Cities as Lived Spaces

This chapter examines the important phenomenon by considering how academic discourses in migration studies and urban studies are trying to make sense of cities as lived spaces of mobility. Migration and mobility are fundamental to the inherent dynamism of cities, to their creative energy, rich diversity and to their development. The chapter argues that the lived experiences of migrants in cities can offer important insights and usefully inform and attune academic discourses to on-the-ground realities. It considers crucial questions about the potential of cities to respond to migrants struggles for rights, justice and citizenship; the new kinds of social and cultural relationships that form in urban spaces and their implications for belonging, identity and intercultural understanding. The chapter focuses on how to build trust and solidarity in increasingly precarious and exclusionary conditions at a time of neoliberal globalization. Economics and capitalism are central to the story of migration and urbanization, as are the crucial socio-cultural and political transformations that ensue.