Cities and Migration
The role of cities in the global flux of migrants
Ferruccio Pastore
Photos © Melania Comoretto
Springboards and Crashmats
Anyone wishing to emigrate today, in a world context inevitably divided into states, must do so via cities. In pre-modern Europe, where borders and national identities were hazy, labourers, artists and craftsmen travelled through the countryside and villages, often unaware of national boundaries. And this is still the case, albeit to a decreasing extent – in some areas of Africa. But in the world of sovereign states, the nomadic lifestyle and circular short range mobility have become a complete anomaly, to the point of often being labelled as deviant. Migrating has become a more complicated business. Certificates, papers, visas, vaccinations, and identity and travel documents are all needed – all bureaucratic procedures which require a visit to one office or another in a big city.
Furthermore, with few exceptions, cross-border economies have lost their vitality: for those in search of opportunities, a change, a better job, the first, most natural step is to head to the nearest city or capital.
The global welfare blanket spreads far and wide, but if tugged too much at one side, leaves the other bare
So more often than not cities are the first port of call in the mobility process, giving rise to the phenomenon of internal migration. And if this does not live up to expectations, it is the city which then acts as a springboard for subsequent moves, this time in the direction of the border.
The role played by the city can be explained in many ways: in the nooks and crannies of its complex economy it is easier to put away the cash needed for the journey; in the flow of information it offers and represents, it is easier to intercept the specific, indispensable know-how needed for migration; while on a more banal level cities are where the great routes of international transport depart from.
The immense dormitory areas, and those chastely termed ‘spontaneous settlements’ which have sprung up on the outskirts of Istanbul, Casablanca or Tirana are lungs which repeatedly swell and empty with a constant passage of inhabitants. This turnover is ensured by influxes of new arrivals replacing those who are in the process of leaving, attracted by the allure of visions beamed in via satellite, or by the boasts of those who have made it, and have come back for their holidays with a spanking new car.
On arrival, the migrant will find another city, all too often city outskirts, not terribly different from the one he or she left behind, or an inner city viewed by the resident population as a depressed and dangerous area. In old Europe, the landing is often cushioned by a social crashmat: the areas which connect stations with busy shopping areas. In entrance halls and waiting areas it is easier to mingle, and open-air markets offer a multitude of casual work opportunities.
The hubs of poverty
The Europeans who wanted to emigrate, a hundred years ago, had to venture into the alleyways round the ports of Genoa or Antwerp, clutching tightly to their life-savings. They were easy prey, and only those who managed to make it through the throng of swindlers, traffickers, money changers and tricksters would actually board a ship.
The geometric tightening of migration controls, which have come to represent a crucial, strategic policy field, the reigning networks of powerful national and trans-national bureaucracy, and a market of highly sophisticated technological applications, have all but eliminated spontaneous, independent irregular migration initiatives
Nowadays international migration follows other routes, even if the forms of exploitation and violence against migrants remain more or less the same. It goes without saying that those who travel in a legal, authorised way usually use the same channels as the ever-increasing masses of non-migrant mobility: tourists and business people. The routes of the so-called irregular migrants are less predictable, but never left to chance. The geometric tightening of migration controls, which have come to represent a crucial, strategic policy field, the reigning networks of powerful national and trans-national bureaucracy, and a market of highly sophisticated technological applications, have all but eliminated spontaneous, independent irregular migration initiatives.
Except maybe within the enlarged area of Europe, the migrant sans-papiers who gets to his destination without using the varying degrees of professional services offered by some trafficker or other, is a rarity. The increasing efficiency of controls has, as always happens, spawned a market which supplies the necessary help to get round them. This market is not run by some fictitious global mafia. It is an anarchic, unstable phenomenon, highly fragmented and ever-changing. A market with a myriad of completely different players, from the taxi driver who balances the books with a few trips with the meter off, down dirt tracks known only to him, to the sophisticated black market tour operator who shifts thousands of people a year and invoices hundreds of millions, all completely “wireless”, and without leaving a trace.
The geopolitics of human traffic is dynamic and reacts with disturbing rapidity to the changes in the strategies aimed at combating it. But even the traffickers need a few fixed points, some degree of stability. Economies of scale and organisational issues call for routes to be arranged around relatively stable hubs. Various factors can be involved in the creation and establishment of these hubs: such as ease of access without a visa to an airport with international connections, in the case of Moscow, or a strategic position on a network of highly sparse overland transportation, like Agadez in Nigeria, one of the hubs for the traffic of migrants across the Sahara, from black Africa to Arabic-speaking Africa, and from there to the Pelagic or Canary Islands.
