From disciplining to dislocation - Area bans in recent urban policing in Germany

In German cities, area bans (Aufenthaltsverbote) are issued against users of illegalized drugs and other 'undesirables' to bar them from entering certain central city spaces. Drawing on materialist state theory, the expert discourses that legitimize these area bans are analysed in order to understand why this spatial measure of policing is on the agenda right now. I argue that these discourses reveal that area bans are aimed at dislocating undesirables; that they are based on a spatialization of 'danger'; that they are symptomatic of recent developments in policing in that they abstract from the individual and engage in 'governing at a distance'; that this very abstraction is made possible by the spatial approach of the area bans; and that the bans are therefore a suitable means to police the consequences of neo-liberalism in the entrepreneurial city.