Overcoming the spaces of
exception: urban refugees in
Amsterdam
MA Thesis in European Studies
Graduate School for Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Will Haynes
11312718
Main supervisor: Dr L. Bialasiewicz
Second supervisor: Dr M. Brolsma
July 2017
Abstract
Building on existing social science research into refugeehood and urban encounters, this thesis examines the role of three innovative initiatives operating in Amsterdam that arguably challenge traditional notions of the experience of urban refugees. Using Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘spaces of exception’, research has traditionally presented refugees as ‘bare life’: passive victims who inhabit spaces of betweenness. By presenting and comparing three different refugee-initiatives, this thesis attempts to offer a rebuttal to Agamben’s notion of exceptionality. Instead, it attempts to present urban encounters between refugees and non-refugees as a means to access civic life in the Dutch capital. Research will also consider how notions of ‘hospitality’ and ‘humanitarianism’ are articulated within the initiatives, and respectively aid or inhibit integration into everyday urban life. Using qualitative methodologies, this study utilises ethnographic data collected from fieldwork undertaken at the Amsterdam-based initiatives, collected over a period of several months. This ethnographic data is presented in combination with interviews, that were conducted during the research process. Conclusions are drawn that, via a number of techniques and processes that are performed within the initiatives, notions of the refugee as ‘exceptional’ are significantly undermined. Moreover, spaces of encounter might provide an equalising environment where ‘urban citizenship’ can be established. Additionally, by mitigating humanitarian language and practice, refugees are realised as contributing members of society, based on their skills, talents, and personhood. Despite this, the initiatives find it ultimately impossible to move beyond paradoxical notions of hospitality, where an unconditional welcome is inevitably subjected to logics of acceptability and control. Welcome or not, a guest must always conform to the rules of its host.
Table of contents
Table of figures……….………5
Chapter 1. Introduction……….6
Chapter 2. The refugee as the exception………..9
2.1. Agamben, state of exception & bare life………....9
2.2. The refugee as Other………..13
2.3. Derrida, hospitality & welcoming………..………..16
2.4. Humanitarianism………...18
2.5. Summary………..………..21
Chapter 3. The city, the encounter, and the informal………....………23
3.1. Urban space & everyday life………..………...24
3.2. Strategies & tactics……….………....24
3.3. Encounter & the city………..……….……...25
3.4. Urban informality………...………...28
3.5. Cities as marginal spaces………...31
3.6 Summary………..………...32
Chapter 4. The city as refuge………....34
4.1. Cities as refuge………....34
4.2. Initiatives for refugees in urban space………..37
4.3. Spaces of care………..37
4.4. Amsterdam as a city of refuge………...39
Chapter 5. Methodology………..…45
5.1. Ethnography………...45
5.2. Interviews………49
5.3. Coding analysis………..50
5.4. Research ethics and positionality………..51
5.5. Summary……….52
Chapter 6. Ondertussen………...………53
6.1. What is Ondertussen?...53
6.2. Interspaces………..54
6.3. Interspace as tactical space………57
6.5. Overcoming humanitarianism at Ondertussen………....62
6.6. Articulating hospitality at Ondertussen………67
6.7. Summary……….68
Chapter 7. Startblok Riekerhaven………72
7.1. What is Startblok?...73
7.2. Living at Startblok………..75
7.3. Deconstructing exceptionality at Startblok………..76
7.4. Overcoming humanitarianism at Startblok……….…….84
7.5. Articulating hospitality at Startblok……….……….85
7.6. Summary……….…………89
Chapter 8. Conversation Group………...91
8.1. What is the Conversation Group?...91
8.2. Deconstructing exceptionality at the Conversation Group?...91
8.3. Overcoming humanitarianism at the Conversation Group?...97
8.4. Articulating hospitality at the Conversation Group?...98
8.5. Summary………....99
Chapter 9. Conclusions………..102
9.1. Overcoming the exception………...102
9.2. Understanding humanitarianism………....104 9.3. Hospitality as an aporia………...105 9.4. Final remarks………....106 References……….…109 Appendix A………..………118 List of interviews………..…118
Table of figures*
4.1. Coat of arms of Amsterdam (web image)………40
5.1. Map of chosen sites in Amsterdam (map) ………...…………46
6.1. Entrance to the Kweekschool………54
6.2. Kitchen at the Kweekschool………..56
6.3. Fronnie & Bengin in their studio………..58
6.4. Identity recognition of refugees (graph)………59
6.5. Kibret's video studio………...60
6.6. Julia in her studio………...61
6.7. Julia's portraits of Ondertussen members……….…62
6.8. A work room in the Kweekschool………66
6.9. Memorial plaque outside the Kweekschool……….67
6.10. Work room in the Kweekschool……….70
7.1. Sign at first entrance to Startblok………..72
7.2. Second entrance to Startblok……….74
7.3. Map of the site………75
7.4. A Startblokker on his balcony………...76
7.5. Basketball field at Startblok ………..77
7.6. Startblok apartment doorway………78
7.7. Startblok buildings………..82
7.8. Startblok buildings II………..84
7.9. Sign in multiple languages at Startblok………86
7.10. Different signs at Startblok………..88
8.1. PC Hoofthuis, University of Amsterdam……….92
8.2. Conversation Group classroom……….……97
Chapter 1
Introduction
In recent years, social scientists have begun to interrogate the potential of cities as spaces of opportunity and hope for marginalised populations. Simultaneously, as an area of academic inquiry, refugee studies are expanding. This thesis looks to further the research agenda, focusing on the city of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, and the role of a growing number of local initiatives that bring Dutch citizens and refugees together in spaces of encounter. These include initiatives for informal work, educational programmes and cultural exchanges.
This thesis is set to the backdrop of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, where a rise in refugee numbers has been witnessed throughout Europe’s cities since 2015. Globally, all forms of migration are expanding: in numbers, coverage, politics and as an area of academic inquiry.1 Refugees are no exception. According to the United Nations
Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 59.5 million people were forcibly displaced in 2014 alone (with more than half of these came from Syria, Afghanistan & Somalia).2 In
global terms, the number of refugees who make it to ‘Fortress Europe’ are a serious minority.3 However, the EU’s external border force estimates that 1,800,000 migrants
illegally entered Europe in 2015.4 Many of these are refugees. Reactions within
Europe have been varied: Germany granting 140,910 asylum claims in 2015, and the Netherlands and the United Kingdom granting 16,450 and 13,905 respectively.5 Kim
Rygiel argues that the subsequent flourishing of refugee spaces in Europe can be considered part of a global emerging network of spaces of exclusion and exception.6
As will be expanded upon in the literature review, Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘spaces of exception’ will be central to this thesis. This facet of Agambenian theory, which has become widely accepted within the social sciences, posits that refugees
1 Gholam Khiabany, “Refugee crisis, imperialism and pitiless wars on the poor”, Media, Culture &
Society, 28:5 (2016): 756.
