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Migrants' Agency and the Making of Transient Urban Spaces

2014; Wiley; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/psp.1891

1544-8452

Tabea Bork‐Hüffer,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

Metropolitan spaces, especially in Asia's megacities, are in constant flux and highly fragmented, affected by the increasing complexity of social and power relations, the politics and ideology of urbanisation and conflicts over space and resources that involve a multiplicity of agents. This collection of articles sheds light on one specific nexus of the urban process: the relationship between migrant populations and the production and transformation of urban spaces in the mega-urban region of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in southeastern China and Dhaka, Bangladesh. The collection brings together authors who seek to overcome traditional binary structure-agency perspectives in migration research (cf. King, 2012) when examining the ways in which migrants contribute to producing urban spaces. Space is conceptualised in all contributions as transient urban space, capturing and accentuating both its translocal nature and continuous transformation, that is, being in the process of ‘becoming’ or ‘in the making’ (cf. Simone, 2010; Massey, 2012). Although translocal relations and movements are also characteristics of earlier forms of migration, it is the dynamics and speed of mobilities (Sheller and Urry, 2006; Yeoh, 2006; Urry, 2007) in the age of globalisation and the consequential fugaciousness that make transient urban spaces distinct. At the same time, transient urban spaces derive their specificity out of situated and grounded relations in certain localities that become ‘nodes where flows that transcend spatial scales converge’ (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013: 377, cf. also Brickell and Datta, 2011). The study of transient urban spaces requires an analysis that extends beyond the analysis of traditional concepts such as migrant enclaves and communities that build upon an understanding of a shared culture, history and feeling of solidarity. Transient spaces are produced by people with similar and different origins, with potentially overlapping or widely different social networks, with migration paths that span across different spatial scales and extents, who hold similar or different roles in the economy, and who have compatible or conflicting interests. As such, they are open, not closed. They may be better described as a heterogeneous criss-cross of diverse and distinct relational and material spaces in the city. While focusing on the effects that migration and translocality have on the creation of transient urban spaces, the authors in this special issue debate the role of mobile subjects behind different forms of mobilities and processes of ‘urban assemblage’ (McCann and Ward, 2011). Many migrants live, move, interact and communicate across contiguous or distant physical spaces; as a result, they shape distinct social spaces and contribute to social change (cf. Portes, 2010) in different spaces of origin, spaces in-between and/or destination spaces. The articles intend to challenge the marginalisation paradigm that characterises a substantial part of migration research through investigating forms of collective and individual agency. Concurrently, they pay tribute to the impact of unequal ‘power-geometries’ and ‘politics of space’ (Massey, 2012) on migrants' livelihoods and their economic and social opportunities, intending to convey a balanced portrayal of migrants' position in the socio-spatial dialectic of the cities they move to or through. The spatial dynamics and constraints of the city become part of the context and directly affect their strategies to survive and prosper in the city. (Mega)cities in South and East Asia such as Dhaka or the cities of the PRD experience an incessant and tremendous in-, out- and circulatory flow of people who bring along luggage of perspectives, aspirations, idiosyncrasies, creativities and capacities along with their values and norms. Intermingled with the local context, migrants' practices fuel the emergence of new structures in the social, cultural, economic and political assemblages of these cities (cf. also Wong, 2011) and as one factor contribute to the distinctiveness and specificity of Asian urbanism (cf. Roy and Ong, 2011; Bunnell et al., 2012). The megacity Dhaka and the mega-urban region PRD exemplify two very different cases of Asian urbanism. Both experienced increasing urbanisation and significant internal and international migration during the last decades, but they exhibit fundamental differences in the rationality of their governments, migration regimes and resulting contestations over urban spaces between migrants, the state and other urban dwellers. China has a history of highly authoritarian control of all types of migration, whereas Bangladesh is characterised by a weaker state and more niches for participation and bottom-up activities. Migrants from rural areas in both countries have been one of the main engines of urban growth and important pillars of economic development. The majority of these migrants have come to the cities to work in low-income sectors of the export-oriented manufacturing sector, although large numbers of them also occupy the economic niches reserved to petty trading or work in the service sector. International migrant numbers are also growing in both countries, although comparatively more quickly in China to date, reflecting the new economic opportunities in the two regions. This issue is based on the authors' involvement in the Priority Program 1233 ‘Megacities – Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change’ (2006–2013) funded by the German Research Foundation. It brings together program members trained in anthropology, geography, sinology, sociology, political science and urban planning from a variety of countries of origin and institutional backgrounds (cf. Castles, 2007 for the importance of transnational and interdisciplinary research on migration that transcends established scientific paradigms and national modes of research organisation), who have specifically studied the nexus of migration, urbanisation and governance. The fundament for this collection of papers was formed during the Program's Annual Symposium in May 2012 and was enriched in a number of follow-up workshops and meetings between 2012 and 2013. The outcome of the intensive discussions that were part of these repeated gatherings is the theoretical introduction to this issue (Bork-Hüffer, Etzold et al.), to which at least one author from each individual case study article contributed. It discusses existing perspectives on the influence of migrants' agency in the process of urbanisation and the creation of urban spaces, puts forth an alternative approach to characterising the linkages of agency and space in the socio-spatial dialectic and outlines the idea of transient urban spaces. Following Smith and King's (2012) and King and Skeldon's (2010) appeal to transcend the separation of the migration scholarship into those studying international from those looking at internal movements, the article applies the concept migrants in the city and discusses both forms of migration, and their