Evento

In informal settlements across Latin America, face-to-face episodes of negotiation over the allocation of urban resources, critical infrastructure, and overall recognition are taking place between migrant populations and numerous representatives who embody the state across urban territories. These are not utopian encounters of democratic inclusion and legal recognition of these most excluded members of urban society. Instead, they are episodes of struggle, periods of waiting for solutions to materialize, bursts of protest and road blockades, heated discussions, strategic ignoring, and racialized biases. However, at the same time, they are intimately intertwined with face-to-face interactions and negotiations based on moral claims and the necessities for the reproduction of life, revealing a world of unexpected connections and collaborations. We see in these episodes the exchange of contact information, giving noncitizen migrants a way to directly communicate with representatives of numerous state institutions to solve pressing needs related to life in the urban peripheries. Ongoing discussion and negotiations take place through WhatsApp group chats where key decision-makers join and engage in daily conversations. The migrant-state relations that are the norm in many urban peripheries of the global South and challenge the way we think about citizenship,democracy, and the state. Indeed, these relationships occur between those who are supposed to be invisible to the state and those who are the actual manifestation and embodiment of the state apparatus in the ordinary spaces of urban life. Such migrant experiences in ordinary cities across the globe, particularly within south-south trajectories, rarely make it into the canon of migration studies, often concerned with the politics of mobility, borders, and migrant activism from a global North perspective; a perspective influenced, reasonably, by multiple recent “migration crises” (Nyers and Rygiel, 2012; Squire, 2012). A decentering of migration studies, however, would entail a recognition that a substantial share of global migration takes place within countries of the global South (McAuliffe and Triandallidou, 2021; Abel and Sander, 2014). Here, the ordinary experiences of migrants are largely circumscribed within a pronounce migration-urbanization nexus in which migrant populations intersect with urban socio-spatial processes quite distinct from those experienced in south-north trajectories. The novel forms of politics, migrant-state relations, and alternative modes of recognition that characterize migrant urban experiences in the global South cannot continue to be anecdotal in migration studies and must occupy an empirically important place at its core. Such step is necessary if we are to learn from the practices and relations that migrants are already crafting in these territories and fine-tune the concepts that we advance to grasp migration processes globally. Moreover, it moves us closer to potentializing the democratic moments that migrants are able to craft to address the everyday challenges that they face in under-resourced urban peripheries. This presentation aims to overflow these migrant experiences into the canon. It reflects on migrant-state relations that take hold around struggles and negotiations over urban infrastructure in informal settlements. In doing so, the prsentation principally aims to nuance dominant debates on migrant politics and citizenships. Scholars tend to circumscribe the political agency of migrants within broad categories of either contention or avoidance vis-à-vis the state (Nyers, 2015). The actually existing forms of migrant-state relations that I engage with in this article rupture this seemingly rigid dualism. Drawing insights from the infrastructural turn in urban studies, I build on Lemanski’s (2020a, 2020b) “infrastructural citizenship” to capture forms of migrant politics and citizenships taking place in the elsewheres of theory production and around the contested materiality of the city. I argue that struggles over infrastructures in informal settlements inaugurate political spaces for migrants and are key to establishing vital migrant-state relations. They facilitate alternative and ongoing forms of recognition crucial to migrants inhabiting in the peripheries and spaces of urban informality; quite literally, infrastructures become objects that mediate these relationships and materialize migrants’ right to dwell, regardless of citizenship status. While such interactions are not free from conflict, they do not fit neatly within the contention/avoidance dualism. In making this argument, I also bring attention to a potential pitfall in migration studies which tends to produce an abstraction of the state as a monolithic and antagonistic entity, operating from above, and principally representing border and migration regimes in the lives of migrants. A monolithic and antagonistic state tends to elicit contentious responses from migrant populations or, on the other hand, life-preserving attempts at remaining imperceptible. Instead, a focus on struggles around infrastructures help reveal the everyday state and its multiple manifestations in the ordinary, as well as the diverse migrant-state politics that emerge in these contexts. A motley configuration of agents representing multiple institutions of the state provide apertures for migrants to entangle themselves into daily decision-making processes and to craft democratic moments through the ongoing production of urban space. The work is empirically grounded in the experiences of Nicaraguan migrants living in La Carpio, an informal settlement in San José, Costa Rica, and the largest migrant informal settlement in Central America. / References: Abel GJ and Sander N (2014) Quantifying Global International Migration Flows. Science 343(6178): 1520–1522. DOI: 10.1126/science.1248676. Lemanski C (2020a) Infrastructural citizenship: (de)constructing state–society relations. International Development Planning Review 42(2): 115–125. DOI: 10.3828/idpr.2019.39. Lemanski C (2020b) Infrastructural citizenship: The everyday citizenships of adapting and/or destroying public infrastructure in Cape Town, South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45(3): 589–605. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12370. MCAuliffe M and Triandafyllidou A (eds) (2021) Word Migration Report 2022. Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM). Nyers P (2015) Migrant Citizenships and Autonomous Mobilities. Migration, Mobility, & Displacement 1(1). DOI: 10.18357/mmd11201513521. Nyers P and Rygiel K (2012) Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

