the floor to catch the rain and all of that...Now, we’ve got a heat pump and, I mean, you know, we’ve got everything, so I’m feeling better. (Tim)

Look, we have two bedrooms, two full baths. Our bathroom has like the French doors and the big garden tub and the separate shower. Compared to where we were living, this is like a mansion to me. (Velma)

Their trailer home and possessions are potent demonstrations of their successful passage but also mark the owners as capable and hardworking people. Amanda, a reformed alcoholic, states proudly, “Look how far I’ve made it. I never thought I'd make it this far, I never thought I'd be alive. I never thought I'd have what I have now…. I mean look at all of this--this is mine, the roses, the rose bushes!” Similarly, Janice who was a drug addict and a victim of domestic violence articulates her material and self transformation:

When I moved in here, I didn't have nothing. I didn't have no furniture. Just clothes. And I did one room at a time…I had to love me enough to learn that I could do this on my own, with my own two feet, get a job, and do it on my own.

Bauman (2005, 38) suggests that the poor are generally perceived as “flawed, blemished, and defective consumer manquées” who cannot consume like their middle class counterparts. The Nesters resist this ascribed identity and, in fact, it is through their consumption that they assert their status (Holt 2002; Ustuner and Holt 2007).

We live really good. I don't think we're poor. Can't classify me as being poor. To me, poverty level is me out walking on the sidewalk standing back watching the guy at the restaurant dump some food in the dumpster so I can eat. That's poverty. I have a different, just a different definition of being poor, you know? We’ve got cable television, we’ve got

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water, you’ve got one of these [showing his cell phone]. When you don’t have a phone, you’re disconnected from everything. (Tim)

Different home projects, including decorating, repairing, and maintaining their yard, are among the Nesters’ favorite spatial activities. They work to personalize their homes as a symbol of their hard fought new identity. They build cherished and symbolic spaces of hope (Soja 1996; Harvey 2000) that remind them of their successful transition and help them cope with ongoing challenges, such as disability, stress, and addiction. For instance, Mary created a place in her yard that she calls “my little corner” and decorates it with painted rocks, lighthouses, crosses, plants, and flowers. This space represents Mary’s transition from being “on drugs and an alcoholic and living the wrong kind of life” to her new “Christian life.” Mary exercises and reinforces her new identity by volunteering at her church to help drug addicts overcome their addiction. For Whitney, her imminent graduation from university and new career are similar wider spaces of hope.

While consumption is an important aspect of the Nester’s identity, these informants also exercise typical middle class values of control, discipline, and delayed gratification by shopping sales, avoiding the use of credit cards, and seeking value. Like their middle class counterparts, the Nesters appreciate the freedom and control associated with home ownership (Rohe, Quercia, and Van Zandt 2007). Even resolving the headaches of homeownership allows Amanda to demonstrate her competency and mastery over her domestic space.

I guess the best thing is it that I come home some nights and I knew winter time if I forget to tell somebody to drip my water then I have to come home and the pipes are frozen or something, I got to get up underneath the porch because I know exactly where it freezes at and I do that myself. Or if my water pipes break I have to fix that myself. But God man, hands down, it’s tons better. Yeah, it’s a constant thing. I’m always remodeling and re-doing something. (Amanda)

The need to control their personal space also extends into the financial domain; Janice managed her home as a financial investment by upgrading and selling it for $14,000 and then buying her current trailer for $11,000. Similarly, Tina summarizes what her trailer home means to her: “Love. Love and my granddaughters. This [the trailer] goes to them if something happens to me. It's in my will.” The trailer is her legacy to her grandchildren, which is once again a middle class value that one transfers wealth inter-generationally.

The Reluctant Emigrants

Life in the trailer park is undesirable and the Reluctant Emigrants are impatient to leave. Unlike the Nesters for whom the trailer home and the park are two distinct spaces with different meanings, the Reluctant Emigrants see these meanings as closely connected.

Trailer Park as a Dangerous and Restrictive Space. The Reluctant Emigrants perceive Lakeside as a threatening neighborhood, a “too dangerous” place inhabited by “a lot of riffraff” and “violent drug dealers.” While other informants either ignore or manage to cope with these illegal activities, the Reluctant Emigrants feel exposed and that their families are at risk. Emily worries about her grandchildren’s safety: “one day, a drug deal gone bad, and someone starts shooting, and it’ll come through the wall or hit one of the grandchildren.”

They feel powerless to control their domestic space as thievery disrupts the use value of their home. Unattended yard decorations and possessions get stolen; they are unable to engage in

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normal activities like embellishing their home. In contrast to the Nesters who feel safer when police patrol in the park, these patrols remind the Emigrants that the park is an unsafe community.

Well, they've chased people down through here. I mean honestly like one guy stole my son's four-wheeler, and he was outrunning the law on it all through the trailer park. They were out here going about 60 miles through the trailer park with all of these kids here. It's okay if they drive through and watch out, you know, but I hate for them to have to come through here chasing people. I don't want the cops coming down by us 50, 60 miles per hour chasing somebody else. You just never know when they'll lose control. (Emily)

The management’s restrictions also diminish their use value, such as limitations on planting and building. Their inability to control their personal space disrupts their sense of homeownership. Below, one informant contrasts her trailer to her past and future home, while highlighting the spatial differences between trailer living and more ideal dwellings.

We've got so many neighbors, and we can't do really what we would like to do, you know? We want to have chickens, you know. When we lived in the double wide, we had chickens and we loved that. We can do anything we want to do and nobody is going to be there saying no, you can't do that. So, but here you have a lot of restrictions. You can't have, you know, a lot of kids' toys, which I do, but you know, I want to fix up a little playground up there for the grandkids when they come up and just be able to do what we want to do. It'll be ours. The trailer is ours and we can do what we want to on the inside, but the land is not ours here. (Emily)

Policies and people intrude on the Emigrants. “People are nosy and gossipy and, just the types, they want to get in your business” and “they just want to know what you have that they don’t have and how much money you make and how can you afford this? (Samantha).” Moreover, park residents cannot be trusted. Shannon recounts how a former friend, who was on drugs, crashed her car after taking it without her permission. Samantha explains that Lakeside residents “saw [them] just as transportation and took advantage of [them].”

