Introduction

Architecture/migrancy. What is it to bring these terms together in this way? The two terms activate opposite meanings, one being associated with the groundedness of buildings, the constitution of places, and the delimitation of territories, the other with uprootedness, mobility, and the transience of individuals and groups of people. Yet, so neat is the opposition between the terms, that in Western thought they were often brought together as counterparts within a more general binary relation. This binary relation privileged such principles as settlement, stability, and permanence over those of movement, flux, and fluidity. Migrancy, in its various enforced and voluntary forms was aligned with the suspect qualities of movement, and so came to be considered to be the unfortunate exception to a more general principle of settlement. Within this logic, the migrant was ascribed kinship with the nomad, the Scythian, the gypsy, the wild man, and other figures that haunted the imagination of the settled citizen.