2 Ibid., 756 3 Khiabany, 757
4 BBC, 2016 Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in seven charts,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911 [Accessed 18 January 2017]
5 Ibid.
6 Kim Rygiel, ‘Bordering solidarities: migrant activism and the politics of movement and camps at
have had their political rights stripped away, leaving just a body, or bare life. Subsequently, to Agamben, they live an exceptional existence.7
This thesis will focus on three specific initiatives in Amsterdam, and will seek to investigate how they respectively challenge traditional notions of refugees inhabiting exceptional spaces and living exceptional lives. As well as questioning whether we can ever consider the refugee to be truly ‘exceptional’, these initiatives present urban refugees as an opportunity for greater integration and cultural understanding, rather than as a problem. Moreover, they present refugees as agentic individuals, with talents, skills, and the ability and desire to express themselves. The initiatives focussed on are: 1) Ondertussen, a creative collective that establishes interspaces for refugees and non-refugees; 2) Startblok Riekerhaven, a shared housing-project for young Dutch and refugees with residence status; and 3) the Conversation Group, a weekly meet-up and Dutch-Arabic language exchange between Dutch students and refugees. The thesis will use three main theoretical concepts to interrogate the three initiatives: 1) The exception, 2) humanitarianism, and 3) hospitality. These concepts will be further explored in Chapter 2.
To investigate whether Amsterdam’s refugee initiatives deconstruct notions of exceptionality, a number of research questions will need to be addressed in this thesis. These are:
- How can notions of ‘exceptionality’ be undermined by spaces of encounter? - Humanitarian language and practice can be negatively impactful on the
experience of refugees. Can initiatives successfully overcome this vocabulary of humanitarianism?
- Can traditional notions of ‘hospitality’ be re-articulated to establish spaces of unconditional welcoming?
Before presenting my research, I will contend that the three initiatives of this thesis significantly overcome assumptions of the refugee as ‘exceptional’, and rather they
7 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Stanford University Press,
indicate the city as a space of opportunity that can foster inclusivity and encounter. Whilst refugee experience undoubtedly echoes notions of exceptionality, encounters from local community-led initiatives permeate the boundaries between refugee space and Amsterdam civic-space, enabling greater dialogue, integration and agency for the refugee population.
The organisation of the text will be set-out as follows: Chapters 2, 3 & 4 represent the literature review section of the thesis. Firstly, Chapter 2 will assess the major literary works in the social sciences and humanities concerning refugees. This literature is a combination of theoretical and empirical research. This research will provide the central theoretical framework of this thesis. Next, Chapter 3 will present a different set of literatures, on cities. As sites of encounter, and informal practice, cities will be presented as fertile ground for contestation regarding citizenship and belonging. Building on the first two literary chapters, Chapter 4 will finalise the discussion, introducing the city of Amsterdam, and exploring the possibility of cities as sites of refuge.
Chapter 5 will then outline the research methodology. Two qualitative methods contributed to data collection: ethnography and interviews. This chapter will present the implementation of these methods, as well as any limitations. It will also assess the level of influence the researcher has over the methodological process. Chapters 6, 7 & 8 will interrogate each initiative in this study respectively (Ondertussen, Startblok Riekerhaven and the Conversation Group). These chapters provide analysis and a discussion of the data collected during research. They also provide specific examinations of the findings and concepts at work within three of Amsterdam’s refugee-spaces. Finally, bringing together the individual initiatives, Chapter 9 will present a final holistic discussion: drawing conclusions, and assessing relationships between refugee experience and Amsterdam urban life. Future research possibilities will also be brought forward.
Chapter 2
The refugee as the exception
As mentioned in the introduction, globally, refugeehood is expanding: in numbers, coverage, politics and as an area of academic inquiry.8 This thesis aims to further this
inquiry, with a focus on three urban initiatives in Amsterdam and their effect on the experience of refugees. This chapter will assess the major literary works in the social sciences and humanities concerning refugees. These texts provide a theoretical framework and reference point for the qualitative research to build upon.
Exceptionality is a central trope of the research project, and so the work of Giorgio Agamben, which has been highly influential in refugee research, will be assessed, namely the notions of the state of exception and bare life. These ideas have been applied by social scientists in various spatial settings, despite increasing calls for alternative ideas. The Othering of refugees will then be focussed on, as an important identity-forming process that can dramatically affect the personal experience of a refugee. Then, Jacques Derrida’s theoretical framework of hospitality will be explored, investigating the way we welcome strangers into our societies, and the paradoxical relationship between conditional and unconditional welcoming. Finally, humanitarianism will be presented as a dominant contemporary discourse that shapes the way refugees are treated in their host countries. In the rest of the thesis, a theoretical triad of exceptionality, hospitality, and humanitarianism will remain central themes throughout the exploration of Amsterdam’s urban initiatives. As theoretical ideas, they interlink, forming a complex web of processes and techniques that are arguably significant in the lives of the displaced. This melange becomes especially pertinent when viewed throughout Europe’s (and indeed the world’s) cities, where an increasing number of displaced peoples presents fertile-ground for research. Further investigation into major literary works concerning the urban will be explored in Chapters 4 & 5.
2.1. Agamben, state of exception & bare life
In the realm of refugee studies, it is important not to underestimate the influence of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. His authority stems from his two most-celebrated works Homo Sacer (1998)9 and State of Exception (2005),10 which largely
build from Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘biopower’.11 The central figure from
Agamben’s writing is Homo sacer, literally the ‘sacred human’, from Roman law, Homo sacer is the man no one can sacrifice, but everyone can kill.12 Contra to his
name, Homo sacer is not holy, but cursed. He is banned and tabooed: an outcast, or a friedlos.13 Agamben builds on Carl Schmitt’s assertion that: ‘Sovereign is he who
creates the exception’.14 Essentially the state has the unique power to suspend law
and create a ‘state of exception’. By separating bios (political life) from zoē (biological life), Agamben states that in the state of exception, Homo sacer is stripped of his bios, leaving only zoē, or bare life.
