Since the 1960s, large housing estates have shaped the physiognomy of suburbia in Western and Eastern European cities. This paper examines the constitution of meaning of this particular form of housing estate within three different national contexts (Germany, Poland, and France). We identify transnational and specific national discursive patterns that produce both particular social spaces and distinct social orders. A research design in discourse theory allows focusing on social phenomena in their specific context and thus serves as the appropriate frame of reference for such an international comparative study. We assume that the interlinkage of spatial (here/there) and social demarcations (familiar/foreign or safe/unsafe) is constitutive for the discursive production of spaces and social structures. Empirically, we base our study on major national newspapers. Combining corpus linguistic, lexicometric analysis with the analysis of articulation patterns, this paper explores differences and similarities, and ruptures in the discursive constitution of large housing estates.