Yet the Reluctant Emigrants still fight against negative stereotypes. However, unlike the Nesters who highlight the similarities between trailer park communities and wealthier neighborhoods, the Emigrants focus on unfair negative generalizations:

Just because we're low income doesn't mean we're not good people, and we need a place to live just as much as everybody else…They don't want to hear, and it makes us feel like we're nothing, you know, to the town when there's nothing but trash and they want us out, but not everybody that lives in here is bad people. But that few that isn't so nice gives us all a bad name and that's not right neither, you know. (Emily)

The Emigrants’ aspirations to leave the park set them apart. Appadurai (2004, 70) defines the capacity to aspire as “a horizon within which more concrete capabilities can be given meaning, substance, and sustainability…a navigational capacity.” The Reluctant Emigrants demonstrate such capacity and perceive trailer living as a layover stop as they “are trying really hard to get out.” (Samantha)

Trailer Home as a Temporary Layover. Here, the trailer home is seen as an “affordable place to live” when “you have nowhere else to go.” The trailer home is basic shelter until they can secure better housing. Irene explains how mobile homes are cheaply constructed:

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Trailers are not made with good support systems and stuff. It's just slammed together. They just use cheap stuff and put it together as far as they can and sell it for as much as they can get out of it. I mean you can go downtown anywhere that they sell trailers now and they'll cut you out a little piece…to show you these are the way we make our trailers. But you can cut a little section out of a watermelon and it'll look good, but when you get over to the middle of it, it don't look quite as good. (Irene)

The Reluctant Emigrants’ ideal home is a conventional site built home on private land. Matt hopes to build a prefabricated modular home on a fixed foundation, which will be a real house because it is “permanent.” Home is a place of safety and control in an insecure world (Dovey 1985). The Reluctant Emigrants imagine their ideal homes as sanctuaries removed from the dangers of the park and the crime in the surrounding town. Sharon’s ideal home would be situated in the woods. Future dream homes are protected zones or spaces of safety. Emily envisions her future log cabin in the following way:

Get my house built on land. Just somewhere where the kids can go out and play and I don't have to worry about someone hurting them, someone picking them up, doing drug deals around them, you know, stuff like that. I worry more about the kids than I do me.

Samantha and her family moved out of the park during the study and, in the second interview, they happily describe living in their trailer on their own land after a decade of planning:

And Zach [referring to her son], he got beat up in the park by three teenage boys in the park and three of the adults stood there and watched it happen and was laughing about it… So, I thought it was safer for us to move out of the park and get them in a better environment and into a better school. It worked out really well. The kids are really happy so that's really all that matters. (Samantha)

They had aspired to control their personal space without external rules structuring their use. Samantha speaks about this new found freedom with excitement:

We have our freedom to, you know, to do what we want, you know. We can make like a flowerbed. If we don't want to mow our grass one week, well, then we don't have to worry about getting charged $30 for not mowing the yard. So, and I mean it works out really nice. There's a lot of deer that come on the property and the kids get to see that and get to, they get to feed the birds and we have a creek that runs down behind the house.

Similarly, Emily’s “real home” is a future log home, free from restrictions, to which they hope to move in a couple of years.

The Reluctant Emigrants complain that the lack of physical space in their trailers restricts daily activities. Emily, for example, had to turn her kitchen into a home office where she runs her arts and crafts business. She and her partner must alternatively display their favorite possessions, dolphin figurines and a vintage bottle collection, given their spatial constraints. The future dream home is imagined as a space of experimentation to express creativity, control, and continuity that they cannot and do not want to achieve in their trailer:

I would like to get some antique pictures even if I don't know who's in the picture, I would like to have old pictures. I've seen some old furniture I would love to have. It's expensive, but it's really pretty. I'd like to make the curtains when we have curtains. I'd like to make most of the stuff. I'd like to make the curtains to match the quilts. I would

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like to decorate it, you know, the way I want it so. As long as I'm dreaming, I can afford anything. [laughter] I just honestly thought if I was going to build a log house that it would look good antique, you know, if we had a modern brick house or something I probably wouldn't go antique, but with a log house I want to go antique. (Emily)

The Community Builders

Driven by values of civic pride and responsibility, community builders try to open spaces of maneuverability within the park. Their trailer home and the park are two interrelated spaces where they engage in practices to care for their neighbors and to build and defend their neighborhood.

Trailer Park as a Space for Engaged Citizenship. Community Builders are committed to the park as a site of pride, responsibility, and civic engagement (Putnam 2000). Even though they might all prefer living on private land, the park is their community. Consistent with the traditional modernist approaches to community (Hummon 1990; Revill 1993), these informants view the park as a community where people are respectful, care for one another, and share resources.