Refugees were considered by Agamben as a pure expression of bare life in this context.15 Inhabiting the space of exception, they have had their political rights
stripped from them, leaving just a body. This led to a paradoxical conclusion, that in the eyes of the law, a refugee is not even considered a human being (until they are re-codified into a new national identity).16 According to Hannah Arendt, refugees do
not belong to any community whatsoever. Only those who are citizen by birth-right, can be citizens.17 Moreover, refugees are not merely unvalued, they simply have no
voice.18 Signe Larsen notes this is a bitter irony, with the principle of equality
established on a razor-sharp dividing line between included and excluded. One is a citizen and human-being, whereas the other’s status as a human-being is lost alongside their citizenship.19 Didier Fassin demonstrates the potency of Agamben’s
9 Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
10 Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005)
11 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) 140 12 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 71
13 Ibid., 79
14 Carl Schmitt Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. George Schwab
(translation). (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1922 (2005)) 5
15 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 144 16 Ibid., 128-129
17 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966) 284 18 Ibid., 284
19 Signe Larsen, ‘Refugees, nationalism and political membership’, Nordicum-Mediterraneum, 7:3
assertion of refugees as the pure example of bare life, describing ‘the sight of dozens of people, usually Africans, shivering on a beach under the watchful eye of police as almost routine’, as well as reports of dead bodies being recovered from the sea.20
Inspired by Agamben, a significant body of research has investigated notions of exceptionality in refugee-camps.21 With those stripped of political life living in the
state of exception, Agamben notes that exceptionality becomes permanent through spatial organisation of the camp.22 In these refugee spaces, ‘the figure of the human
emerges from behind that of the citizen’.23 The recently-closed Calais ‘Jungle’ camp
has been the subject of numerous scholarly investigations. Depictions of conditions at the Jungle as ‘deplorable’, where denizens are exposed to ‘assault, police violence, sexual exploitation, diseases and psychological illness’,24 encapsulate notions of
exceptionality in the camp.
Didier Fassin quotes Walter Benjamin’s famous theorisation: ‘The camp is the space that opens up when the state of exception starts to become the rule’.25 Its potency lies
in its permanency, where refugees are submitted to a regime of power that suspends ordinary law.26 Adam Ramadan’s research into refugee camps highlights the role of
‘liminality’ in establishing the state of exception. In Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, life is seen to be held at a threshold, a time-space of betweenness. Refugee status is not a normal life to be lived, but also a timeless and spaceless struggle for survival.27 Fassin however, links the camp space with increasing discourses of
humanitarianism. He declares that camps represent ‘compassionate repression’28: in
the camps, the lives of refugees are sustained, but through charity, not rights.29
20 Didier Fassin. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2012), 145-6
21 Rygiel, 2 22 Ibid., 2
23 Peter Redfield, ‘Doctors, borders, and life in crisis’, Cultural Anthropology 20 (2005): 341 24 Gerry Clare et al., ‘The Calais ‘jungle’’, British Journal of General Practice: Letters October (2016):
510
25 Fassin, 151
26 Marion Fresia & Andreas Von Känal, “Beyond Space of Exception? Reflections on the Camp
through the Prism of Refugee Schools”, Journal of Refugee Studies 29:2 (2015) 250-272
27 Adam Ramadan ‘Spatialising the refugee camp’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38
(2013): 73
28 Fassin, 135 29 Larsen, 8
Agamben is not exclusively referring to extreme manifestations of the camp, indeed, he believes we are all potentially Homo sacer before the sovereign, with the state of exception existing on a continuum with liberal democracies.30 Moreover the camp
has become the nomos of the modern, existing potentially everywhere: in airports, in public areas, even in cities.31
It is worth noting, Agamben’s work is often misused in the context of refugees. Various researchers have demonstrated that life in a camp can never be completely reduced to bare life and that refugees are not passive victims.32 Carl Levy is highly
critical of Agamben, claiming that ‘Agamben orientalises and exoticises the refugee and overly dramatizes the camp’.33 He also states that refugees should never be
‘cannon fodder for radical metaphysical arguments, and should never be equated to the half-dead inmates of Nazi concentration camps’.34 Indeed, refugee camps exist
primarily to save and support life.35
Camp-spaces may even offer opportunity. According to a study by Fresia & Von Känal on refugee camp schools, the camp provides precisely the visibility refugees need to speak and act for themselves.36 Arendt counters this, writing that whilst
refugees enjoy freedom of opinion, it is the ‘freedom of a fool’: there is no guarantee they will have the possibility of uttering their opinions.37 Rygiel highlights the
everyday nature of the camp, and the dangers of denying refugees agency. Far from being a mere space of exceptionality and bare life, the camp is in fact a place where social relations are forged and acts of citizenship emerge.38 Moreover, future research
should concentrate on ‘camp space as a lived space, a space in which people are placed in positions of abjection but also in which people negotiate, cooperate, fight, resist, and ultimately live’.39
30 Ibid., 68
31 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 175 32 Fresia & Von Känal, 253
33 Carl Levy, ‘Refugees, Europe, Camps/State of Exception: ‘Into the Zone’, The European Union
and Extraterritorial Processing of Migrants, Refugees and Asylum-Seekers (Theories and Practice),
Refugee Survey Quarterly 29:1 (2010): 101
34 Ibid., 101 35 Ibid,, 100
36 Fresia & Von Känal, 254 37 Larsen, 8
38 Rygiel, 13 39 Ibid., 15
2.2. The refugee as Other
The exceptionality of refugees owes much to the process of Othering. The framing of the refugee as Other has been highly significant in the European context. The status of refugees as Other arguably sanctions the state of exception, consecrating it legally and politically. Social-psychologist Henri Tajfel held that to identify who we are, we must first identify who we are not.40 Furthering this, Anthony D. Smith maintained
that identities are forged through opposition to the identities of ‘significant others’.41
Indeed, nationalism scholar Benedict Anderson attributes identity’s roots to fear and hatred of the Other.42 The process is reflexive. Through affirming our own identities
as Europeans, for example, the identity of the Other (the refugee) is in turn reaffirmed. Alluding to refugees’ supposed status as Homo sacer, this legitimises their poor treatment and marginalisation.
Fassin notes that the mobilisation of the notion of Otherness has been prevalent throughout Europe. Indeed, Pope & Garrett’s study into the US migrant deportation programme suggests that an immigrant (especially an illegal immigrant), is the definitive definition of the Other. Much like homo sacer, the non-citizen is removed from a normative legal framework and placed in ‘no man’s land’.43 Both legal and
linguistic distinctions between ‘residents of the European Union’ and ‘foreigners’ have become increasingly significant in forming Europe’s political imaginary. Significantly, the only ‘foreigners’ that are presented as a potential problem, are those from non-Western countries.44 Writing on increased Islamophobia in Europe,
Stéphanie Lathion writes: ‘It is not an Unknown who scares us, but rather the Other, whom we believe we know but who still inspires fear and rejection’.45 Othering
becomes a mechanism that secures the dichotomy of citizen and non-citizen.46 This
dichotomy encourages the use of extrajudicial power, and can lead to extraordinary policy responses, reminiscent of Agambenian exceptionality.
40 Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology.(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981).
