Overview

This book looks at migrant landing spaces, exploring the processes and infrastructures which people encounter as they navigate urban spaces along the central Mediterranean route. The book argues that there remains a theoretical and practical difficulty in grasping the complexity of migrant arrivals. Migrants are often unsure whether they will stay or leave, their mobility is uncertain. Despite this, they face rigid binaries and categories within administrative policy and planning which tries to pin them down as either permanent or temporary. Drawing on extensive original research in southern Italy, this book suggests that we should instead think of ‘landing spaces’: parts of the city that work as infrastructures for landing, that allow for an open and dynamic use of the urban space and provide opportunities for encounter and information exchange as migrants consider their next steps. Combining an ethnographic gaze with insights from urban planning, architecture, geography, social sciences and migration studies, this book invites us to look closer at the interactions between people, practices and places as migrants land in Europe.

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9781032578668

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With 'landing', Martina Bovo provides a much needed concept that opens up the possibility to ethnographically grasp the complex temporalities of arrival processes. Through the way Martina herself describes landing in the Italian urbanised coast, she provides a brilliant example of how the diverse geographies of that process can be vividly portrayed. Bruno Meeus, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands Martina Bovo has given us a beautifully written new way of conceptualizing human migration that blends ethnography with architecture and urban studies. Her spatial starting point results in her and us questioning many fundamentals of migration and, moreover, how we think of and govern our cities. A refreshing, exciting book! Howard Duncan, Carleton University, Canada Migration is radically challenging traditional processes of change in our societies. Martina Bovo's precious work focuses on migrants' landing in places of destination, where the hope of those who arrive clashes against the resistance of spaces and institutions. As she suggests, we may see alternatives and solutions also for spatial planning by changing perspective and looking at those moments and places. Alessandro Balducci, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Author Information

Martina Bovo is an architect and postdoc researcher at KU Leuven, with a PhD in Urban Planning, Design and Policy obtained at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Her research focuses on the territorial dimension of migratory arrival processes, and broadly on urban and welfare policies and ethnographic approaches to urban analysis.

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