This case starts from the argument that the many urban crises in the form of the dominance of technocrats in political affairs, the increasing numbers of refugees in Europe and the extension of the so called ‘refugee crisis’ raises urgent political and ethical questions. Based on a research study on racial injustices we seek to develop an extended phenomenological reconceptualization of the political through the concept of everyday politics and politics of hospitality. Phenomenology of critical geography is here not only a philosophical/theoretical practice, but even more importantly, it is at the same time a political practice of restructuring the world in order to generate new and liberatory possibilities for meaningful experiences and existence. Taking phenomenology of critical geography as a starting point, everyday politics transcends the institutional level and implements a much broader understanding of the ‘political’. Everyday politics is what we experience and live through and our shared capacity to act. It is about forms of perceiving the world and relating to it – how we make sense of the world. Everyday politics is centered in the lived world, drawing attention to the way we experience it from within. That includes the experiences of those who are living in and suffering from situations of oppression. The case is based on an examination everyday politics through three issues: action, empowerment, and spaces of political freedom. While dynamics such as dehumanization; for example, growing neo-nationalism and fear of Others, Islamophobia, and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe emerge as crisis that close possibilities for justice the emergence of a new politics of hospitalities create hope for the way in which the world can be re-created through political action. It is concluded with a quest of a ’new humanism’. It involves a political thinking that emphasizes co-existence and is characterized by a renewed critique of the current directions in politics, as well as different forms of everyday resistance, experiments, and disruptions. Keywords: Everyday politics, hospitality, humanism, solidarity.

Abstract: Berlin is often proclaimed to be the queerest city in Europe, some might even say in the world, but it also often remains white and homonormative. This paper started from the question of what makes people who self-identify as queer, as a migrant and FLINTA* (an German acronym that includes women, lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans, and agender people) feel represented in the city and what this feeling of representation does for them. I asked all participants what had brought them to the city and with few exceptions they answered, “If not Berlin, then where else?”. This counter question implies a lack of alternatives and a sense of urgency. Questions of belonging, questions of urban citizenship and questions of boundaries within the queer community in Berlin where much more pressing to participants and that is where we took this project. Using empirical data from creative methodologies (experience mapping, photovoice and Zine making) with participants this project questions what it takes to feel represented in a city, how people would like to be represented and what role certain spaces and institutions play in this process. It highlights the role of symbolism, of informal support from different queer communities and how central a sense belonging is within each of these steps. Looking at the mutual shaping of the city and queer migrants simultaneously this paper explores this process from an intersectional lens centering the affective notion of feeling represented. This contribution questions how and why many participants describe this feeling of being represented in the city, which memberships make them feel like they belong, their relationships to their “home” communities in their countries of origin but also different diasporas in Berlin and how they navigate their urban citizenship or rather their multiple constantly shifting citizenships in Berlin. The reason for many where there is no alternative place to Berlin are these informal and formalized queer support structures that provide support to people arriving at any step of the way and allow people to feel like they belong because there are so many queer communities. In groups of 3-5 people participants created 6 Zines about their relationship to the city and what it means for them to be represented. After introducing the theoretical and empirical process that this participatory project went through, I will use the Zines that the participants created, printed, and disseminated to demonstrate how this notion of urban citizenships and social borders is negotiated and navigated by different groups of participants. Telling stories of queer resilience, different queer diasporas, the entanglement of belonging and home as well as the difference of experience of non-binary, trans, lesbian and bisexual participants who reflected on classism and racism not only in their interviews and focus groups, but also when engaging in the creative process of figuring out which stories they want to tell in the Zine. The project aims to weave together multiple theoretical and methodological strands to find a more meaningful and situated way to discuss urban representation by treating it as something with real affective consequences. By shifting the focus to lived experience of queer migrants that include conversations of belonging and identity beyond categories that dominate the discourse providing a new intersectional perspective on representation in an urban space of those with experiences of migration, discrimination, and racism providing visualizations of post-migration Germany. Key words: intersectionality, queer diasporas, sexual citizenship, affect theory.