A community to me is not necessarily everyone knowing everyone, but just to live together and try to make your surroundings better for, you know, not only yourself, but your neighbors. For instance, I try not to like mow late at night or real early in the morning or to not play my music loud so it doesn't disturb anyone…I'm going to be one to help my neighbor. (John)

Beyond sharing resources with “those who are not so fortunate,” the Community Builders are very attached to the park and defend park living. As discussed earlier, a popular criticism against mobile home parks is that they are poorly kept and affect the property values of the surrounding homes (Hurley 2001; Wallis 1991). Community Builders are aware of these tensions and offer communal solutions:

I think the town don't want trailer parks here anymore, that they think it's just a royal dump. It's a place for trouble and some of that I might agree with. It is a royal dump unless you fix it up. There should be times of the month or year that you paint your trailer, and if you can't afford it, there should be funds available for people that need it. There should be, the landlord should offer help with pressure washing and things like that of the outside mobile homes if they want the park to look good. (Jennifer)

In addition to offering solutions to the park’s problems, these informants develop socio-spatial strategies to improve the quality of communal life. These inward-looking spaces are intended to unite the community around reciprocal interests and create “bonding social capital” (Putnam 2000). For instance, they open spaces of maneuverability within the park to increase the use value of the park for the community. We define spaces of maneuverability as the shaping of place to open possibilities for new social action (Soja 2010). John informally works with the park management on clean-up projects, which involve repairing older trailers, adding street lights, and doing general park maintenance. Nancy convinced the park management to compile a list of community services for residents who need financial assistance. She also advocates for “summertime community picnics where everybody can bring a dish and get to know each other,”

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movie nights, and open auctions in the community. Jennifer offered to arrange a karaoke nights for the children and also proposed a food and clothing bank:

What I told Alvin [the park manager] I would do, I wanted to open up like part of a clothing bank here in the park just people giving people things and taking, rewashing it and handing it back out to somebody that's really in need, the same thing with furniture but he said he didn't have a building spot big enough for me to do that. I even offered my home to do that out of…. Somebody gives you something, you should give somebody else something. Kind of pay it forward, you know? Like the movie, you know. And maybe I'm just in a fantasy, but I think it would be much better if people would help other people instead of stabbing people in the back and cursing and fighting with people.

Community Builders also carve out intermediary spaces between the residents and the park management; these function as buffered zones where conflicts between exchange and use value can be negotiated (Gotham et al. 2001). John created a community group to act as a liaison between the management and his neighbors so “shy residents” could anonymously have their concerns heard by management.

Builders also create spaces of maneuverability between the park community and other social networks, including town representatives, volunteer associations, non-profit organizations, and the local media. These outward-looking spaces are created to gain institutional allies for resource mobilization and collective action and develop “bridging social capital” by bringing different groups together for the good of the community (Putnam 2000). John negotiated assistance from a community outreach group for repairs and is currently advocating for the opening of a new free medical clinic in town. Despite her limited literacy, Jennifer lodged formal complaints to city officials and the Better Business Bureau about being overcharged and she sought help from a community group on what she saw as the park’s unfair hiring practices.

John is the most active Community Builder both within and beyond the park. He attends town council meetings and fights against zoning plans to defend the park. During the meetings, he points out structural problems, such as lack of adequate affordable housing:

I would go to the meetings and sometimes I wouldn't talk, I would listen…I never argued out of ignorance, I had facts. I would bring up things such as median income in this town was not $50,000 to $77,000...I would disagree with their comprehensive plan, they actually had a map drawn one time that didn’t even include this place, being that they were going to do away with it, but yet they are going to “help us live in better places.” How can they do that if we can’t afford it? I would bring up things like, this place here [pointing to his trailer home], this is not a mansion by any means, this is not one of these houses over here, but this is a nice, neat house, you know? And people that live here are good people. They need this place. They can't afford anything else. (John)

John’s quote emphasizes the conflicts over the use and exchange value of the park: for the town representatives, the land occupied by the park is an abstract space that should be re-gained through zoning in order to increase its exchange value whereas for the residents the trailer park is the community where they live that has use value. In addition, John raises awareness within the park community and tries to organize the residents on important spatial issues such as affordable housing and the residents’ right to homeownership. As such, he displays an “organic intellectual” identity—an organizing force of the working poor who critically challenges the ideological and intellectual social order and educates others (Gramsci 1995; Kozinets and

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Handelman 2004). However, the obstacles faced by John were evident in email communication with John after the end of the fieldwork, where he complained about the “ignorant or intimated residents” who do not raise their voice and defend their rights. “Without back up, I have a rough road to travel to make a difference if at all,” he says, and this lack of social support led John to decrease his advocacy for the park within the town government. In addition, John had stopped cooperating with the management on maintenance as he now perceives them to “be practically raping people at the park and taking advantage of poor people” by justifying the rent increases with the tie-in process. Yet, John still continues to raise his complaints against the management and he works with outside organizations to improve the community life.

Trailer Home as Part of the Community. Feelings towards their trailer home range from pride (e.g., “everything in here has been worked very hard for and is paid for and that’s a long struggle”), gratitude (e.g., “I feel very fortunate to have the things I have”), to individual achievement (e.g., “it was kind of a royal dump and I turned it into something that’s worth living into”). But mostly, trailer home stands as the most “reasonable” place to aspire to homeownership. It is also a place around which contested ideological issues such as affordable housing and lack of financing for the poor are being articulated:

We don't have the luxury of accountants that write our bills for us or our lawyers that take care of things when they don't go right. So, we have to suffer with whatever the credit companies deliver upon us. So, we're, it's just an easy place to live. (John)

These informants have creative skills that they use to beautify their home through decorating, gardening, and remodeling. However, unlike the Nesters with their trailer homes and the Reluctant Emigrants with their dream homes, the home is not central to the Community Builders’ identity. They take pride in their trailer and possessions, but they do not assign great importance to material wealth. John says, “It's just, it's the person, it's not what you have, it's how you take care of it.” Unlike the Nesters’ view of trailer home as a personal signifier of upward social mobility and as a cherished and protected space from the chaotic community, the Builders’ narratives of home reveal communal associations. Their trailer is part of the community and, thus, their trailer home, like the whole park, should be tended. For instance, explaining how she cleans up after the kids playing in a vacant yard, Jennifer says, “I bet I pick up trash out of that yard 20 times a day because I am a clean person. I don’t want it to be nasty looking.” John takes care of the vacant lot next to his trailer so “it would not make his look bad because if there’s trash all over the ground and you’re living beside of it, it reflects on your place.”