Reservoirs of Needs
But for migrants cities are not just points of departure, passage or arrival. They are above all a vital venue of opportunities, economic areas where rich pickings are to be had, which can be penetrated rapidly and profitably. It is true that most of what economists call the primary sector (agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry) in almost all of the Western world, functions thanks to imported labour; it is also true that small-scale industry, the small and medium-sized manufacturing concerns that characterise the provincial areas of Italy and other countries, owes its competitiveness (or at the very least its survival) to foreign manpower, but cities still represent the main magnets for contemporary mass migration flows: cities are where the so-called pull factors are concentrated.
In the end it all boils down to a question of time and division of labour, which are at their most pronounced in the city. We city-dwellers don’t have time to cook: so cooks, waiters and dishwashers are required; we don’t have a minute to wash the floor or put the washing on: cleaners become necessary; then there’s no time to look after the kids and the dog: we need baby- and dog-sitters; and our houses are too small to take in the grandparents: separate residences and paid help is much more suitable. Each one of us is a little, but complex universe of needs, that we are no longer able to satisfy alone or within the family. Each one of us is the heart of a miniscule economic system which employs a variable number of people. Foreign people, more often than not.
Maybe in the end it will be the rules for behaviour in the swimming pool or the opening times of discos that determine whether multicultural societies get on peacefully or turn into battlegrounds
Every year our cities leach millions of cheap suppliers of physical toil, care, affection and patience from the four corners of the globe. From Berlin to Los Angeles, from Rome to Riad, we just can’t do without them. And so what? – many would say – this is a market like any other, a market that has always existed, only now on a global scale. But the fact is that we are exploiting precious resources that are not unlimited. For every child or old person being taken care of here, there is a child or old person not being cared for in some faraway place, and usually in countries where the welfare state does not exactly step in with a helping hand. It has been observed that the children of Philippine women who have emigrated have poorer academic results than their peers, even if they do get an iPod in their Christmas parcel. And it appears that underage crime is growing at an alarming rate among the children of Peruvian nannies. The global welfare blanket spreads far and wide, but if tugged too much at one side, leaves the other bare.
Our cities are giant reservoirs of needs, and importing people is the easiest, cheapest way to respond to those needs in the short term. But in this way the incentives for investing in more sophisticated community-based solutions (home help networks, technologies to support self-sufficiency, time banks, and so on) collapse. And what will happen when, as is to be hoped, all the women from the Ukraine find something better do?
Melting Pots or Battlegrounds?
Cities are also the great points of encounter, where integration succeeds or fails. Coexistence is usually less problematic in smaller towns, maybe because reciprocal familiarity stops prejudice in its tracks. In the city, on the other hand, contact is widespread, but hurried and superficial, chance or involuntary, or strictly practical. Which makes it easier to witness the advent and spread of that schizophrenic syndrome, whereby foreigners are both called on and vilified: indispensable, but intolerable; precious, but unwelcome. This paradoxical and relatively widespread attitude is at its most acute in the urban setting.
In many cities this dissociation leads to a fragmentation of space. On the one hand is the visible hemisphere: clear, regulated, where foreigners comply, facilitating the smooth running of family and working life; while on the other hand there is the hidden hemisphere, where foreign immigrants deal drugs or turn tricks, two of the key areas of mass transgression. In some border areas these two hemispheres are located in two separate cities, non-identical twins on either side of the border. And so the ladies of San Diego pop over to Tijuana to stock up on Prozac, and Viennese yuppies go whoring in Bratislava.
While all cities are hubs of forced coexistence, each city also has its own particular characteristics. The individual physical structure of each one profoundly conditions the forms and nature of this cohabitation. The spread of immigrant communities or formation of ghettos depends not only on the social capital of the individual ethnic groups and their migration flows, but also decidedly on property prices and transport services.
National models of integration are often talked about, but specific local factors may count even more. Factors such as the average size of apartments, the quality of urban decor, and the mix of residential and commercial areas may well be decisive. Maybe in the end it will be the rules for behaviour in the swimming pool or the opening times of discos that determine whether multicultural societies get on peacefully or turn into battlegrounds. Perhaps it is the specific chemistry of a city, at the end of the day, that makes the difference between melting pot and battleground.