41 Anthony D Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991) 75 42 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 141-145
43 Paul James Pope & Terence M. Garrett, “America’s Homo Sacer: Examining US Deportation
Hearings and the Criminalization of Illegal Immigration”, Administration & Society 45:2 (2012): 174
44 Fassin, 154
45 Stéphanie Lathion, “Fight Islamophobia in Europe? Less Islam and Muslims and More
Citizenship!” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 26:2 (2015): 135
The media holds a pivotal role in disseminating information, spreading knowledge and shaping ideologies.47 However, as Lathion notes, journalistic discourse can be
reductionist, simplistic and couched in economic interests.48 By strengthening
perceptions of the Other, van Dijk argues that media contributes to the reproduction of stereotypes, prejudices and eventually racism.49 Indeed, to David Sibley, this
emergence of boundaries between us and them, strengthened by stereotypical representations of the Other in turn reflects social practices of exclusion and inclusion.50
In 2007 alone, Britain’s national newspapers contained over 2500 articles concerning asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, with the vast majority of these overwhelmingly negative and hostile.51 Gholam Khiabany writes that in the midst of
the refugee ‘crisis’, prior to the tragic story of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler washed up on a Turkish beach (which proved to be a discursive turning point), sections of the British press styled refugees with language equating them to waste, human flotsam, unstoppable floods and terrorist threat.52 Other studies have revealed a
media focus of metaphors, presenting immigrants as animals, debased persons, weeds or disease.53 In April 2015, columnist Katie Hopkins for British tabloid The
Sun wrote: ‘Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I don’t care’.54 The dehumanisation
of the refugee subsequently disseminated into the political sphere. In an interview with ITV News, then British Prime Minster David Cameron spoke of ‘a swarm of
47 Stergios Fotopoulos & Margarita Kaimaklioti, ‘Media discourse on the refugee crisis: on what
have the Greek, German and British press focussed?’, European View 15 (2016): 266
48 Lathion, 139
49 Teun A Van Dijk, ‘New(s) racism: a discourse analytical approach’. in S. Cottle (ed.), Ethnic
minorities and the media (pp. 33–49). (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000) 34
50 David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West, (London: Routledge, 1995).
5
51Yasmin Ibrahim, “Constructing ‘the Jungle’: Distance framing in the Daily Mail” International
Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 7:3 (2011): 322
52 Khiabany, 758
53 Otto Santa Ana, ‘Like an animal I was treated’: Anti-immigrant metaphor in US public discourse’.
Discourse Society 4:1 (1999): 7-31
people coming across the Mediterranean’.55 Yasmin Ibrahim writes that this language
suspends morality and dehumanises discourses of immigration.56
With the largest numbers of refugees coming from Muslim countries, heightened perceptions of Islam as a significant Other and a security threat have arguably enhanced the exceptionality of refugees. Much is driven by a tenuous connection between migrants and the radical Islam.57 To Ibrahim, terrorist attacks in Europe and
North America have given rise to a new category of migrant: terrorists. Through this lens, refugees have their rights and protections eroded within discourses of security, threat and fear.58 When the problem of illegal (or excess) immigration of Others
evolves into an emergency (such as the fear of another terrorist attack), it justifies the state of exception.
Given little prominence until recently, ‘Islamophobia’ has crystallised around mistrust and even hostility toward Islam as a religion and Muslims as a group59.
Although some believe it stands in the way of a realistic and quite legitimate criticism of Islam,60 identifying an enemy is often the motivating force of politics.61 Spruyt &
Elchardus prefer to view it as ‘prejudice’. Here, prejudice is a theory stating that a certain group fall short of important values and norms that are usually considered to be widespread.62 Tonkens et al. call this connection between cultural values and
political citizenship as the ‘culturalisation of citizenship’.63 Their study focuses on the
Netherlands, where its majority population are seen as culturally homogenous, generally supporting ‘progressive values’.64 Right-wing parties especially declare
migrants as a threat to this social cohesion. Indeed, right-wing populists routinely instrumentalise an ethnic/religious/linguistic/political minority as a scapegoat for
55 Khiabany, 759 56 Ibrahim, 319 57 Pope & Garrett, 167 58 Ibrahim, 321 59 Fassin, 154
60 Bram Spruyt & Mark Elchardus, “Violence, fear of crime, and Islam scepticism” International
Review of Sociology 22:3 (2012): 552
61 Levy, 119
62 Spruyt & Elchardus, 557
63 Evelien Tonkens et al. ‘Culturalization of citizenship in the Netherlands’. In Ariane Chebel
d’Appollonia & Simon Reich (eds.), Managing Ethnic Diversity after 9/11: Integration, Security, and Civil
Liberties in Transatlantic Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010)
society’s woes.65 This ‘politics of fear’66 leads to a discursive focus on actual or
potential harming influences on society of Muslim minorities, who comprise most the migrant population in Western Europe.67 Refugees, as the Islamic Other,
therefore are presented as not possessing the capacity to integrate into European cultural life.
2.3. Derrida, hospitality & welcoming
Hospitality is a central theme throughout this thesis. Attributed to French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida,68 hospitality is the lens we use to consider the act of
welcoming strangers and Others: either into our homes, or in the case of the so-called refugee crisis, across our borders. To Derrida, the Law of Hospitality is welcoming unconditionally: without questioning and without identifying.69
For Derrida, for a host to remain sovereign in his/her own home, the guest must become subject to the rules of the host, else hostility might arise.70 Martijn Stronks
uses an example from antiquity: the welcoming of Telemachus in Lacedaemon, the land of King Menelaus.71 At first, Telemachus is welcomed unconditionally. He is
lavished with gifts and given a special seat at the welcome feast. Indeed, it is unlikely everyone would receive this welcome. Essentially, Telemachus’s unconditional, unquestioned welcome does not last, and as his stay prolongs, he is interrogated by Menelaus’s guards. As a guest, he is obliged to become subject to his host’s laws.72
Essentially hospitality is a self-contradictory concept. It is both inclusionary and exclusionary.73 As such, hospitality ‘deconstructs’ itself when put into practice. It
never truly exists, as it is always to come.74 In the context of refugees, Stronks writes
that this collision between hospitality and power can easily degenerate into
65 Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What right-wing populist discourses mean (Los Angeles: Sage
Publications Ltd., 2015) 78
66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 1
68 Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000)
69 Martijn Stronks, ‘The question of Salah Sheekh: Derrida’s hospitality and migration law’,
International Journal of Law in Context 8:1 (2012): 74
70 Stronks, 75 71 Ibid., 74 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., 73
xenophobia. The stranger is no longer seen as a guest, but as a hostile guest.75
Etymology provides some interesting insight, especially from the French hôte, translating as both ‘host’ and ‘guest’, which are binary terms in regards to hospitality. The Latin word hostis, from which hôte derives, means ‘stranger’ or ‘enemy’.76 For
Derrida, hospitality and hostility are not just etymologically linked. Ramadan builds on this, writing that hospitality is inconceivable without hostility. Instead of viewing them as binary opposites, he suggests combining them together as one concept, hostipitality.77
In the legal framework of migration, states may choose who enters. Moments of welcome are conditioned by logics of acceptability and control.78 Not only can the
host-nation decide the entrance, but initially, guests are forced to adjust to the language. Derrida recognises this as the first violence upon his/her Otherness.79
Hospitality is a process laden with mistrust. When the stranger crosses our borders, our guest becomes an enemy, as we do not trust them. Indeed, in Mistrusting Refugees, Daniel & Knudsen write80:
From its inception the experience of a refugee puts trust on trial. The refugee mistrusts and is mistrusted. In a profound sense, one becomes a refugee even before fleeing the society in which one lives and continues to be a refugee even after one receives asylum in a new place among a new people.
