Contained and abandoned in the “humane” border: Black migrants’ immobility and survival in Moroccan urban space

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 887-904 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Migration Policy ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Black Migrants

This article examines the effects of Morocco’s new, “humane” migration policy that claimed to center human rights and integration over securitized border enforcement. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper demonstrates how the new migration policy expanded rather than dismantled the border regime, respatializing it from the edges of Moroccan territory into cities in the interior. Border respatialization was accomplished through abandonment, theorized not as an absence of government but a technique of governance that targets the racialized poor. Focusing on the experiences of migrants living in two urban spaces—an informal migrant settlement and a working-class neighborhood—this paper illustrates how abandonment limits black migrants’ ability to move and transgress the border, and how these effects have site-specific, as well as racial and gendered dimensions. This analysis underscores how humanitarian migration policy may have changed the modality of border violence, but not its substance.

Reframing Gentrification: How Tenant Shopkeepers’ Activism in Seoul Radically Reframed Gentrification

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 819-834
Author(s):  
Yewon Andrea Lee
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
New Agents ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
New Locations ◽  
The City ◽  
Radical Shift

Critical scholarship on gentrification has contributed significantly to bolstering the rights of working-class residents against the forces that price them out of the city. However, working-class residents are not the only ones who suffer from dispossession and displacement with rampant hyper-commodification of urban space. Based on the case of Seoul, I examine how new agents—tenant shopkeepers—emerged at the forefront of challenging gentrification and successfully reframed the problem of gentrification. Within the new frame, the shopkeepers who make their livelihoods by using urban spaces are pitted against the property owners who attempt to profit at the expense of their tenants. Through this case, I ask ‘How can radical shifts occur in the ways that the problem of gentrification is constructed?’ My answer draws upon the framing theory in the social movement literature which identifies conditions under which a radical departure from institutionalized ways and social norms can transpire even when the radical shift means challenging the entrenched power structure—in my case, the property-ownership-based rights regime. I highlight the importance of further developing a gentrification scholarship on social change that unravels the rise of new locations of resistance, particularly at a time when the advance of gentrification seems inevitable.

scholarly journals Hemispheric Conversations: Exploring Links between Past and Present, Industrial and Post-Industrial through Site-Specific Graffitti Practice at the Carrie Furnaces

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Caitlin Frances Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
University Of Pittsburgh ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Collaborative Art ◽  
Post Industrial

In this article, I briefly discuss a project I co-organized this year in collaboration with Oreen Cohen, Shane Pilster, Rivers of Steel, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, and the American Studies Association. Named “Hemispheric Conversations: Urban Art Project” we used international collaboration between artists in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and León Guanajuato Mexico as a platform for conversation about how to reimagine our shared urban spaces. In a political moment that might be a cause for despair, collaborative art practice in urban space can serve as one vehicle to reignite our shared sense of possibility and energy.

scholarly journals MENAS VIEŠOSIOSE MIESTO ERDVĖSE: KŪRĖJO, UŽSAKOVO IR PUBLIKOS VERTYBIŲ SANDRAUGOS KLAUSIMAS

2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elona Lubytė
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
New Left ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Art Object ◽  
World Outlook ◽  
Art Objects