In sum, these informants construct and affirm a communal identity focused on collective consciousness, citizenship engagement, and community spirit. Consequently, their agency extends beyond securing individual resources and coping with deprivations; it encompasses forging social bonds across multiple disparate groups (Putnam 2000). The ideological and abstract representations of the social spaces of home, neighborhood, and town conflict with the realities of the lived spaces of trailer homes and trailer parks. Aware of these contradictions, the Builders clear spaces of maneuverability to challenge the dominant order and address socio-spatial inequalities (Harvey 2000; Smith 1995).

The Homesteaders

The Homesteaders face multiple disadvantages and appreciate the trailer park community for significant social support. Their trailer and the park are the places that they call home.

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Trailer Park as a Familiar Munificent Space. The Homesteaders see Lakeside as a comfortable community where they fit in with people who share their lifestyle and struggles (Hill and Gaines 2007; Klein and Hill 2008). They have lived most of their lives in trailers and trailer parks. While Nesters, Emigrants, and Builders compare and reference more prosperous middle class neighborhoods, the Homesteaders identify with trailer parks and trailer residents. They make connective comparisons with their neighbors to feel socially affiliated (Locke 2003):

Well, the good thing is, you know, you're around a lot of people that pretty much lives like you do, you know? Of course, everybody is a little different, but the good things are you live around people and they pretty much understand how you live. (Lucie)

More importantly, Lakeside provides a safety net of resources. Homesteaders all have multiple concentrated disadvantages (e.g., old age, chronic health problems, physically demanding jobs, lower self esteem). Like the Community Builders, the Homesteaders use the park as a social bonding zone (Putnam 2000) where resources are leveraged to open spaces of maneuverability and spaces of hope. But, while the Community Builders work to build collective solidarity and a sense of community (O’Brien 2008), the Homesteaders seek support to cope with their individual problems. In particular, Community Builders often provide for the Homesteaders’ basic needs, such as transportation, home repairs, and even food. Robert receives help from neighbors since he is estranged from his family due to his former alcohol addiction (Robert died during the course of the fieldwork and his Community Builder neighbor John found his body during a daily routine visit). Likewise, Mike and his wife Wanda routinely receive help maintaining their trailer from the Lakeside manager.

Past research long notes that the poor rely on social networks and resource sharing (e.g., Hill 2001; O’Brien 2008; Snow and Anderson 1987). However, in contrast to some of the disadvantaged groups studied in consumer research, the Homesteaders neither engage in artful social maneuvering (Adkins and Ozanne 2005) nor enact a victim identity to secure resources (Hill and Gaines 2007). Rather, they portray themselves as hard-working, responsible people trapped by circumstances beyond their control.

I have tried so hard all my life. I've made mistakes in my life like everybody has, I don't understand, you know, it seems like to me that I take two steps forward and somebody will push me back three because every time I have a job opportunity something takes it away… My health isn't as good as it used to be, and working six hours a night now and if I get another job it will probably be working eight hours at the other job. To be honest with you I just don't know how long I can hold up to it. (Lucie)

While Homesteaders generally support park policies, they exhibit a fair degree of tolerance for their neighbors and their activities. They cope with what they perceive they cannot ignore, escape, or change. Criminal activities are mostly “nuisances” that do not disrupt the routine use of their lived space (Soja 2010). They take for granted the regular police patrols; “They [the police] have nothing better to do.” Overall, the Homesteaders develop a live-and-let-live attitude as they struggle to make ends meet.

Trailer Home as a Utilitarian Space. The trailer is their permanent home and the only affordable option for hard working, unfortunate people like themselves. Talking about her trailer, Melissa says, “It’s all right. It needs a lot of work.” Homesteaders adopt an embracement strategy that they are united as trailer park residents, but rather than seeing trailer park identity as

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demeaning, they see trailer living as a reasonable option for people with limited funds (Snow and Anderson 1987).

Although they share a practical and utilitarian view of the trailer, the Homesteaders harbor the traditional belief that homeownership marks achievement and integration into American society (Rohe et al. 2007). With varying degrees of success, the Homesteaders reach out to social circles within the park to secure help to repair and beautify their home. Robert is helped by John (a community builder) and a volunteer organization that supplied materials.

I mean my friend down here, I don't have to do nothing. He helps me out on anything I need. He helps me work on my car, mows my yard. You name it, he does it. He's going to paint my ceiling. I don't even have to buy the paint, I mean the roof coating. I don't even have to buy it. The company is giving it to him and he's going to put it on. So, I've got it made. I can't complain. (Robert)

Some Homesteaders are skilled at leveraging social assistance even from the park management. As a policy, the management is not responsible for the maintenance of trailers if the residents own their homes. However, Mike and his wife Wanda get assistance as owners.

I own the trailer, but I tell Alvin [the park manager] and he'll get the stuff. He'll come and check it out. And take care of it because he knows I'm not able to do it… some people don’t like them because he wouldn't help them but if I need anything or anything, I'll go over there and tell him and he'd say yeah, I'll get it. (Mike)

In contrast, Melissa struggles to get her needs met and cannot get management to take care of repairs in her rented trailer. This failure is likely due to Melissa’s mother ongoing conflict with the park management about maintenance and management’s perception of Melissa as a young person who does not need as much help as Mike and Wanda

Well, like, I've told him for six months that I needed that hole fixed, and he never, I went through him and I've told them over and over you all need to fix that hole in there because if my kids fall through that and get seriously hurt, I'm suing you all, but they still don't never want to do it. I told them about the kitchen floor, which I don't really care, I mean it looks tacky, but I mean I don't really care, but they do need to fix that hole back there, but like they're always like we have you on the list to get it fixed, but it's been almost a year now and it still ain't never been fixed. (Melissa)

Melissa reaches out to social circles within the park to improve her trailer home when the management ignores her need for use value. Like her mother Lucie and Robert, she relies on Community Builders to maintain her home.