similarities and interactions in the face of increasing interlacing and complexity of migration paths and biographies (cf. Skeldon, 2006). Several of the five case study articles that follow the introduction take a theoretical stance, heeding the call for more theoretical work on migration (Smith and King, 2012). Endeavours by migration scholars to overcome the traditional dualism of structure and agency have increased – especially over the past two decades (cf. Bakewell, 2010). Turning away from functionalist and structuralist structure-agency understandings, many scholars have come to use Giddens' (2000) structuration theory laid out in The Constitution of Society. Expanding upon the prevalent use of a structuration approach, essays in this compilation adopt a variety of theoretical positions, among others, through the application and examination of the potential of critical realist, relational and space-theoretical approaches, to analyse migrants' practices. At the same time, the diverse interactions between migrants' agency and urban spaces in the quickly changing PRD and Dhaka regions are analysed through in-depth, grounded, empirical fieldwork-based case studies of organisations, strategies and tactics, which discuss the stake that migrants as well as migrant organisations and networks have in the production of urban space. Although migrants are often conceptualised as either the underclass, the subaltern of urban development, or upper-end, highly skilled or even elite migrants and beneficiaries of the international neo-liberal division of labour, mobile subjects, in fact, occupy a wide range of layers of the urban social hierarchy (Smith, 2005; Yeoh, 2005). The diversity and differentiation of migrants in the city is reflected in the contributions through an analysis of migrants' positions in, relationships to, experiences of and ability to mould urban spaces. One factor that triggers contestations over urban spaces is related to migrants' endeavours and strategies for moving up the social ladder and negotiations over their position in the highly stratified assemblage of the city. This is exemplified in Kimiko Suda's article on highly educated migrants from Chinese rural areas with aspirations to permanently occupy the urban space through the acquisition of urban registration (hukou) – the so-called ants (yizu). Suda analyses migrants' strive to move up in the urban social hierarchy and create a permanent urban home against the background of the Chinese migration regime and guanxi-networks of urban elites. Despite the impressive body of international publications on low-skilled rural-to-urban migration, the livelihoods of this highly educated group, which similarly occupies an outsider position in Chinese urban society, have scarcely been explored to date. This paper adds new insight through its focus on the negotiation of upward social mobility in complex transient social spaces. The subsequent two articles give particular attention to the relationship between the migrants and the state, mirroring the importance of migrants' apparently simple or tactical interactions with physical and relational space and the context, opportunities and limits provided by either a strict or lenient regulation of urban space. Using street peddlers and mobile service providers as examples, Ryanne Flock and Werner Breitung discuss the important role of public space for migrant members of this marginalised group in Guangzhou. On the basis of participant and non-participant observations combined with an analysis of policy and other documents, they focus on negotiations surrounding the use of space between the public order regime and the street level tactics of migrant vendors. The article aims to understand the degree of openness as a measure of the quality of public space in urban China. The authors demonstrate how the production of public space as social space is the result of the interaction of various actors on the meso- and micro-level and the mobilisation of their different forms of agency. Benjamin Etzold addresses migrant street vendors' endeavours to sustain a livelihood in the megacity of Dhaka. He highlights the influence of translocal relations, migrants' relations to the state, local contestations over the ‘appropriate use’ of public space and the resulting effects on the transformation of urban spaces. His qualitative and quantitative research in Dhaka illustrates the imprint that street vendors leave on the urban fabric by altering the everyday flows of people and serving the demand of millions of other migrants. This article demonstrates that migrant street vendors serve crucial social and economic functions in the city, while their translocal social capital and home-bound identities are important resources for procuring their own economic position in the city. The final two articles turn to the influence of migrant groups, organisations and institutions in creating, reproducing and scrambling for urban spaces and thus debate the enabling or constraining effect of collective agency in this process. Bettina Gransow and Zhu Jiangang examine the emergence and contested position of migrant worker non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the PRD cities. Concerned with the rights of labour migrants, the NGOs pose a challenge to a variety of urban institutions such as enterprises, hospitals and trade unions. To better understand the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of migrants in the city and their organisations, the article takes up Martina Löw's (2008) space-theoretical concept, in particular her concepts of spacing and synthesising. The authors discuss the NGOs' struggle to support the enactment of labour rights and abridge migrants' isolation, marginalisation and exclusion from urban space at the same time. Tabea Bork-Hüffer, Birte Rafflenbeul, Frauke Kraas, Li Zhigang and Xue Desheng investigate the effect of social embeddedness and translocal relations on African merchants' livelihoods and positions in the cities of Guangzhou and Foshan. The contribution highlights, first, the scope and extent of the traders' past transnational activities, revealing the fluidity of migration paths, importance of previous intermediate migration destinations and relevancy of relations established in these spaces ‘in-between’ for the traders' livelihoods in their new migration destinations. Second, the article seeks to conceptualise how new migrant networks, groups and organisations emerge in the trader's current main base in China. It discusses their variegated successes and failures in supporting individual migrant members in the face of a legal and socio-political environment that has become increasingly hostile towards the inmigration, stay and economic activities of Africans in the last decade. The authors analyse the context of structure-agency interaction and explore how this creates and feeds back into the development of (new) transient urban spaces on the basis of a further development of Archer's (1995) morphogenetic approach. All articles in this special issue were written as part of the German Research Foundation's Priority Program 1233 ‘Megacities – Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change’. I also thank the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, for funding my fellowship during which this editorial was written.