Contested bodies in a regenerating city: post-migrant men’s contingent citizenship, parkour and diaspora spaces (original) (raw)
Related papers
Urban spaces in contemporary Italy are currently contested sites where competing images of society, politics and citizenship are constructed and negotiated. While at a national level widespread xenophobic discourses classify migration as a security and public order problem, and define immigrants and their children as alien bodies in Italian cities, at a local level the leadership and cultural entrepreneurs of Turin based the city urban renewal on an image of multiculturalism and inclusiveness with the aim to attract visitors and capital investments. As the intersection of such discourses shape the manifold ways through which (post)migrant bodies become represented, perceived and addressed in contemporary Turin, this paper will address how such dynamics are negotiated by groups of children of migration between 16 and 21 years old practicing capoeira and parkour in Turin public spaces. The focus on capoeira and parkour, two lifestyle sports which emplace the body in public spaces, enabled this study to highlight how groups of (post)migrant youth used these practices to negotiate spaces and processes of inclusion, and exclusion, in Turin's cityscape. Capoeira and parkour represented meaningful sites of analysis, as practices wrought with contradictions indicative of current trends within Turin's urban politics. Both disciplines are abundantly endorsed by public-private events celebrating Turin's renewal, vibrancy and diversity. However, the participants' spontaneous, and often unrequested, engagement with these disciplines in public spaces often creates frictions and conflicts between them and other members of the public in relation to what constitutes the public, how it should be used, and by whom. The analysis of the participants' engagement with capoeira and parkour in Turin's regenerating cityscape, enabled to illuminate the shifting meaning of citizenship in the context of research, and articulate it to the reciprocal constitution of bodies, spaces, and power relations in a less-thancoherent assemblage of neoliberal urban regeneration.
The following paper aims to contribute to an interdisciplinary field of enquiry addressing the ways in which lifestyle and informal sports can inform policy debate and development at various levels. It will do so by considering the ambivalent position that parkour is taking within policies of urban and community re-branding enacted in Turin, Italy. Parkour in Turin is an increasingly structured discipline often endorsed by events celebrating the city’s vibrancy, and by local projects that target youth, and promote social participation. However, this discipline implies also a spontaneous and irreverent engagement with urban spaces that often creates frictions and conflicts between traceurs (parkour practitioners) and other actors in relation to what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research with a group of 20 traceurs predominantly of migrant origins, this study focuses on the participants’ ambivalent engagement with one project promoting social participation through sports in Turin’s urban spaces. Building on the ethnographic material, this paper addresses the emerging relationship between social projects, informal urban practices and emerging forms of creative urbanism. The discussion focuses on the ambiguities and fault lines of urban agendas incorporating lifestyle and informal sports in their (neoliberal) vocabulary of community and place regeneration. However, this paper calls also for the necessity to engage with spontaneous, informal physical practices as a way to acknowledge, and support existing, contested negotiations of citizenship and belonging in urban spaces.
CONTESTED BODIES, CONTESTED CITIES: (POST)MIGRANT YOUTH AND CONTINGENT CITIZENSHIP IN TURIN, ITALY
Urban spaces in contemporary Italy are currently contested sites where competing images of society, politics and citizenship are constructed and negotiated. While at a national level widespread xenophobic discourses classify migration as a security and public order problem, and define immigrants and their children as alien bodies in Italian cities, at a local level the leadership and cultural entrepreneurs of Turin based the city urban renewal on an image of multiculturalism and inclusiveness with the aim to attract visitors and capital investments. As the intersection of such discourses shape the manifold ways through which (post)migrant bodies become represented, perceived and addressed in contemporary Turin, this paper will address how such dynamics are negotiated by groups of children of migration between 16 and 21 years old practicing capoeira and parkour in Turin public spaces. The focus on capoeira and parkour, two lifestyle sports which emplace the body in public spaces, enabled this study to highlight how groups of (post)migrant youth used these practices to negotiate spaces and processes of inclusion, and exclusion, in Turin's cityscape. Capoeira and parkour represented meaningful sites of analysis, as practices wrought with contradictions indicative of current trends within Turin's urban politics. Both disciplines are abundantly endorsed by public-private events celebrating Turin's renewal, vibrancy and diversity. However, the participants' spontaneous, and often unrequested, engagement with these disciplines in public spaces often creates frictions and conflicts between them and other members of the public in relation to what constitutes the public, how it should be used, and by whom. The analysis of the participants' engagement with capoeira and parkour in Turin's regenerating cityscape, enabled to illuminate the shifting meaning of citizenship in the context of research, and articulate it to the reciprocal constitution of bodies, spaces, and power relations in a less-thancoherent assemblage of neoliberal urban regeneration.