Unlike the informants discussed so far, the Homesteaders’ trailers are usually disorderly and dirty since they have significant health challenges. But, similar to the Nesters, they still create symbolic spaces of hope. These are also compensatory spaces that replace places they have both willingly and unwillingly abandoned. While Robert no longer goes to church due to health problems, he had a sacred corner of religious figurines, pictures of Jesus Christ, and a Virgin Mary lamp; “I always talk to the Good Lord,” he states. This space symbolizes his salvation from alcohol and gratitude for his loved ones (with whom he has little contact). Although she no longer dates, Lucie collects angels and fairy figurines that symbolize her survival of domestic violence and her enduring romantic spirit. Finally, Wanda collects used children’s books even though she left school humiliated by her inability to read.

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The Outcasts

The hedonistic and deviant lifestyles of this group cast them to the outskirts of the park community. They perceive the park management and their neighbors to be hostile and thus the outcasts engage in subtle spatial acts of defiance and resistance within the community.

Trailer Park as Panopticon. The Outcasts create a small and tightly knit hedonic subculture based on risky lifestyles that counter the dominant norms and values of most park residents. As trust grew in later interviews, these informants shared that they regularly binge drink, take drugs, earn income through deviant means (e.g., strip dancing, dealing drugs), and break laws (e.g., identity theft, driving with a suspended license, assault on a police officer). While other informants also confided about past addictions and illegal activities, they almost always described these events with shame and regret and instead preferred their reformed lifestyles. For the Outcasts, hedonistic and risky acts are an important part of their self identity.

The Outcasts are the most socially dependent people of all park residents. Yet, their social resources are not based on leveraging collective solidarity, pooling resources, or maneuvering through spaces, as was the case with the groups discussed earlier. Instead, the Outcasts manage various socio-spatial challenges based on highly dependent social relations.

I'm 30 years old and I've never had to be on my own. Because I went from like moving out of my parent's house to, you know, with friends or family and then I was married and he took care of me and then I've been with him and he takes care of me. I wouldn't know what to do, you know. I wouldn't make enough to pay the bills like he does. (Emma)

Of all the groups, the Outcasts are least bothered by negative portrayals of trailer living. For instance, they do not perceive the park to be dangerous. Neither Deborah nor Anita lock their doors because they “feel safe and it don’t bother [them].” Likewise, Josh portrays a clearly different version of safety in comparison with the other community groups.

I don't care if you want to do drugs, that’s fine...When it comes to drug dealing, I mean it depends on what they're doing. Marijuana to me I think it ought to be legal. I mean it's a wild flower. [laughter] I used to smoke it years ago and I didn't do the crazy stuff that I would do if I'm drinking beer and when I smoke a joint it relaxes you. I mean to me, the way I feel about it, I mean if somebody gets a bottle of pills and they don't take them all and then want to make them a few dollars, I don't really see the big harm in it if they are selling to like one person that's an older person or something like that. (Josh)

However, the park is viewed as an unwelcoming community, a panopticon, where private practices are under constant surveillance (Foucault 1977). Most complain about other Lakeside residents as being “too nosy” and interfering with their lifestyles.

If I had my choice now, I'd be gone. Anywhere but here. Everybody is in your business. Well, yeah, they talk about me all the time. Because I have a lot of company. But, you know, I have family and friends, you know, that come and see me. What's the big deal? Uhm, just that, you know, they think I'm dealing drugs or I'm allowing it to go on here or some stuff like that…What somebody else does in their own house is their business so, you know. (Anita)

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Given the Outcasts’ pursuit of illegal and deviant practices, their hostility toward the surveillance of their life is not surprising. In response, the Outcasts engage in subtle, spatial acts of defiance to fight “the ridiculous things” that management does (Gilliom 2001). For instance, Anita protests the manager’s inconvenient placement of trash dumpsters by letting trash accumulate in her yard even though she risks fines. The Outcasts also challenge park policies through linguistic tactics such as name calling, sarcasm, and gossiping about management.

The Outcasts express an attitude of ‘us’ verses ‘them’ between themselves and management, but also with the wider park and general community. They perceive the system is against them and employ weapons of the weak that are so often used by people who feel disenfranchised (Scott 1985). For example, Emma attended a community picnic organized by an outside volunteer group; she only socialized briefly with her family, fed her dog picnic food, and then left after filling her purse with more “dog food” (field notes). Anita likes to “work the system” by sending her cousin to different food banks to defy rules that limit visits. Josh was currently looking for a used car to drive despite being imprisoned for repeatedly driving with an expired license. These individual acts of defiance and spatial protests signal the Outcasts’ way of getting back at a system perceived to be “fucked up” and “messed up.”

Trailer Home as a Flop House. For the Outcasts, the trailer is just a physical shelter with little symbolic meaning or personal attachment. As Deborah states, “I mean the trailer is crappy. But, you know, it's a place to live. I don’t mind living in a trailer.” The Outcasts’ trailers are the least well kept, most disorganized, and dirtiest homes within the park. These informants do no home improvements and even their most personal possessions are relatively unimportant. Anita sold her bed for much needed money and now sleeps on the couch.

All of the Outcasts rent their trailers and, according to Lakeside policies, management should be maintaining their homes as renters. While all Outcasts complain that they are ignored and their trailers are in disrepair, they are resigned. As Josh succinctly states, “they [the management] ain’t took care of nothing in here.” Even other residents note that the trailers of Outcasts are in poor repair. Often times, the management helps people who own their trailers and are perceived to be “compliant” (i.e., some Homesteaders) while neglecting the needs of Outcast renters who are labeled as “trouble-makers.” By actively producing and reproducing this difference, the management attempts to exert both social and spatial control (Harvey 2006; Soja 1996). Thus, the Outcasts’ resignation to their poor living conditions is in part due to their refusal to cooperate with the management.

Most residents are supportive of the new management battling the “drug culture” within the park. The manager articulates that he identifies and evicts those suspicious residents who are believed to be engaged in illegal drug activities. For instance, one Outcast, Anita was accused by management of selling drugs, but she was evicted for failure to pay rent. The Lakeside manager has significant leeway and states, “if they work with me, I work with anybody.” But Outcasts generally perceive that this discretion does not apply to them.

