LOREN B. LANDAU

The world is undergoing a process of rapid urbanization. In 1950, less than 30 per cent of the world’s population lived in cities and towns. That figure is expected to reach 60 per cent by 2030. To what extent should public institutions take into account migration processes in the development in their urban plans?

 

In this day and age you are not making an urban plan if you are not considering mobility’s varied forms. With the dissolution of permanent employment and the stripping away of state support for the poor and marginalised, mobility is an ever more normalised part of human life. We are increasingly aware of the global elite’s movements among sites and often celebrate their ability to forge connections and communication.  While the effects of ‘ordinary’ mobility are likely to be different, such movements are central to achieving people’s social and economic aspiration. Cities must adapt. This is not only about translocal service provision, but considering new modes of economic planning, budgeting, and civic participation.

 

Heimat refers to the idea of creating a ‘new home’ for refugees and migrants who have left their familiar environments, stressing the relevance of a successful integration process. Which policies should be included in an arrival city in order for refugees and migrants to identify it as their ‘heimat’?

 

In an era of heightened economic precarity and social fragmentation, it is difficult to even ask who has the authority to make policy or the ability to structure an integrated social world. Rather than the previous generation’s churches, unions, and civic clubs, integration now is far more social, privatised, and flexible.  Indeed, we are increasingly seeing integration in motion; a kind of fluid form of coming together. This is not based on a promises of a common culture or political values; but rather on modes of getting along in ways that facility ongoing flexibility and mobility.  Some would argue this is a kind of minimalist integration based on an acceptance of multiculturalism. To some extent that is true. However, if we separate civic identity from social identity, we can actually see this as immigrants and hosts – whoever they may be – authoring their own rules and forms of civic engagement.  If we accept that immigrants have a right to be in the space we have previously occupied, then we must also accept their right to negotiate belonging as they choose. Our responsibility – as planners or policy makers – is to identify the structures and interventions that incentivise exclusion. With those limited or removed, people can construct their own civics; their own heimat.

 

In terms of cultural identity integration, there are two differentiated approaches, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. Which model do you think arrival cities should follow for a refugee welcoming policy?

 

In their very nature, cities are diverse spaces.  Such diversity can be the source of productive tensions and dynamic translocal and transcultural collaborations. Yet substantial challenges exist for building and governing cities in which populations’ orientations and trajectories extend primarily beyond city ‘walls’. This is not a question of demanding unfailing loyalty to a state or city or trying to fix people’s bodies or minds in space. This is not a question of achieving social cohesion at the cost of varied opinions and conflict. Rather, what is needed is the ability to foster multiple forms of engagement. So while we often speak of people expressing their social identities in multiple, sometimes contradictory registers, we must now too think about politics as a practice on multiple planes. This may require not so much a cosmopolitan identity, but a recognition that people’s lives are shaped by obligations and contributions at multiple levels.

 

‘Citizenship’ is related to a set of rights in a given State. Do you consider, as other scholars, that this concept is harmful for newcomers?

 

Citizenship is exercised on multiple levels. Across much of the world – and indeed in Europe – the scale of the sovereign state is losing its relative importance in practical and normative terms. Instead, people participate politically – accessing rights, influencing social life, shaping policy – in multiple spaces. These include the highly local sites of clubs and community to the transnational world of the European Union, the Umma or global pentecostalism. Each of these scales continues to influence each other and individual lives in ways that are dynamic and mutually constitutive.  Those concerned with building inclusive communities and citizenship must recognise that forms of integration and belonging can be forged in multiples spaces simultaneously.  While restrictive forms of national citizenship continue to generate exclusionary socialities and cities, there are increasingly opportunities to erode and circumvent such restrictions.

 

What specific characteristics should social housing have in order to contribute to the integration of refugees and economic migrants?

 

An answer to this question is premised on what we understand what constitutes the goals and processes of integration. If we work from a classical definition of joining an existing host community, it must be affordable, diverse, and stable: a basis for building socialities that extend beyond ethnic and national categories. However, if we accept that successful livelihoods often demand flexibility, translocality, and ongoing movements, social housing must be created in ways that allow for people to restructure their social and economic exchanges in multiple ways. This will demand multiple forms of housing provision that can accommodate varied family structures, residential patterns, tenure systems, and communal engagements.

 

Given your expertise in Africa’s urban spheres, is there any experience that could be translated into European integration policies?

 

What we’re increasingly seeing across African cities is a kind of Do It Yourself Urbanism. This stems from economic and demographic changes that rapidly outpace formal structures’ ability to respond. Without the disciplining and integrating forces of expanding formal employment or state institutions, people have been free (or forced) to forge their own forms of sociality and politics. While the history and politics of African cities creates many informally governed spaces, this may well be the future for cities across Europe and elsewhere in the world.  Whether it’s the peri-urban banlieus in France or new immigrant enclaves across other European cities, there are increasingly sections of cities which remain at once part of and removed from the city; governed –in part or in whole – by logics of transience and translocality.

 

The process of ‘making heimat’ is to be accomplished by both the arrival country and the immigrants themselves. What role do you think refugees and migrants should play in their process of integration?

 

The primary driver of integration – building new forms of sociality and civic engagement – will always be refugees and migrants themselves. A country or a host population can not integrate someone; at best they can create conditions in which ‘the other’ can form bonds, instrumental relations, or tactical disengagements. While host countries may have the ethical bases to shape the initial meeting between foreigner and citizen, the very act of accepting them into ‘your’ space is a recognition that from that point in time, the space is shared and will be shaped by the incentives, interests and interactions that follow.