2016
The following paper aims to contribute to an interdisciplinary debate between studies on “the physical” (Silk et al., 2015), the urban condition, migration and multicultural/super-diverse societies, by exploring how groups of (post)migrant youth practicing parkour engaged emerging forms of social and spatial restructuring characterizing cities like Turin, Italy. Taking cue from Lefebvre's argument that “space originates from the body” (1991, p. 242) this paper does not aim to address the practices of (post)migrant youth in cities, as merely containers of social practices and relations (Glick Schiller and Caglar, 2011; Schmoll and Semi, 2013), but focuses on the relationship between young men of migrant descent and the city of Turin, thus exploring how participants practices negotiated, and were made part of the process of repositioning and restructuring of their city of settlement. The ethnographic exploration of participants' engagement with parkour in Turin's public s...
2016
This thesis illustrates the relationship between body and space in the process of identity construction amongst groups of young men of migrant origins between 16 and 21 practicing capoeira and parkour in Turin's public spaces. Urban spaces in contemporary Turin, Italy, are contested sites where competing images of society, politics and citizenship are (re)produced and negotiated. While at a national level, widespread xenophobic discourses define immigrants and their children as alien bodies in Italian cities, Turin leaderships and cultural entrepreneurs aiming to attract visitors and capital investments have based the city's urban renewal on an image of multiculturalism and inclusiveness. The intersection of such discourses shapes the manifold ways through which immigrant bodies, and identities, become valorised, pathologised and essentialised in Turin. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research conducted with a multi-method qualitative approach, this study explores h...
Patterns of Prejudice, 2016
Rather than being seen as citizens, the children of immigrants are portrayed as a population to be controlled and contained across Europe. In Italy today, debates about cultural authenticity and renewed nationalism accompany waves of moral panic that depict a country under siege by illegal and unwanted immigrants. Specifically in cities, immigrants and their children are imagined and portrayed as alien and out of place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic research in Turin, Italy, with children of immigrants aged between 16 and 21, Ugolotti and Moyer illustrate how these youth make use of their bodies through capoeira and parkour practices to contest and reappropriate public spaces, thereby challenging dominant visions about what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. They analyse the 'body in place' to understand how the children of immigrants navigate unequal spatial relations and challenge dominant regimes of representation, while also attempting to improve their life conditions and reach their personal goals.
Rather than being seen as citizens, the children of immigrants are portrayed as a population to be controlled and contained across Europe. In Italy today, debates about cultural authenticity and renewed nationalism accompany waves of moral panic that depict a country under siege by illegal and unwanted immigrants. Specifically in cities, immigrants and their children are imagined and portrayed as alien and out of place. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic research in Turin, Italy, with children of immigrants aged between 16 and 21, Ugolotti and Moyer illustrate how these youth make use of their bodies through capoeira and parkour practices to contest and reappropriate public spaces, thereby challenging dominant visions about what constitutes the public, how it should be used and by whom. They analyse the 'body in place' to understand how the children of immigrants navigate unequal spatial relations and challenge dominant regimes of representation, while also attempting to improve their life conditions and reach their personal goals.