Abstract: Proud of its diversity and progressive politics, the City of Toronto adopted a sanctuary policy in 2013 by which all city residents, regardless of status, can access municipal services under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. Despite this municipal commitment and non-status citizens’ precarious presence in the city, non-status citizens are still subjected to everyday socio-legal violence invested in historical and current state/planning practices of dispossession and racial capitalism. Our research examines how non-status citizenship is negotiated in municipal governance and planning politics in Toronto – in the moment of (and post) COVID-19 pandemic and anti-racism mobilizations. We argue that municipal governments and urban planners have yet to fully address the “local turn” of migration politics at a time when they are increasingly confronted with anti-austerity, anti-racism, and anti-colonial movements. Our inquiry thus examines the limits and possibilities of creating an urban fabric where different sectors and service providers within and beyond the state may resist “irregularity” to “circumvent non-juridical status” and where illegalized migrants are increasingly included and afforded housing, labor, and mobility justice (beyond limited sanctuary policy). Using content analysis of official documents and undocumented testimonies, our research seeks to activate new openings to disrupt exclusionary discontinuities in access to substantive citizenship, services and infrastructure. Considering the paradoxical ethos of exclusion of citizenship, we suggest that despite Toronto’s progressive local sanctuary and inclusivity policy, non-status citizens experience a constant socio-legal precariousness that defies the notion and promises of an inclusive city. Preliminary findings exposing paradoxes linked to access, jurisdiction and regularization are offered as a theoretical opening to challenges of inclusivity and solidarity. We frame our discussion in terms of paradoxes to highlight both discomfort but also the potential of transformation of what might be perceived as contradictions according to most social expectations. Although denied in the legal sense, non-status citizenship is achieved by presence, actions, and social rights claims. Keywords: Non-status, citizenship, migration politics, Toronto.

Keywords: labour; migration; citizenship; India; urban. Abstract: Despite India’s constitutional right for citizens to settle and work anywhere within its national borders, Indian labour migrants have persistently faced “unequal citizenship” (Abbas, 2016; Jalal 2009) in the cities they live, work and build. Despite the sheer scale of their labour behind the construction and maintenance of India’s world-famous ‘megacities’ and increasing number of urban centres overall, labour migrants remain invisible in terms of accurate data, protection of rights and guarantee of entitlements. Labourers who migrate within India overall face a “more restrictive citizenship regime” then their sedentary counterparts (Abbas, 2016: 151). Labour migrants in cities are precarious in multiple and intersecting ways: typically earning minimal wages; reliant upon informal and exploitative labour relations; and lacking access to adequate housing, welfare rights and urban services. Such conditions are shaped by historically and socially embedded factors including caste, gender, regional background and class and perpetuated by the rapid pace of neoliberal urban development across India. It was not until the recent ‘crisis’ of India’s hastily implemented national lockdown in initial response to Covid-19, that the sheer scale of precarious migrants forced to leave cities overnight without economic, legal or social protections was exposed to global public attention (Deshingkar et al., 2022). This paper focuses on how urban citizenship among migrants in India have been made and unmade through processes of bureaucratisation. Bureaucratisation is a key technology of postcolonial governance of citizenship and mobilities (both internationally and within national borders) (Sadiq & Tsourapas, 2021). Bureaucratic systems in India sort and differentiate access among citizens belonging to the same national – and ostensibly – democratic regime that create and perpetuate spatial and social inequalities. Through systems of paper-based documents and contemporary digitised processes, state entitlements such as healthcare, access to credit, food subsidies, housing, education and even guaranteed labour are structurally biased toward sedentary populations and increasingly along explicitly sectarian lines. The advent of digitalisation and e-governance in India in the 2010s has done little to improve welfare access and service provision for traditionally excluded citizens (Khera, 2017; Rao & Greenleaf, 2013; Nair, 2018). Labour migrants – representing approximately 453.6 million citizens in India (India Census, 2011) – remain excluded from welfare programmes reinforcing and reconfiguring their intersectional precarities in the digital age. In order to conceptualise urban citizenship among labour migrants moving internally in the context of India, the paper presents two key empirical strands. These strands draw from original fieldwork based on ethnographic and survey methods among labour migrants and their local counterparts working in low-income and ‘low-skilled’ sectors of construction and domestic work conducted in India’s fastest growing cities. The first strand presents the ways in which local-level bureaucratisation in both its analogue (paper documents to verify identity) and nascent digital forms (biometric and surveillant tools) construct material, social and symbolic barriers for migrants, in comparison to ‘local’ citizens. Second the paper presents the ways in which labour migrants navigate, rework and resist such bureaucratic barriers to citizenship through distinctly spatial strategies. In doing so the paper makes a key contribution to expanding understandings of 1) multi-scalar migration and citizenship beyond the limits of methodological nationalism; 2) the role of bureaucratisation in postcolonial citizenship regimes in challenging urban citizenship for migrants and 3) of the importance of studying the impacts of such structures on the everyday life and scale for migrants in cities. References: Abbas, R. (2016) ‘Internal migration and citizenship in India’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42:1:150-168.Deshingkar, P., Naik, M. and Ahmed, N. (2022) ‘Covid-19 and India’s ongoing migration fiasco: some lessons for policy and research’ Economic & Political Weekly (57) 16 Jayal, N. G. (2009) ‘The challenge of human development: Inclusion or democratic citizenship?’ Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 10(3): 359-374. Khera, R. (2017) ‘Impact of Aadhaar on welfare programmes’ Economic and Political Weekly 3 (1): 91-117. Nair, V. (2018) ‘An Eye for an I: Recording biometrics and reconsidering identity in postcolonial India.’ Contemporary South Asia 26 (2): 143–56 Rao, U. and Greenleaf, G. (2013) ‘Subverting ID from above and below: The uncertain shaping of India's new instrument of e-governance’ Surveillance and Society 11(3): 287-300. Sadiq, K., & Tsourapas, G. (2021). The postcolonial migration state. European Journal of International Relations, 27(3).