Stronks highlights the case of a young man Abdirizaq Salah-Sheekh, a refugee seeking asylum in the Netherlands. It provides a good demonstration of the contradictory treatment of refugees in the Netherlands and in Europe as a whole.81
Salah-Sheekh testifies that he is seventeen years old (his mother told him so), but Dutch medical checks declare him to be over 20 (to 99.9% certainty). He remains certain of his original statement, yet the Dutch authorities proceed to declare him twenty years old.82 Essentially, in return for hospitality, Salah Sheekh must sacrifice
75 Stronks, 94 76 Ibid.
77 Adam Ramadan ‘Hospitality and postnational peace’ Political Geography 30 (2011) 195 78 Darling 2013, 1785
79 Stronks, 76
80 Valentine E. Daniel and John Chr. Knudsen, Mistrusting Refugees (Oakland CA: University of
California Press, 1996)
81 Stronks, 73 82 Ibid., 82
his story, as it is not trusted. As Fassin attempts to demonstrate with the refugees at Calais, these people are neither guests nor enemies, but enjoy a furtive hospitality that confers no right.83
So how can we rearticulate hospitality so it can resemble a genuinely unconditional welcome? Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant argued for a cosmopolitan right to universal hospitality in Perpetual Peace. By separating the concepts of hospitality and hostility, he advocated the ‘the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he [sic] arrives on someone else’s territory’.84 Seyla Benhabib
similarly champions one unitary cosmopolitan right, where an individual should be treated with hospitality in any country other than their own.85 Derrida claims this is
a deep, but ultimately impossible ideal based on an ethic of responsibility to the Other.86 Ramadan views Derrida’s view of hospitality as an aporia, a perplexing and
insoluble philosophical problem.87 He argues for unconditional international
commitment to receive and welcome a stranger, no matter who they are, and to impose no limits on their welcome.
2.4. Humanitarianism
Didier Fassin’s Humanitarian Reason declares a significant political paradigm shift, whereby moral sentiments have become an essential force in contemporary politics88.
The reaction to the so-called refugee crisis of many European political leaders was one of moral obligation: we have a ‘duty’ to help.89 This new moral economy has
been especially impactful on the experience of refugees.90 To Fassin, political asylum
became subsidiary to humanitarian reason. Fassin identifies this new age of humanitarianism as a convergence of a set of elements over the past twenty years, including the creation of humanitarian organisations, the establishment of ministries
83 Fassin, 136
84 Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch’, In H. S. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political
writings, pp. 93-130. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 105
85 Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others - Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004) 26-27
86 Ramadan, ‘Hospitality and postnational peace’ 195 87 Ibid.
88 Fassin, 1
89 Tony Paterson, “Angela Merkel: It’s our damned duty to help refugees” Independent (8th October
2015) Available online: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-its-our-damned-duty-to-help-refugees-a6686631.html [Accessed 20 January 2017]
of humanitarian assistance and the designation of conflicts as humanitarian crises.91
Fassin goes beyond usual definitions that restricting humanitarianism to the Global South. In fact, it is a new paradigm where citizenship has globalised as a regime of government.92 As already discussed, legitimising sovereignty on the basis of
citizenship can directly exclude the non-citizen from political space.
Fassin writes that humanitarian politics is a politics of precarious lives.93 At the
beating heart of humanitarianism is a paradox between inequality and solidarity. Moral sentiments are usually focussed on the most unfortunate, or vulnerable individuals. Fassin explains humanitarianism through the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Encountering a man left for dead by thieves on the road, the Samaritan feels morally obliged to help; he dresses his wounds, finds him lodging, and pays for his care.94 Of course, the Samaritan had only good intentions, but by using the same
framework, the invocation of moral obligation throughout the discourse surrounding refugees can have difficult ramifications.
In the era of humanitarian intervention, the overwhelming institutional response from ‘liberal’ states has been notably illiberal. Throughout Europe, refugees often experience increased control, fear of deportation, harsh conditions and poor treatment.95 Refugees are decreasingly considered not as humans with history or
biography, but as numbers and things and (increasingly) security threats. Alluding to Agamben’s state of exception, refugees in Europe are DNA tested, fingerprinted, medically examined, labelled and ‘processed’.96 Ramadan sees that refugee space is
more than just a humanitarian space of welfare, but rather a space of exception and intensified biopolitical control.97 Indeed, Agamben writes that the state of exception
has become a ‘paradigm for government’, not used out of necessity, but as a political framework for governmentality.98 Fresia & Von Känal describe UNHCR camps as
‘some kind of storage’, rather than a genuine solution.99
91 Ibid., 4 92 Rygiel, 1 93 Fassin, 4 94 Ibid., 1 95 Khiabany, 757 96 Ibid.
97 Ramadan, ‘Spatialising the refugee camp’ 74 98 Agamben, State of Exception 30-33
Issues of trust are embedded within hospitality. Humanitarianism, with its increased concern for the body, has amplified these issues. Fassin argues that asylum seekers’ verbal accounts, which have long been the only evidence testifying their experience, are no longer sufficient evidence for alleged persecution. Indeed, in a new regime of truth, physical traces on the body have come to be seen as tangible proof, i.e. physical signs of torture.100
Much of this categorisation can be characterised by William Walters’s notion of ‘domopolitics’.101 Defined by Jonathan Darling as the ‘governance and construction of the nation as a domestic or homely space, domopolitics is secured through practices of filtering, classification and surveillance’.102 Within the framework of domopolitics, the identification and labelling of guests is critical to both the practice of hospitality and the securitising impulses of an orderly ‘homely’ nation. Indeed, across Europe, the language of hospitality has fused with the language of domopolitics which seeks to classify and ‘secure’ those seeking refuge.103
So what are the implications of domopolitics and humanitarianism? As well as reducing the experience of the refugee to physical scars, politics of compassion also reduces the agency of those presented as ‘in need’.104 Much like the host-guest
dichotomy within hospitality, there is a similarly asymmetric power-laden relationship at work within relationships of care, essentially between those needing it and those delivering it.105 Despite good intentions, the status and agency of the
refugee is significantly reduced by this process. Slavoj Žižek agrees, arguing that a recipient of care is constructed as a non-political subject, a recipient of both compassion and repression.106 Levinas recognises this as a core impulse towards the
