Policy schizophrenia and the sociology of fragmentation

This article revisits the concept of ‘policy schizophrenia’, introduced in Fragmenting Cities (Schultz Larsen & Delica, 2024), to analyse how democratic governments increasingly govern urban marginality through stigmatizing and discriminatory policies. The concept captures the ambivalence, incoherence, and fragmenting effects of contemporary urban governance shaped by rapid political and bureaucratic change. Grounded empirically in the Danish “ghetto list,” the article situates policy schizophrenia within debates on neoliberalism, arguing that fragmentation is intrinsic to neoliberal governance. It outlines six interrelated logics of practice as analytical tools and concludes by framing policy schizophrenia as a social diagnosis, briefly exploring its relevance beyond Denmark through the analysis of the rise of Portugal’s Chega party. https://doi.org/10.21747/08723419/soc53a6