Public urban spaces reflect the values of society (authors, customers and the public). During transition from the soviet state-planned economy towards market-driven relations, or, in other words, moving from the politically-determined way towards a democratic variety of creative expression, a system of centralized state contracts is being substituted by a more liberal way of contracting works of art in public spaces. As a consequence, nowadays a public urban space should turn into a platform for representation of various artistic programs that are based on different world outlook values. However, in so far, relations between the authors of various artistic programs, their contracting authorities, and the public are undergoing rather the stage of “cold war” than democratic tolerance (those who are not with us are against us). While examining the reasons of this phenomenon by research methodologies of social sciences (marketing, management), including PEST, SWOT, case analyses, the paper discusses links of the world outlook values of the author, customer and the public with expression of the contemporary sculpture in public urban spaces (starting with monumental representation and moving towards the site-specific art objects and socially engaged art). To this end, the focus is turned to the reasons of contradictions between values in various contemporary artistic programs and partnership patterns (post-soviet, liberal, new left-wing, learning from Las Vegas, political appropriation). Santrauka Viešosios miesto erdvės atspindi vertybines visuomenės (kūrėjo, užsakovo ir publikos) nuostatas. Pereinant iš sovietmečio planinės ekonomikos į rinkos santykius, nuo politiškai reglamentuotos link demokratinės kūrybinės raiškos įvairovės, centralizuotą valstybinių užsakymų sistemą keičia liberalesnė meno kūrinių viešosiose erdvėse užsakymo sistema. Todėl šiandien viešoji miesto erdvė turėtų tapti skirtingų pasaulėžiūrinių vertybinių meninių programų pateikimo platforma. Tačiau kol kas santykiams tarp skirtingų meninių programų kūrėjų, užsakovų ir publikos būdinga ne demokratinė tolerancija, o šaltojo karo (kas ne su mumis, tas prieš mus, t. y. mūsų priešas) pozicija. Ieškant šio reiškinio priežasčių, pasitelkus socialinių mokslų (vadybos, marketingo) tyrimų metodus (PEST, SSGG, stebėjimą ir atvejų analizę), pranešime aptariamos kūrėjo, užsakovo ir publikos pasaulėžiūrinių vertybių sąsajos su šiuolaikinės skulptūros viešosiose miesto erdvėse raiška (nuo monumentalios reprezentacijos link skirtų konkrečiai vietai meno objektų (site-specific art object) ir socialiai angažuotos (socially engaged) kūrybos). Tuo tikslu sutelkiamas dėmesys į skirtingų nūdienos meninių programų ir partnerystės modelių (jie yra tokie: posovietinis, liberalus, naujosios kairės, mokymosi iš Las Vegaso, politinės apropriacijos) vertybių prieštarų priežastis.

The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Cinthia Torres Toledo ◽  
Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
School Engagement ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Brazilian Literature ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Educational Trajectories ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban State

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

scholarly journals Impact of Different Types of Physical Activity in Green Urban Space on Adult Health and Behaviors: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-275
Author(s):  
Alessia Grigoletto ◽  
Mario Mauro ◽  
Pasqualino Maietta Latessa ◽  
Vincenzo Iannuzzi ◽  
Davide Gori ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Adult Health ◽  
Time Restrictions ◽  
Walking Activity

This systematic review aimed to investigate the type of physical activity carried out in green urban spaces by the adult population and to value its impact on the population’s health. Additionally, another purpose was to examine if the presence of outdoor gyms in green urban spaces can promote participation in physical activity among adults. Searches of electronic databases, with no time restrictions and up to June 2020, resulted in 10 studies meeting the inclusion criteria. A quantitative assessment is reported as effect size. Many people practiced walking activity as a workout, which showed improvements in health. Walking is the most popular type of training due to its easy accessibility and it not requiring equipment or special skills. Outdoor fitness equipment has been installed in an increasing number of parks and has become very popular worldwide. Further, outdoor fitness equipment provides free access to fitness training and seems to promote physical activity in healthy adults. However, other studies about outdoor fitness equipment efficiency are needed. People living near to equipped areas are more likely to perform outdoor fitness than those who live further away. The most common training programs performed in green urban spaces included exercises with free and easy access, able to promote physical health and perception.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

Collaging atmosphere: Exploring the architectural touch of the eye

2021 ◽  
pp. 239980832098655
Author(s):  
Anette Stenslund
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Computer Generated Imagery ◽  
Aesthetic Characteristics