100 Fassin, 110
101 William Walters ‘Secure borders, safe haven, domopolitics’, Citizenship Studies 8 (2004): 237–
260
102 Jonathan Darling, ‘Moral urbanism, asylum and the politics of critique’, Environment and Planning
A, 45 (2013): 1792
103 Ibid., 1795
104 Jonathan Darling. ‘Giving space: care, generosity and belonging in a UK asylum drop-in centre’.
Geoforum, 42 (2011): 414
105 Chris Beasley & Carol Bacchi, ‘The political limits of ‘care’ in re-imagining
interconnection/community and an ethnical future’, Australian Feminist Studies 20:46 (2007): 49-64
Other. Arguably, ‘to recognise the Other is to give’.107 He writes that we are incapable
of approaching the other with empty hands, having an irreducible and inescapable responsibility to be generous. Much of this generosity stems from the tolerant nature of a humanitarian society. Wendy Brown writes upon the paradoxical nature of tolerance. Essentially she believes that tolerance ontologies different and conflict. Indeed, it sustains a ‘status of outsiderness for those it manages by incorporating; it even sustains them as a potential danger to the civic or political body’.108 It proves to
be a damaging and flawed discourse of power, uncritically promoted as a universal human dignity.109
2.5. Summary
This chapter has sought to compile and assess some of the major literary works concerning refugees, with a particular focus on their experience as exceptional. An academic focus on refugees has often channelled the work of Agamben, and various expansions on the state of exception. Agamben’s theories can be argued to be somewhat reductionist. It is certainly difficult to argue that the refugee is truly bare life, or a Homo sacer. This only serves to increase plight of a displaced, disenfranchised, and often frightened individual. Despite this, the refugee experience is undoubtedly haunted by echoes of exceptionality, ranging from the physical camp-space, to contemporary media representations that serve to systematically debase and dehumanise.
Secondly, humanitarianism has been demonstrated to represent a discursive paradigm shift in global politics, which directly affects the experience of refugees ‘on the ground’. Whilst often served with best intentions, humanitarianism has certainly placed an increasing emphasis on the management of bodies, dehumanizing them, and delegitimising their right to public-space. Again, akin to Agamben’s exception, the words of the refugee are disregarded, with only physical corporeality serving as evidence. Within the framework of humanitarianism, refugees are also increasingly
107 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Translated by A. Lingis)
(Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1985)
108 Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 2008) 28
presented as ‘in need’, sanctifying Otherness in the political response to asylum and exacerbating the situation of the displaced.
Hospitality, Derrida’s paradoxical concept of an unconditional welcome made impossible by an inevitable host-guest power imbalance, is another useful lens to focus of refugee experience. Welcome or not, a guest must conform to the rules of its host. This highlights Otherness, and constructs difference, exceptionality, and often hostility. Social-science researchers have found it difficult to venture away from traditional notions of host and guest, but several questions remain unanswered. Is it possible to undermine the inevitable conditionality of welcoming? Is there a geographical solution? Can some spaces provide an alternative to the traditional host-guest dialectic? Perhaps the open vivacity of cosmopolitan urban space can provide the answer.
Chapter 3
The city, the encounter, and the informal
‘The world isn’t flat, it’s paved.’Edward L. Glaeser, Triumph of the City110
Cities dominate the world. Indeed, the human condition and the urban condition may have become one and the same.111 By 2050, 70% of the world’s 9 billion people
will live in urban areas.112 However, the scale and omnipresence of cities is not the
only reason for their importance in social science thinking. Cities are so engrossing because they pose fascinating, important, and often troubling questions.113 As sites of
super-diversity and encounter,114 cities are where it all comes together. Moreover,
they are spaces of opportunity.115
Building on the literary works assessed in the previous chapter, this chapter will present another set of literature, attempting to make sense of cities as, not just spaces of opportunity, but as sites of encounter, informality and marginality. Additionally, urban space might represent an opportune site for deconstructing the exceptionality of refugees (as well as other marginalised groups). To Jonathan Darling, taking an urban focus has both a political and analytical purpose. Politically, it offers the potential to contest exclusions from the nation-state, by presenting the urban as fertile ground for contestation regarding citizenship and belonging. Analytically, it gives
110 Edward L. Glaeser, Triumph of the city: how our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener,
healthier, and happier. (New York: Penguin Press, 2011) 12
111 Ash Amin, ‘The Urban Condition: A Challenge to Social Science’, Public Culture 25:2 (2013): 201 112 UN-Habitat, State of the world’s cities 2010/2011: Bridging the urban divide. (Nairobi: United Nations
Human Settlements Programme, 2008)
113 Glaeser, 14
114 Steven Vertovec, ‘Super-diversity and its implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 30:6 (2007):
1024-1054; Fran Meissner & Steven Vertovec, ‘Comparing super-diversity’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 38:4 (2015): 541-555
valuable insight into the dynamics of refugee experience in a multifaceted environment.116
3.1. Urban space & everyday life
In Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser notes, ‘the real city is made of flesh, not concrete’.117 Its structures may stand for centuries, but its populations are fluid.
Urbanism is thus characterised by movement, flux and restlessness of its highly variant populations.118 To Rossi & Vanolo, cities are multifaceted physical, relational
and governmental spaces.119 Moya Pellitero expands on this, stating that the city, or
rather the moment of the city, is not merely an object, but also the mental relation of individuals with it.120 Geographer Doreen Massey’s conceptualisations of space are
extremely insightful. Seeing space as the ‘product of interrelations’, Massey argues that space ‘does not exist prior to identities/entities and their relations’.121 Rather,
these identities/entities, and the relations between them are all co-constitutive, with spatiality an integral part of all of them.122 Cities are no exception. Arguably, the
urban environment needs a phenomenological dimension.123 Cultural geographer
and orientalist Augustin Berque agrees, viewing the urban environment as not an object, but rather a relation, or process, involving the society with it.124 It is in the
fluidity of the urban, where informality thrives, that cities represent crucial sites of coming together, or encounter.
3.2. Strategies & tactics
Several models are presented by various geographers, sociologists and urban theorists to engage with the opportunity and encounter of everyday urban space. Writing on the city, Henri Lefebvre observed the nuance and complexity of everyday life. Noting
116 Jonathan Darling. ‘Forced migration and the city: Irregularity, informality and the politics of
presence’. Progress in Human Geography 41:2 (2017): 179
117 Glaeser, 40
118 Warren Magnusson, ‘Politicizing the global city’. 289–306. In: Isin E.F. (ed.) Democracy,
Citizenship and the Global City. (London: Routledge, 2000) 298
119Ugo Rossi & Alberto Vanolo, Urban Political Geographies: A Global Perspective (London: SAGE
Publications Ltd, 2012) 18
120 Moya Pellitero, The image of the urban landscape: the re-discovery of the city through different spaces of
perception (Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, 2007) DOI: 10.6100/IR625254 xi
121 Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2005) 9 122 Ibid., 10
123 Pillitero, xii
the existence of so many sub-systems, rather than a single system, operating at ‘different levels of reality, the lacunae and gaps between them filled with floating mists’.125 It is in these mists, or informal spaces and settings, where the opportunity
of the everyday occurs.