Even though the Outcasts’ home is a neglected shelter, it is also where they engage in their subculture--it is a place “to party” with other Outcasts. Anita’s trailer is “the hangout spot” and Josh describes his trailer as where he is typically “cooking and drinking cold beer. That’s about it.” Even during interviews, Outcasts would drink, chain smoke, and ask the researcher to “party with them.” They would proudly tell the researcher about the “mixed drinks” they make, the “tricks” to get more buzz with alcohol (such as adding salt in beer), the card games they

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know, and the best music. This construction of the trailer as a partying spot is similar to the idea of a flophouse associated with single-occupancy motel rooms and other forms of cheap urban dwellings in skid rows that are inhabited by addicts and homeless people (Berlin and McAllister 1992). The case of Emma is exemplary of the trailer home as a flophouse. Emma was addicted to crystal meth and, for months, she let a drug dealer use her trailer as a meth lab in exchange for free meth. In the excerpt below, Emma recalls those days with nostalgia:

I'd let them use my trailer to cook it and make it and then I'd get some of it. They'd give me meth. Then I was selling it, too, so…You've gotta be real careful because you can smell it and mine was right up there on the bike trail the best trailer to do it. People can smell it. It's dangerous to cook it in the house. I had already lost my kids and my mom had them…So he [the drug dealer] about blew us up that time and one time he was mixing some stuff in a bottle that you use to make it, I didn't know what all was in it, and his finger slipped off and I had a bikini top on and it flew over and hit my back and put a hole there, we poured water to get it off…Yeah, he's doing 15 years in prison. I would have got busted the same time he did if I hadn't left, but I was gone. I was gone two days ahead of him before he got busted. So, luckily I left when I did [laughter]. (Emma)

INTERPRETATION

We examined the consumption and spatial practices of five different groups within the marginalized community of a trailer park. Despite the persistent and sustained historical and social construction of trailer parks as sites of social pathology, we find the Lakeside Park inhabitants enact an inventive array of consumer identities as they shape and are shaped by their social space. Next, we explore implications for the link between consumer identity and community and conclude with the theoretical contributions to identity politics.

The Connection between Consumer Identity and Community

How people embody the communities in which they live is important to their sense of self; “questions of ‘who we are’ are intimately related to questions of ‘where we are’” (Dixon and Durrheim 2000, 27). Through producing and consuming community, as in the case of our park residents, people define themselves and are also defined by other users of the same and other spaces (i.e., auto-recognition and hetero-recognition) [Melucci 1996]. While we know that identity construction arises in the ties and tensions between self-identification and identification by others (Thompson and Haytko 1997), our findings highlight that identity practices always occur somewhere and this community matters.

Our research answers some important questions. How do the poor use their communities to create positive identities and challenge ascribed stigmatized identities? How do different spatial constructions contract or expand agency and influence consumption and spatial practices? What spatial tensions and conflicts arise among different social actors, who are the makers and users of the community, and how do these dynamics impact consumer identity formation? In grappling with these questions, we have relied upon critical and post-structuralist approaches to social space and identities. Trailer parks are real spaces, often located at the margins of town; they are imagined as deficient habitats violating “normal” conventions; yet as lived spaces consumers reconfigure the real and imagined to be something more largely through their consumption practices (Foucault 1986; Soja and Hooper 1993).

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The lived spaces of the trailer home and the park act as sites to enact identity and agency. They are the mediating spaces between “macrostructural constraints and locally situated behaviors” (Gotham and Brumley 2002, 267). Tensions over the meaning of homeownership and community affiliation or detachment are enacted within the trailer home and park. These spaces also provide the real and symbolic grounds upon which various ascribed identities (e.g., ‘white trash,’ ‘trailer trash,’ ‘poor’) are contested and new identities are formed and affirmed (e.g., community-oriented, middle-class, detached). The Nesters are strongly attached to their home and cherished belongings and perceive these as symbolic of their transformed identity as upwardly mobile. The Reluctant Emigrants view their current home as disrupting their ideals of a meaningful social place and integration into the society. For the Homesteaders, the trailer home is a familiar place to connect with like-minded people. The Community Builders treat their home as part of the community and as a site for civic activism. The deviant Outcasts utilize their home as a flophouse providing an escape from community surveillance and into hedonistic pleasures.

Home is also “where one discovers new ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference…a site of resistance and liberation struggle” (hooks 1990, 148). It is through notions of home and house that abstract conceived ideologies (i.e., standards for ‘ideal’ homes) are developed and disseminated by the designers of space and can adversely impact such contested zones as trailer parks. A general popular belief holds that people who own their homes are individuals with better work ethics, stronger familial and communal ties, and the capability to realize the American dream through hard work and discipline (Rohe et al. 2007). In this quest towards the ideal of home ownership, mobile home occupants face obstacles as they seek to fulfill their shelter needs through an unconventional form of housing. While defending their home against conceived spatial ideologies and exchange value interests, our informants engage in a range of spatial practices to increase the use value of their home. While postmodern geographers do stress the active role of residents in producing and consuming space, their work under theorizes the mechanisms through which residents shape social spaces. Here consumer researchers can contribute how consumption practices of adornment, decoration, building, organizing, and such help people invest space with significant meaning that can defy the meanings of first and second space (Soja 1996, 2010).

Our analysis also reveals that home should not be treated as a clearly bounded space since much of the meaning of home derives from the neighborhood in which it is situated. The boundaries of community are flexible and porous, and under constant social production and negotiation (Gieryn 2000). The meanings of neighborhood also emerge among social actors with different interests through essentializing discourses that name inhabitants as ‘trailer trash,’ in the workings of the local real estate market, and through local zoning practices. Yet, despite the obvious connection between home and community, research investigating this linkage is limited in consumer research (Hill 1991; Hill and Stamey 1990; Mehta and Belk 1991). Our research fills this gap by simultaneously exploring home and the community as two interrelated spaces where meaning is relatively plastic and can be shaped to support a range of identities.