In recent decades, research has paid attention to the atmospheric ways computer-generated imagery (CGI) marks the experience of future urban design. What has been addressed in the generic abbreviation CGI has, however, exclusively concerned visualisations that communicate with stakeholders beyond designers and architects. Based on fieldwork within an urban design lab, the paper differentiates among the range of CGI used by urban designers. Focusing on collage, which forms one kind of CGI that has received scant attention in scholarly literature, I demonstrate its key function as an epistemological in-house work-in-progress tool that helps designers to refine their vision and to identify the atmosphere of future urban spaces. Based on New Aesthetics, collaging atmosphere is characterised by a physiognomic approach to urban space that selectively addresses aesthetic characteristics. Hence, the paper tackles a discussion that points towards cautious handling of the communicative scope of collages that can be well complemented by other types of CGI before entering a constructive dialogue with clients.

Decolonization and Coloniality in Human Development: Neoliberalism, Globalization and Narratives of Indian Youth

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4-6) ◽  
pp. 207-221
Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Global South ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
American Psychology ◽  
Urban Indian

In this article, I argue that globalization is interwoven with colonialism and coloniality and both psychology and human development are shaped by the enduring legacy of Eurocentric colonial knowledge. In particular, I draw on my ethnographic research in Pune, India, to show how the transnational elite, middle- and working-class urban Indian youth are engaging with new practices of globalization. I examine how particular class practices shape youth narratives about globalization and “Indianness” generally, as well as specific stories about their self, identity, and family. This article is organized around three questions: (a) How has Euro-American psychology as a dominant force supported colonization and racialized models of human development? (b) What kind of stories do urban Indian youth from varied classes tell about their identity formation in contexts of neoliberal globalization? (c) How can we create and promote models of human development and psychology that are inclusive of the lives of people who live in the Global South?

THE FREEDOM OF THE AESTHETIC: MONTSERRAT ROIG’S USE OF THE CITY IN RAMONA, ADÉU

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Caragh Wells
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Social ◽  
Catalan Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The City

This article suggests that over recent decades Catalan literary criticism has paid too little attention to the aesthetic attributes of Catalan literature and emphasised the social, political and cultural at the expense of discussions of narrative poetics. Through an analysis of Montserrat Roig’s metaphorical use of the city in her first novel Ramona, adéu, I put forward the view that the aesthetic features of Catalan literature need to be re-claimed. This article provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic importance of Roig’s representation of the city in her first novel and argues that she uses Barcelona as a critical tool through which to explore questions of both female emancipation and aesthetic freedom. Following a detailed discussion of Roig’s descriptions of how her female characters interact with particular urban spaces, I examine how Roig makes subtle shifts in her semantic register during these narrative accounts when her prose moves into the realm of the poetic. I conclude that this technique enables us to read her accounts of urban space as metaphors for aesthetic freedom and are inextricably linked to her wider concerns on the importance of liberating Catalan literature from the discourse of political nationalism.

In a “Half-dark, Half-light Zone”: Mobility, Precarity, and Moral Ambiguity in Vietnam's Urban Waste Economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minh T.N. Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Network ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Urban Waste ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
State Agents

AbstractThis article discusses the everyday practices of a mobile network of migrant waste traders originating from northern Vietnam, locating them in an expanding urban waste economy spanning across major urban centres. Based on ethnographic research, I explore how the expansion of the network is foregrounded by the traders’ dealing with the precarious nature of waste trading, which is rooted in the social ambiguity of waste and migrants working with waste in the urban order. Characterised by waste traders as a “half-dark, half-light zone”, the waste economy is unevenly regulated, made up of highly personalised ties, and relatively hidden from the public. It is therefore rife with opportunities for accumulating wealth, but also full of dangers for the waste traders, whose occupation of marginal urban spaces makes them easy targets of both rent-seeking state agents and rogue actors. While demonstrating resilience, their practices suggest tactics of engaging with power that involve a great deal of moral ambiguity, which I argue is central to the increasing precaritisation of labour and the economy in Vietnam today.

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