Keywords: urban border space; European border regime; migration; differential inclusion; multiscalarity / Abstract: Among the more recent dynamics in the European border regime is the shifting of the border into the territory of the state, and thus into the city and urban space. Hence, migrants no longer encounter the border exclusively at the gates of the state territory, and thus at the moment of their entry. Their encounter with the border occurs long before, and increasingly very long after they crossed the physical border line as it is drawn on a map. These transformations highlight an understanding of the border as mechanism of differentiation and control, and when it comes to migration, to control not only the mobility of people but also mobile people. The border and the practices of bordering thus need be recognized as crucial mechanisms of ordering and othering that demarcate the social order of belonging. This notion entails that the border articulates social differences mapped onto space. Current shifts include the increased policing of city streets and urban spaces; the involvement of diverse local state and non-state actors into the operations of territorial stay, entry and removal; the practices of administrative and welfare bordering by urban actors, that implement, enact and create migrants’ legal status, rights, and entitlements, further shaped by intersecting categorisations of socio-symbolic bordering operating on divisions of racialization and ethnicization, class, gender, sexuality, or health, and undergird by diverging logics of belonging, control and deservingness. Thus, a plethora of urban actors has become involved in the making and unmaking of the border. This has placed to border in the everyday life of migrants but also of non-migrant ‘others’. The newer vocabulary in border studies has already suggested a view beyond the line, into borderlands, borderities, and borderscapes that conceptualize the border as a space of representation and enactment of distinctions, control and power, as much as of negotiation, contestation and resistance, allowing for alternative border practices and imaginaries to emerge. However, the role of the city and urban space has hardly received attention in this debate while those who re/border and those who deborder are largely considered distinct actors. In turn, scholars researching urban migration, its governance or resistance tend to share a certain local optimism toward inclusion and accommodation to diversity, as well as a rather bounded ontology of urban space. Yet, the small literature on urban borderlands points to socio-spatial exclusions as well. Building on these literatures, and moving beyond, in this paper I elaborate on three arguments. First, classically, border scholars have put great emphasis on the control function of the border, meant to filter and select, and thus to represent territorial selection and exclusion. Yet, the border not only selects the welcomed from the unwelcomed at the entry gates. It also creates and enacts ‘internal exclusion’ of migrants inside the state and within the space of city, and thereby contributes to ‘differential inclusion’, that is to partial, subordinate, graduated and fragmented positions. As a consequence, urban citizenship and control are intertwined. Second, and related to this, the making and unmaking of the border are interconnected, not only as parallel and potentially simultaneous processes, but also because including some may exclude other persons, at specific moments, or from certain realms. Lastly, while operating from the city space, internal border practices are tied to border externalization and include transnational operations, discourses, networks, and practices. This requires engaging with urban studies critique of taking the city merely as an ontologically given, bounded urban place, and suggests a relational and multiscalar approach to the city, and the border. Drawing on critical urban studies and geography, critical border studies, and the sociology and anthropology of migration the objective of this paper is to advance the theorization of the border by highlighting how the city and urban space connect to border making. To this end, rather than studying the border merely of or within the city, this paper proposes to study the border through the city, located within a multi/interscalar and relational framework. This is summarized by the notion of the city as urban border space. The paper uses empirical material and insights from my own research and from my team in the framework of the Urban Border Spaces-project as well as from current work of colleagues engaged in a recent conversation on internal border transformations in a variety of locations across the European border regime.