While consumer researchers have generally stressed the positive and affiliation benefits of community membership (Kozinets 2002; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001; Schouten and McAlexander 1995; Thompson and Troester 2002), community can be a “morally charged instrument of authority” and does not always entail a bounded organic group of shared consciousness and meanings (Revill 1993, 119). This overlooked and dark-side of community emerges in marginalized communities. While some residents favor communal park spaces (i.e.,

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Community Builders and Homesteaders), others reject the communal activities as a threat to their identity (i.e., Reluctant Emigrants and Outcasts). In addition, community generates conflicts between the makers of social spaces and the users as reflected through the relationships between the park residents and the management and town representatives.

Similarly, the city is not a fixed object of study but is dynamic and socially constructed; the city is “the site of conflicting cultural, aesthetic, political, and economics discourses competing over the meaning of ‘the city’” (Tajbakhsh 2001, 21). Our findings point to the trailer park and home as lived and contested spaces of competing meanings and conflicting interests, which helps shape and are also shaped by multiple intersecting identities. Through this constant interplay between meaning-making in the personal space of the trailer home and the shared public space of the trailer park, identity politics emerge.

Identity Politics and Consumer Profiles

Consumer culture scholars generally research the identity projects of consumers with significant resources, such as educated people employed in professional vocations (Kozinets 2002), middle and upper middle class tech-savvy consumers (Muniz and Schau 2005), or middle class families with stable economic prospects (Curasi, Price, and Arnould 2004). With a few notable exceptions (Hill 1991; Hill and Stamey 1990; Holt 2002; Ustuner and Holt 2007), identity projects of poor consumers are largely overlooked. Often researchers focus on their coping strategies (Adkins and Ozanne 2005; Hill and Stephens 1997) or the structural factors that cause an unfair marketplace making it more expensive to be poor (Alwitt and Donley 1996; Andreasen 1975). But understanding how poor consumers form individual and collective identities is important theoretically. First, as our findings reveal, poverty is a complex phenomenon and a multidimensional setting of disadvantage (Chakravarti 2006). Poverty is not only about an economic and material shortage of resources but it also involves a lack of socio-culturally perceived necessities and the social/spatial exclusion from meaningful interactions and exchanges (Bauman 2000). In our study, we found many examples of deprivation and social/spatial exclusion. Additionally, different poverty populations exist with their separate realities—the homeless, the working poor, the urban poor, and the rural poor, for example (Hill 2001). Far from being a homogenous population, a wide range of economic, social, and cultural dynamics unfold even within the same geographically bounded setting of a trailer park.

Finally, poor people are often subjected to multiple and overlapping bases of stigmatization. Poverty is perceived as a “manifestation of moral defect,” a blemish of the individual character (Goffman 1963). As citizens, they are seen as free riders and welfare abusers who fail to contribute to the society (Collins 2000). A tribal-like stigma is attached to the poor and to trailer residents as a social group (Goffman 1963). Our informants encountered many stigmatizing experiences and forged different forms of agency around their social spaces to negotiate stigmas in defense of their individual and collective identities. They forged spaces of resistance, maneuverability, possibility, acceptance, and, at times, spaces of resignation.

The interaction of these multiple disadvantages, diverse meanings of poverty, and concentrated stigmatization points to the richness of consumer groups within what is largely treated as a monolithic category of the poor. Consequently, our findings reveal multiple identity projects undertaken by the informants. The Nesters reject the ascribed ‘poor identity’ through their trailer home and various belongings that symbolize their positive status. The Reluctant Emigrants perceive themselves as poor and aspire for independent homes that signify success,

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hard work, and transition into a middle class and safe lifestyle. For the Community Builders, poverty is seen as perpetuated by structural disadvantage and the lack of communal ties and, thus, they develop spaces to affirm community-oriented identities. All three groups make social comparison with others to challenge the ‘trailer parker’ identity and affirm their independent selves. The Homesteaders, however, are comfortable with the ‘trailer park’ identity and they feel safe within this familiar zone. And the deviant Outcasts forge subcultural ties within the park, ignore negative portrayals of trailer life, and affirm their deviant identity through their consumer and spatial practices.

The plurality of identities identified at Lakeside challenges the traditional Marxist and modernist approaches that view identity as a fixed and static construct that is shaped and shared across classes such as the working poor. Instead, our theorization of identity is inspired by critical spatial perspectives and is aligned with post-structuralist (Dhamoon 2009; hooks 1990; Tajbakhsh 2001) and new social movement approaches to identity (Melucci 1996). These approaches argue for the idea of identity politics, which are “politics that eschews such terms as groups, rights, value, and society in favor of such terms as places, spaces, alterity, and subject positions” (Zaretsky 1994, 200). Identity politics emphasize difference rather than commonality and multiple subjectivities rather than homogenous worldviews. This view parallels a dominant consumer culture theory understanding of identity as a complex, multi-faceted, and fragmented social construction (Arnould and Thompson 2005). Our research finds that, even within the same trailer park and the same socio-economic class, diverse identities emerge. People of a certain social class are not mainly defined by their unified and politicized collective identity rooted in instrumental interests, as conventional Marxism suggests, nor bound by their homogeneous worldviews, as essentialist approaches to identity would argue (Zaretsky 1994). People who share the same social and economic locations do not necessarily share the same views of community.

