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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Robin Finlay
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2017 The Author. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group In this paper, I bring together ideas of ‘diaspora space’ and ‘the right to the city’ and empirically demonstrate how the formation of diasporas is frequently dependent on migrants attaining certain rights to the city. These rights, I argue, are conditioned and attained by the interplay of urban structural context with the place-making strategies of migrants. Drawing on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate that Moroccan migrants in Granada, Spain, have achieved a partial right to a neighbourhood of the city, producing a multi-sensory, self-orientalised diaspora space. First, I show that certain urban conditions in Granada provided a foothold for Moroccan migrants to begin to form a diaspora and transform urban space. Second, I demonstrate that through the mobilisation of a strategically self-orientalised cultural capital, the diaspora have partly appropriated the valuable history of Al-Andalus, a key component in the city’s tourist imagery. These factors and strategies have enabled Moroccan migrants to gain a right to have a visible presence in the city, a right to produce and transform urban space and a right to spatalise diverse identities – all key rights, I argue, in the formation of a diaspora.
Author(s): Finlay R
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Social and Cultural Geography
Year: 2019
Volume: 20
Issue: 6
Pages: 785-805
Online publication date: 15/09/2017
Acceptance date: 19/08/2016
Date deposited: 29/09/2017
ISSN (print): 1464-9365
ISSN (electronic): 1470-1197
Publisher: Routledge
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2017.1378920
DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2017.1378920
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