Geographies of migration I: Platform migration

Collins, Francis L.

doi:10.1177/0309132520973445

Cited by 28 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Here we can think of the catering services set up by Poya and his friends, the religious services offered by André in exchange for money or his role in facilitating mobility. These practices are still seen as platforms (Collins, 2020), and there might even be strong elements of solidarity in these commercial activities. At the same time, the commercialised aspect of infrastructuring practices moves away from the ‘common’, that is central in the mobile commons debate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our view, two elements deserve more attention in the context of this paper. First, there is the claim that resonance has a constitutive quality; that the constellation of things and people indeed become operations or platforms (Collins, 2020) larger than themselves. This dimension of resonance is further explored by studies affiliated with the affective turn in anthropology (e.g.…”

Section: Conceptualising Migrant Infrastructuring and Resonancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Resonance beyond regimes: Migrant’s alternative infrastructuring practices in Athens

Wajsberg

Schapendonk

2021

Urban Studies

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In migration studies, there is an increasing interest in understanding how migration processes are shaped by different forms of brokerage and mediation. We relate these debates to the everyday struggles of migrants in the city of Athens. In so doing, we propose a shift from the all-encompassing view on infrastructures, that is, as systematic entities of facilitation/control to the infrastructuring practices of migrants. This implies a focus on how migrants create dynamic social platforms, and how these platforms relate to formal infrastructures and industries. We analyse these infrastructuring practices through a conceptual lens of resonance that is sensitive to the constitutive (how things, people and processes are brought together) as well as travelling capacities of these practices (how the platforms shift to other places). With an ethnographic approach, we create in-depth insights into the ways in which migrants mediate im/mobility in the urban environment of Athens through infrastructuring practices. The paper concludes by reflecting on the promises and limitations of the infrastructuring practices as sites of solidarity. We thereby argue that there are many links to make within the mobile commons debate. At the same time, our findings highlight that the transformative potential of infrastructuring practices does not always go along with a clear claim on solidarity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptualising Migrant Infrastructuring and Resonancementioning

confidence: 99%

Resonance beyond regimes: Migrant’s alternative infrastructuring practices in Athens

Wajsberg

Schapendonk

2021

Urban Studies

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“…More recently, the concept of a migration industry has been recognised anew as a creative framework to theorise an ‘ensemble’-creating (Hernández-León, 2008, 2013) intertwinement of actors, practices, and infrastructures geared towards the provision of an increasingly diverse array of migration-related services. These intertwinements making up the ‘middle-space of migration’ result in ensembles of institutional as well as individual actors that are at once ‘articulated but uncoordinated’ (Collins, 2021: 867). While the number of studies using the term has risen considerably since 2010, scholars still work on fleshing out its conceptual clarity.…”

Section: The Migration Industries Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…initiation, take-off, and stagnation), also counts actors engaged in ‘the rescue and rehabilitation of exploited and vulnerable mobile populations’ (p. 25) in the migration industry. Irrespective of its precise composition, what remains crucial in current theorisations of migration industries is the focus on a generalised practice of brokerage as a ‘work undertaken … to mediate between individual migrants and a migration system or regime’ (Collins, 2021: 868). Crucially, the work that migration industries do actively moulds not only the tenor of cross-border mobility but also the character of cities and urban systems.…”

Section: The Migration Industries Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Making cities through migration industries: Introduction to the special issue

2022

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Migration industry has recently emerged as a lens through which to theorise the intertwinement of non-state actors who aim to provide diverse migration-pertaining services. However, while much of their work is done in and through cities, consequently (re)forming variegated urban landscapes, scholarly literature has thus far neglected the nexus between cities and the migration industry. In this special issue, we begin filling this gap by exploring the significance of migration industries – as a resurgent concept and an area of research from migration studies – for understanding the urban. We start by reviewing the urbanisation of migration studies, highlighting its key limits. We then move on to introduce the migration industries debate, pointing out its existing implicit urban dimensions. We proceed by elaborating our main argument about why and how migration industries provide an especially productive lens for urbanists to consider. Specifically, we stress the three key analytical vantage points that the attention to migration industries enables us to see as central to contemporary city-making. These are its political-economic embeddedness, the urban-constitutive nature of trans-local connectivities, and how business-driven city-making dovetails with more serendipitous, bottom-up shaping of the arrival city. Each of these points also describes how individual papers speak to them. We conclude by briefly outlining a research agenda for migration industries that is thoughtfully embroiled in the (post-)pandemic urban.

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“…Finally, while clearly commercial actors might have been given most focus in migration studies research until now, many not primarily commercial and even non-profit actors become enrolled within the broader economic landscape of migrant-providing services, often unintentionally (Juul, forthcoming, this issue). As Cranston et al (2018) argued recently (but see also Spener, 2009), focus on labour expended in the mediation of migration rather than the orientation to profit then provides a more productive avenue to understand the role of migration industries in the ‘middle-space of migration’ (Collins, 2021: 867). This article draws on their suggestion and focuses less on the commercial aspects and more on the kind of work that migration intermediaries actually do.…”

Section: Migration Industries and Integration-assisting Labour As Tra...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Translating the nation through the sustainable, liveable city: The role of social media intermediaries in immigrant integration in Copenhagen

Fogelman

Christensen

2022

Urban Studies

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This article explores settled Western migrants whose digital content provides recent, mostly Western migrants in Copenhagen with local know-how and city-related information. This new type of informal integration intermediary functions as an emerging digital component of wider urban integration industries that assist migrants with settlement and social integration. We draw on the sociological theory of translation as a social, productive practice that constructs new meanings through selective interpretations and conceptualise the work of these bloggers as translation. Relying on the analysis of their blog and Instagram posts, and on interviews, this article shows how their translations of the city, and through it Danishness, play a critical role in mediating narratives of ‘becoming local’. Despite the differences between the bloggers’ respective translations (including those afforded through blogs vs Instagram) and despite criticism of a lack of inclusion of the socio-cultural differences in Denmark, these intermediaries ultimately reinforce for newcomers the expectations of the ‘green-city citizen’ and integration into Danish culture and lifestyle. We argue that what makes their translations resonate is not only that social media itself allows them to perform their having become (almost) local, but also that they carefully use their personal reflections as migrants. At the same time, the fact that their personal experiences of the city have been shaped by their positionality as white migrants feeling very welcomed, and even passing for locals, in the city curtails these bloggers’ wider potential as informal intermediaries filling a gap within Copenhagen’s urban integration industries.

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Geographies of migration I: Platform migration

Cited by 28 publications

References 92 publications

Resonance beyond regimes: Migrant’s alternative infrastructuring practices in Athens

Resonance beyond regimes: Migrant’s alternative infrastructuring practices in Athens

Making cities through migration industries: Introduction to the special issue

Translating the nation through the sustainable, liveable city: The role of social media intermediaries in immigrant integration in Copenhagen

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