Michel de Certeau offers a framework of strategies and tactics, as a critical analysis of the negotiation of urban space as a mode of resistance (although he himself admits it is ‘rather too neatly dichotomised’).126 To de Certeau, the ‘strategy’ is the tool of the
powerful. It is a calculus of force-relationships, when a subject of will and power (a government, city, enterprise etc.) is isolated in a particular place.127 On the other
hand, the ‘tactic’ is the tool of the weak. Operating within something reminiscent of Lefebvre’s floating mists, the tactic cannot rely on a fixed spatial setting, as its place belongs to the other.128 Tactics are victories of the weak over the strong: clever tricks
and ‘hunter’s cunning’.129 According to de Certeau, many everyday practices (talking,
shopping, cooking etc.) are tactical in character. Through de Certeau’s analysis, whilst strategies are able to produce and impose spaces, they can be continually negotiated, manipulated and restructured by the marginalised in society through everyday informal activity.130 Hernando de Soto, regarded informality in this way as
a ‘survival strategy’. For de Soto, the informal entrepreneur was a hero who managed to prosper despite the state’s continuous controlling policies and measures.131 Various
studies have also demonstrated how refugees negotiate space, through tactical means, to acquire greater agency in their own lives.132
3.3. Encounter & the city
The city presents opportunity through encounter. Like de Certeau’s tactics, these encounters disrupt, subvert, refuse, subjugate and intervene in everyday life.
125 Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World: Second Revised Edition (London: The Athlone
Press, 2000) 98 126 de Certeau, xvii 127 Ibid., xix 128 Ibid., xix 129 Ibid., xix 130 Ibid., 36
131 Hernando De Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: Harper
& Row, 1989) 243
132 Penny Johnson, ‘Tales of Strength and Danger’: Sahar and the Tactics of Everyday Life in Amari
Refugee Camp, Palestine’, Signs 32:3 (2007): 597-619; Nina Woodrow, ‘City of welcome: refugee storytelling and the politics of place’, Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (2017): 1-11
Operating in the urban shadows, or Lefebvrian mist, encounters encapsulate creativity, experimentation and failure. Generally, there are two sets of literatures concerning the encounter, the first concerning the theoretical ‘moment’ of encounter, and the second, which concentrates on empirical studies of spaces of possibility in cities.
Ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius’s ‘dance of atoms’ in The Nature of Things offers an elegant metaphor for the encounter.133 In this dance, everything falls, with
unconnected atoms falling downwards, completely blind, in parallel to each other. The atoms rain as individual bodies, falling through empty space. They continue to fall, until something undetermined intervenes, and then the atoms swerve. Lucretius calls this swerve clinamen. The clinamen is barely distinguishable, yet alters everything henceforth.134 French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser writes that this encounter
does not create any of the reality of the world, which is in fact just an agglomeration of atoms.135 Rather the encounter confers reality upon the atoms themselves, which,
‘without the swerve and encounter’, would be mere abstract elements. Instead, the atoms’ very existence is due to nothing but the swerve and the encounter, prior to which they led only a phantom existence’.136 This dance of atoms might be
simplistically applied to urban life, where unsystematic encounters within Lefebvrian mist may reconstitute identity, agency and space.
Metaphysical concepts aside, there exists prolific scholarship concerned with empirical studies concerning the encounters between different groups, in a variety of urban spaces, under very different circumstances.137 Scholars have also paid close
attention to the relationship between encounters and power-structures. Darling & Wilson’s Encountering the City138 draws on selected empirical studies of urban
encounters from Accra to New York. One such study is Mónica Farías’s, focussing on contact between middle-class activists and those from ‘disadvantageous
133 Lucretius, The Nature of Things (London: Penguin Classics, 2007) 42
134 Andy Merrifield, The Politics of Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest under Planetary Urbanisation,
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013) 56
135 Louis Althusser, Philosophy of the Encounter, Later Writings, 1978-1987 (London: Verso, 2006) 169 136 Ibid.
137 Mónica Farías, ‘Working Across Class Difference in Popular Assemblies in Buenos Aires’,
169-186. In Jonathan Darling & Helen F. Wilson (eds.), Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra
to New York (Oxford: Routledge, 2016)
138 Jonathan Darling & Helen F. Wilson (eds.), Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to
situations’ working together in Buenos Aires soup kitchens. By investigating the potential of encounters to disrupt and challenge negative stereotypes,139 she
interrogates how prejudice can be overcome through encounter. It is suggested that empathy arises when different groups work together for sustained periods of time.140
Awareness and change come gradually through sustained encounters, with each bringing a ‘new perception of difference’.141 Encounters are also ubiquitous. A study
based in Dubai by Yasser Elsheshtawy suggests that the potency of the encounter even exists in the gleaming, immaculate urban centres of the Arabian Gulf.142
Encounters are posited as a crucial aspect of urban vitality and liveliness in Dubai, where informal economic bonds between Bangladeshi migrants result in new friendships which significantly ‘enhance their lives’143.
Despite this, Gill Valentine has warned against celebratory statements that encounters might form a foundation for a politics of living with difference. Encounters can fail to travel, and can also leave attitudes unmoved, or worse still, entrench prejudices further.144 The very etymology of the word alludes to difference.
It stems from the Old French encontrer, meaning a ‘meeting of adversaries’. The encounter can present difficulty, especially regarding tolerance. To Wendy Brown, tolerance has become uncritically promoted worldwide, especially due to the challenges multiculturalism has posed to liberal democratic citizenship.145 Ideally, to
achieve tolerance in the case of societal encounters, the Other is confronted, resulting in empathy and greater understanding. However, presumed already tolerant, the political imaginary of liberal Western democracies may prevent genuine tolerance. Tolerance therefore emerges as part of a civilizational discourse, constructed opposition between a cosmopolitan West, and an intolerant, illiberal, barbarian Other.146 Encounters may emphasise this cleavage, with an atomic swerve, or
139 Farías, 169
140 Tatiana Matejskova & Helga Leitner, ‘Urban encounters with difference: the contact hypothesis
and immigrant integration projects in eastern Berlin’, Social and Cultural Geography 12:7 (2011): 717-741
141 Farías, 182
142 Yasser Elsheshtawy, ‘Mapping Abu-Dhabi’s Urban Public Spaces’, Built Environment 37 (2011):
92-113
143 Ibid., 111
144 Gill Valentine, ‘Living with difference: reflections of the geographies of encounter’, Progress in
Human Geography 32(3): 323-337.