While Escobar (2001) argues for the transformative power of local social movements in defense of locales, little evidence of such stirrings was found at Lakeside with the notable exception of the Community Builders. Nevertheless, nationally some trailer parks are organizing to create cooperative trailer parks aided by local public policies that give residents first rights of refusal when the park land is sold. While these cooperative parks face new challenges such as self-management, residents benefit by getting lower and more stable rents, greater control, the opportunity to build assets, community investment of profits, and access to block grants. Ironically, some of the persistent social stigma surrounding mobile homes has meant that nonprofit aid groups do not see trailer parks as a site in which to expand access to affordable housing (Apgar et al. 2002). One model that might be copied by trailer communities is the galvanization of local indigenous peoples to protect their land through global social networks of resources and support (Escobar 2001). Yet, diverse consumer identities may prove a daunting obstacle to collaboration, such as those that emerged in this study.

CONCLUSIONS

A critical spatial perspective argues that space deserves an equal treatment as temporal and the social in the exploration of identities (Soja 1996). It is true that identity is a narrativized construction encompassing consumers’ sense of self in relation to their past, present, and possible future lives (Schau et al. 2009; Thompson 1997). However, in investigating identity development through time, consumer researchers can gain added insights if they also look at the spatial dynamics, relations, and struggles, which arise clearest in peripheral and marginal spaces.

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Similarly, Crockett and Wallendorf’s (2004) African-American consumers built a repertoire of everyday yet ideological shopping patterns to fight against the status quo.

Largely overlooked contexts can help researchers explore interesting dynamics as “going to extremes is at heart a defamiliarizing tactic that helps us transcend some of the assumptions we have in overly familiar contexts” (Arnould, Price, and Moisio 2006, 110.) By investigating an overlooked and marginalized context of a trailer park, we were able to understand new ways of constructing and negotiating identities through everyday spaces. Additionally, we have sought to advance research on identity construction by foregrounding an understudied population: impoverished consumers. Like the unusual social contexts, investigating overlooked consumer segments is worthy for delineating hidden sides of phenomenon (Arnould et al. 2006). For instance, contrary to the dominant perceptions of the poor as victims or survivors with a homogeneous class profile, our study yields multiple experiential realities and diverse profiles among the trailer residents. Our findings call for future investigations on other such understudied groups as the physically handicapped, the elderly, or other types of impoverished. One possible future research path would be to explore other poverty populations such as the immigrant poor, the homeless, or the urban city poor to explore the relevance and applicability of a critical spatial framework in the social construction of other marginalized spatial identities.

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TABLE Name

Age Occupation/Previous Occupations Park Tenure

Previous Domestic Spaces Housing/Family Status Spatial Identities

Tim 50s disability; government job, custodial work recent trailer parks, efficiency motel, private home during childhood

renter; lives with wife Velma and son Nester

Velma 30s food services; food services, housekeeping recent trailer parks, efficiency motel, public housing during childhood

see above Nester

Mary 40s disability; telemarketing, waitressing, manufacturing recent trailer parks, homeless for short period

owner; lives with husband Nester

Janice 40s nursing and cook ; unemployed for a long time moderate trailer parks, apartments, private home during childhood

owner; single Nester

Amanda 40s truck driving ; telemarketing, cashier, government job moderate apartments, farm house during childhood

owner; single Nester

Tina 50s disability ; nursing, owned her own cleaning company short term Apartment owner ; single, raising two grandchildren Nester Whitney 30s unemployed (going to school) ; N/A recent trailer parks renter to buyer; boyfiend and her 4 kids Nester

Emily 50s disability, home-based business ; managed convenience store

short term trailer parks, apartment owner; lives with partner Reluctant Emigrant

Matt 30s disability, online stock trader; manufacturing, nursing, private detective

short term trailer parks, two-story house renter; lives with wife Samantha and 3 kids

Reluctant Emigrant

Samantha 30s retail store manager; homemaker short term trailer parks, two-story house see above Reluctant Emigrant

Irene 50s disability; dishwashing, manufacturing, food services recent trailer parks, apartments, farmhouse during childhood

renter, lives with daughter Sharon and her family

Reluctant Emigrant

Sharon 30s homemaker; custodial work recent trailer parks, apartment renter; lives with husband and two kids Reluctant Emigrant

John 40s disability; food services, store management, bar owner long term NA owner; lives alone Builder

Jennifer 40s disability; food services, owner of arts and crafts business

short term trailer parks renter; lives with husband and five kids Builder

Nancy 30s secretary; merchandising, secretary short term trailer parks renter; lives with partner and four kids Builder Mike 60s disability; construction work long term trailer parks owner; lives with partner Wanda Homesteader Wanda 50s disability; has never worked long term trailer parks see above Homesteader Robert 80s disability; construction work short term trailer parks renter; lives alone Homesteader Melissa 20s welfare and food services; retailing, dishwashing long term NA renter; lives with kids Homesteader Lucie 50s housekeeping, retailing; housekeeping long term trailer parks renter to owner; lives with sons Homesteader

Emma 30s waitressing; food services, housekeeping, babysitting, strip dancing

short term trailer parks, apartments, townhouse

partner rents; lives with partner Outcast

Anita 40s unemployed and welfare; housekeeping, retailing, public services

short term duplex apartment, townhouse renter; lives with her two sons Outcast

Deborah 40s cashier job; housekeeping moderate trailer parks, townhouse renter; lives with partner Josh, her son, and his family

Outcast

Josh 40s unemployed; housekeeping long term trailer parks, townhouse see above Outcast Background in the Park: recent: less than 5 years; short-term: 5-9 years; moderate: 10-20 years; long-term: 21-40 years

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Reviewer Supplemental Appendix with Photographs

Photo 1—Lakeside Trailer Park

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Photo 2--Nester’s ‘Space of Hope’

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Photo 3—Nester’s Material Success

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Photo 4—Reluctant Emigrant’s Home as a Temporary Layover

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Photo 5—Community Builder’s Home as Part of the Community

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Photo 6—A Community Builder’s Home Interior

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Photo 7—Homesteader’s ‘Space of Hope’

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Photo 8—Outcast’s Home in Poor Repair

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Photo 9—Outcast’s Visual Protest

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