The Unknown City: the (in)visibility of urban displacement

未知的城市：城市流离失所的（不）可见性

• 批准号: ES/P005128/1
• 负责人: Michael Collyer
• 金额: $ 32.78万
• 依托单位: University of Sussex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2016 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FP005128%2F1
• 关键词: Unknown; City; visibility; urban; displacement

Public attention is typically focused at the minority of forced migrants who are able to cross an international border and claim refugee status, although the large majority of forced migrants remain within their countries of origin. A growing number of people at a global scale are seeking shelter in cities, particularly poor areas of cities in poor countries. Urban displacement may result from political instability, environmental stress or extreme absolute poverty in areas nearby the city, or as a result of policies of forced eviction within the city. People who are forced to move to or within the city are rarely welcome in the areas where they end up. They are often forced to live in low quality housing where disease and crime are more common than in the city as a whole. To make matters worse, they are frequently blamed for those problems by city authorities. In extreme cases, where forced displacements raise highly racialised tensions, forced migrants may face eviction or even complete removal from the city. For these reasons forced migrants may prefer to try to remain hidden and the city offers plenty of opportunities to do so. Yet invisibility also raises challenges and if individuals are not visible to state and civil society institutions they may not receive the support they need. This raises a tension between visibility and invisibility. This project explores when, how and why forced migrants to poor areas of cities prefer to remain invisible. It also considers attitudes of city authorities who frequently have very little information and almost no direct experience of living in such neighbourhoods. Official responses to the (in)visibility of displaced people range from solidarity and support to repression. This project is concerned with the visual. These underserved areas of cities frequently remain unknown even to city authorities. Research will develop comparative fieldwork in selected neighbourhoods in Colombo, Dhaka, Harare and Hargeisa, working with excellent partners in each city. These cities all have long histories of forced migration from neighbouring areas and within the cities themselves. The project is concerned with a multi-level analysis, focused on different scales of (in)visibility. This may vary from individual forced migrants, to city level authorities via the common practice of collective or community organisations within particular neighbourhoods. At each of these three scales individuals or groups have a choice to remain invisible, to hide away and avoid official contact, or to make themselves visible through strategies of protesting or claiming rights. These scales intersect with three sets of questions that investigate first how much decision making forced migrants actually have, second, how these processes have developed over time and third, how different individuals experience, perceive and imagine space differently. This leads to a series of innovative methods, exploring visual representations, graphic accounts of forced migration, and cartographic accounts of individuals and local residents association. The project will contribute to changing ways of thinking about the city, and particularly the place of forced migration in the cities. Ongoing engagement with city authorities will help to challenge understandings of forced migrants as deceitful or parasitic, which remains extremely widespread. It will also contribute to the broader project of 'global urbanism' highlighting how cities in poorer countries have begun to challenge assumptions of the universality of theories developed in North America and Western Europe. Forced migration is a particularly common occurrence in cities in Africa and Asia and the project aims to draw on that to develop new theoretical understandings of urban displacement.

公众的注意力通常集中在能够越过国际边界并申请难民身份的少数被迫移民身上，尽管绝大多数被迫移民仍在其原籍国。在全球范围内，越来越多的人在城市中寻求庇护，特别是在贫穷国家的城市的贫困地区。城市流离失所可能是由城市附近地区的政治不稳定、环境压力或极端绝对贫困造成的，也可能是城市内强制驱逐政策的结果。被迫搬到城市或城市内部的人在他们最终居住的地区很少受到欢迎。他们经常被迫住在低质量的住房里，那里的疾病和犯罪比整个城市更常见。更糟糕的是，城市当局经常将这些问题归咎于他们。在极端情况下，强迫流离失所会引发高度种族主义的紧张局势，被迫移民可能会被驱逐，甚至完全被赶出这座城市。出于这些原因，被迫移民可能更愿意隐藏起来，而这座城市提供了大量这样做的机会。然而，隐形也带来了挑战，如果国家和民间社会机构看不到个人，他们可能得不到所需的支持。这增加了可见性和不可见性之间的紧张关系。这个项目探索了被迫前往城市贫困地区的移民何时、如何以及为什么更愿意保持隐形。它还考虑了城市当局的态度，他们往往掌握的信息很少，而且几乎没有在这种社区生活的直接经验。官方对流离失所者可见度的反应从团结和支持到镇压。这个项目与视觉有关。这些城市服务不足的地区经常连城市当局都不知道。研究将在科伦坡、达卡、哈拉雷和哈尔格萨选定的社区开展比较田野调查，与每个城市的优秀合作伙伴合作。这些城市都有从邻近地区和城市内部被迫迁徙的悠久历史。该项目涉及多层次分析，重点放在不同级别的可见性上。这可能会有所不同，从个人被迫移民，到城市一级的当局通过集体或社区组织在特定社区的普遍做法。在这三个尺度中的每一个，个人或团体都可以选择保持隐形、隐藏和避免官方接触，或者通过抗议或要求权利的策略使自己显露出来。这些量表与三组问题相交，这三组问题首先调查移民实际上有多少决策被迫，第二，这些过程是如何随着时间的推移而发展的，第三，不同的人如何以不同的方式体验、感知和想象空间。这导致了一系列创新的方法，探索视觉表现，被迫迁移的图形描述，以及个人和当地居民协会的地图描述。该项目将有助于改变人们对这座城市的看法，特别是城市中被迫迁徙的地方。正在进行的与城市当局的接触将有助于挑战对强迫移民的理解，认为这是欺骗性或寄生性的，这种理解仍然非常普遍。它还将为“全球城市化”这一更广泛的项目做出贡献，突显较贫穷国家的城市如何开始挑战北美和西欧理论普适性的假设。强迫移徙在非洲和亚洲的城市中特别常见，该项目旨在利用这一点来发展对城市流离失所的新的理论理解。

项目成果

Partisan citizenship and its discontents: precarious possession and political agency on Harare City's expanding margins

党派公民身份及其不满：哈拉雷市不断扩大的利润中不稳定的占有和政治机构

• DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2019.1691151
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Citizenship Studies
• 影响因子: 1.8
• 作者: McGregor J

Migrants on the margins final report

边缘移民最终报告

• DOI: 10.55203/jtld8758
• 作者: Collyer M

The advantages of migration to Dhaka

移民到达卡的优势

• 发表时间: 2019
• 作者: Collyer M

Migrants on the Margins

边缘移民

• 发表时间: 2018
• 作者: Positive Negatives

Geographies of Urban Dominance: The Politics of Harare's Periphery

城市主导地位的地理：哈拉雷周边地区的政治

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3739996
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: SSRN Electronic Journal
• 作者: Mcgregor J