145 Brown, 1 146 Ibid., 6
clinamen leading to deeper misunderstanding and opposition. Despite this, on a human level, encounter with the Other, may provide a deeper understanding. ‘An enemy’, wrote Quaker peace-activist Gene Knudsen Hoffman, ‘is one whose story we have not heard’.147 Whilst we cannot assume tolerance to be a wholly innocent
affair, accepting the Other must begin with direct contact. By communicating, cooperating, and contributing to urban life with the Other, opportunities might well be presented to create a more open and hospitable society.
3.4. Urban informality
Many encounters in the city operate through informality. Informality essentially operates through the constant negotiability of value and the unmapping of space.148
Defined by Roy & Alsayyad as an organising logic, under a paradigm of liberalisation,149 informality is an integral feature of urban life. Indeed, large numbers
of people work, live and play in the informal sector.150 A binary term, presented as
the antithesis of formality, informality operates in the shadows, generally articulating itself as a small-scale, easy-entry, ‘way of doing’.151
In recent years, numerous studies have emerged, illustrating the prevalence of informality in urban space, especially regarding economic activity.152 For example,
there have been numerous studies into urban informality in the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia,153 where informal economic activity often thrives around
and within marginalised communities. These are often part of a wider effort to unpack urban informality, not only as a political economy, but as a way of life.154
Over recent years, geographers and other social scientists especially have studied the use of infrastructures as a lens to understand organisation and experience in everyday
147 Rev. Charles Gibbs, ‘Those Whose Stories We Have Not Heard’ [online], Huffington Post (5
September 2011). Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-charles-gibbs/those-whose-stories-we-ha_b_889360.html. [Accessed 29 April 2017]
148 Ananya Roy & Nezar Alsayyad, Urban Informality (Lanham: Lexington Books 2004) 5 149 Ibid., 26
150 Alan Gibert, ‘Love in the Time of Enhanced Capital Flows: Reflections on the Links between
Liberalization and Informality’, 33-67 in (eds.) Roy & Alsayyad, Urban Informality, 35
150 Roy & Alsayyad, Urban Informality, 5 151 Ibid., 12
152 JK Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)
153 Roy & Alsayyad, Urban Informality 154 Ibid., 27
life. The hidden, informal infrastructures, often tactical in nature, and operating in the Lefebvrian mist, must be understood in order to recognise the material processes and relations through which (uneven and unequal) worlds are created and maintained.
Colin McFarlane sees that managing a distinction between the formal and the informal has served as a ‘multifaceted resource for naming, managing, governing, producing, and even critiquing contemporary cities’.155 Within this discourse,
informality is typically depicted as detrimental to urban economic development and social cohesion. Informal employment, for instance, is usually couched in negative assumptions of illegality and corruption. However recent research has suggested it plays a much more positive role in society than previously considered.156 Primarily,
it presents an opportunity for encounter. Empirical studies have also suggested that informality undermines fixed classifications of citizen and non-citizen.157 Within the
social sciences and beyond, there is a growing consensus on the benefits of harnessing the efficiencies of urban informality.158 According to Roy, informal practices
successfully highlight the ‘ever-shifting urban relationship between the legal and the illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, authorized and unauthorized’.159 This is because
informality operates in an environment where structural power is not enacted ‘as a monolithic and singular regime of rule, but rather as a fragmented domain of multiple and competing sovereignties’.160 The link between informality and marginalisation is
substantial. Roy writes that, to speak of urban informality is to speak of representation.161
155 Colin McFarlane, ‘Rethinking informality: Politics, crisis, and the city’. Planning Theory & Practice
13(2012): 89
156 Colin C. Williams & John Round, ‘Beyond Negative Depictions of Informal Employment: Some
Lessons from Moscow’ Urban Studies 44:12 (2007) 2321
157 Darling, ‘Forced migration and the city’, 188 158 Roy & Alsayyad, Urban Informality, 8
159 Ananya Roy, ‘Slumdog cities: rethinking Subaltern Urbanism’. International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research, 35:2 (2011): 233
160 Nezar Alsayyad & Ananya Roy, ‘Medieval modernity: On citizenship and urbanism in a global
era’. Space and Polity 10 (2006) 11
161 Ananya Roy, ‘Transnational Trespassings: The Geopolitics of Urban Informality’, 289-317 in
Urban informality is sometimes presented as a ‘coping mechanism’ for marginalised populations.162 When failed by the state, marginalised citizens can move beyond
normative protection from the state by establishing informal networks, establishing strong community bonds based on trust.163 Based on a case study in the northern
Russian city of Magadan, John Round explores the lives of Gulag-survivors residing in an hostile environment, almost abandoned by the state.164 In order to cope with
rising food-costs and falling pensions, some local people establish a food-production network, by claiming a nearby plot of land for crop production. They take turns guarding and farming the land, whilst daily telephone calls between network members, ensure that no one is in need of assistance. Most significantly, the informal food-production network provides an opportunity for lasting friendships between group members.
Urban informality may also present an opportunity for marginalised populations to express themselves and display agency. This ability to express oneself is demonstrated by Fraser McNeill’s study into informal recording studios in Venda, South Africa.165 Enabled by the use of cheap second-hand equipment, the informal
music movement relies on mutual trust established between various parties involved in the informal network, such as musicians, producers & sponsors. Whilst it is not a lucrative business, the process results in the achievement of artistic freedom for those outside of the exclusive, formalised music economy.166 Another study by Rita
Oenning da Silva is based on fieldwork focussing on young-people’s involvement in music and dance throughout the marginalised neighbourhoods of Recife and Olinda, Brazil.167 By participating in informal music and dance events, children and
adolescents from the favelas can test and express their competence and creativity,
162 John Round & Colin C. Williams, ‘Coping with the social costs of ‘transition’: everyday life in
post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine’. In Stephen White & Cerwyn Moore (eds.), Post-Soviet Politics. (London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2012); Colin C. Williams et al. ‘Explaining the normality of informal employment in Ukraine: A product of exit or exclusion?’, The American Journal of Economics
and Sociology 70:3 (2011): 729-755
163 John Round, ‘Marginalized for a lifetime: The everyday experiences of gulag survivors in
post-Soviet Magadan’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B 88:1 (2006): 15-34
164 Ibid., 15
165 Fraser G. McNeill, ‘Making Music, Making Money: Informal Music Production and
Performance in Venda, South Africa’, Africa: The Journal of the International Africa Institute 82:1 (2012): 93-110
166 Ibid., 94
167 Rita de Cácia Oenning da Silva, ‘Reversing the Rite: Music, Dance, and Rites of Passage among
