A specific assembly of categorizations, concepts, and ideas that is produced, reproduced, performed, and transformed in a particular set of practices. Schott (2007) Tijdschrift 98, 2 defines discourse as ‘a social process which can be called “inclination of sense” or, in a more sophisticated manner, “genesis of meaning”…It is appealing to use the word discourse in Foucault’s sense of a system of exclusion.’

Discourses create their own ‘regimes of truth’—the acceptable formulation of problems, and solutions to those problems (M. Foucault 1980). ‘Although many of the urban studies that undertake discourse analysis are interested in urban social justice…some critics charge that talking about social justice is not enough, and as critical urban researchers we need to create it’ (Lees (2004) PHG 28, 1). See Nijman (2007) Tijdschrift 98, 2 on ‘the prevailing political and ideological discourse [that] seeks to maintain the Haitian identity’.