ABSTRACT

Migrant City tells the story of contemporary London from the perspective of thirty adult migrants and two sociologists. Connecting migrants’ private struggles to the public issues at stake in the way mobility is regulated, channelled and managed in a globalised world, this volume explores what migration means in a world that is hyper connected – but where we see increasingly mobile, invasive and technologically sophisticated forms of border regulation and control.

Migrant City is an innovative collaborative ethnography based on research with migrants from a wide variety of social backgrounds, spanning in some cases a decade. It utilises recollections, photographs, poems, paintings, journals and drawings to explore a wide range of issues. These range from the impact of immigration control and surveillance on everyday life, to the experience of waiting for the Home Office to process their claims and the limits this places on their lives, to the friendships and relationships with neighbours that help to make London a home.

This title will appeal to students, scholars, community workers and general readers interested in migration, race and ethnicity, social exclusion, globalisation, urban sociology, and inventive social research methods.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

A generation on the move

chapter 1|23 pages

Mobile lives, moving borders

chapter |20 pages

‘We are here because you are there’

Rescaling the migration debate

chapter 3|16 pages

Freshie from the boat

chapter 4|23 pages

Waiting, dead time and freer life

chapter 5|22 pages

Living across borders

chapter 7|21 pages

Conclusions

London’s story

chapter |14 pages

Afterword

Writing ethnography differently