Staying Put, Feeling Displaced: Grief and Shame Under Gentrification

Abstract While gentrification research increasingly acknowledges displacement beyond physical dislocation, less is known about how such processes mediate – and are mediated by – the emotional lives of residents who remain in place. Drawing on 25 interviews with longtime residents of Eilandje, a former working‐class harbour district in Antwerp (Belgium) that has undergone extensive new‐build gentrification, this article examines how displacement shapes and is shaped by emotions. The analysis identifies distinct emotional geographies marked by grief and shame. Grief stems from the erosion of familiar social relations and place‐based attachments, while shame arises from feeling both out‐of‐place and ‘not up‐to‐place’ in a transformed urban landscape. Crucially, these emotions did not merely register displacement after the fact; they actively shaped how residents navigated, endured, and at times resisted the gentrifying landscape. Taken together, these findings show that gentrification can exert a profound emotional toll even without physical displacement, challenging the assumption that staying put shields residents from harm. They further suggest that emotions should be understood not only as outcomes of displacement, but also as forces that mediate it. The article concludes by calling for attention not only to the right to space, but also to the right to place.