The following paper aims to contribute to an interdisciplinary debate between studies on “the physical” (Silk et al., 2015), the urban condition, migration and multicultural/super-diverse societies. It will do so by exploring how groups of young men of migrant origins practicing parkour in urban spaces engaged emerging forms of social and spatial restructuring characterizing the rebranding of cities like Turin, Italy. Taking cue from Lefebvre's argument that “space originates from the body” (1991, p. 242) this paper does not aim to address the practices of (post)migrant youth in cities, as merely containers of social practices and relations (Glick Schiller and Çağlar, 2011; Schmoll and Semi, 2013), but focuses on the relationship between young men of migrant descent and the city of Turin, thus exploring how participants practices negotiated, and were made part of the process of repositioning and restructuring of their city of settlement. The ethnographic exploration of participants' engagement with parkour in Turin's public spaces will enable to articulate local processes of urban redevelopment with emerging global patterns of transnational gentrification (Sigler and Wachsmuth, 2015) and surveillance orientations (Manley and Silk, 2014; Bauman and Lyon, 2013) taking place in (First World) regenerating urban areas. Addressing the relationship between processes of urban renewal, subjectivity and emerging unequal definitions of citizenship this paper will finally explore participants' ambivalent practice of parkour as a counter-conduct (Foucault, 2007 [1978]). Through this conceptual lens this paper will address the fault lines of the city's advanced government of difference, and account for participants' negotiation of (contingent) citizenship through their situational physical and spatial re-appropriation of urban spaces.
The right to the city: outdoor informal sport and urban belonging in multicultural spaces
Annals of Leisure Research, 2020
Studies on ‘everyday multiculturalism’ and ‘lived multiculture’ have advanced knowledge on the kinds of inclusive everyday spaces and practices that characterize our culturally complex, mobile and superdiverse cities. This paper expands this agenda by exploring informal sporting and leisure interactions amongst migrant and ethnically diverse urban populations. Embedded in a larger comparative city project that examines how urban environments and wider social structures mediate inclusions and exclusions of urban dwellers, this paper presents a case study of temporary migrant workers in Singapore and their participation in outdoor informal sport. It deploys Lefebvre’s notion of ‘Right to the City’ to understand city dwellers’ access to urban resources and their collective ability to democratically inhabit the city. Despite structural constraints imposed on marginalized migrants, the nature of informal sport, the spontaneous coming together to play, creative use of public space and a range of convivial practices, generate a sense of urban belonging.
The aim of this special issue is to discuss the urban space through the lens of interpretation of the concept of “community of practice”. By focusing on specific places (gyms, sports fields, dance halls, etc..) But also squares and streets located in certain urban contexts (the outskirts of Bologna Bolognina, the sports facilities of Trento, Cagliari and still in the district of Brooklin New York) study the practices of everyday life of men and women, boys and girls, girls and boys (with a cut so transgenerational) that share physical spaces and relationship by virtue of their practice the same sport (boxing, ballet, vodou dance, soccer, cricket etc.) or the same physical bodily activities (those who frequent gyms etc.). These learning processes, body, within physical locations structured or in urban situations spatio-temporally less certain in fact result in “practical” knowledge embedded in giving relevance to the daily life of the protagonists of this research through a continuous production and reproduction of senses and meanings that have value even outside of space and time sports. Knowledge that influence the way in which they build their identity as citizens and that is relevant about their citizenship. In this framework, the methodology we use to investigate what lies behind the normal course of daily life within these settings can only be that ethnography. Telling the point of view of these “practitioners” meant for researchers authors of these essays build relationships of trust with them, use tools such as life histories, the free, in-depth interview, participant observation and sometimes do observant participation. The sport, in a Manichean division between work and leisure, it is commonly considered an “minor”, of leisure, a “safety valve” of a society that is increasingly crushed to a size and a conception of hyper-productive of life. Still, the sense that the “inhabitants” of these gyms urban damage to the sport is not reducible to a simple physical activity. As you become footballers, dancers, boxers, or, more simply, a gym- goers? As in these places or urban contexts produces and reproduces a knowledge on the body? You only know about a body or a knowledge that through the body becomes a means of belonging to a “community”? The concept of “communities of practice” allows us to analyze these places as laboratories construction of subjectivity and “urbanity” as well as a time were the old artisan shops scattered throughout the city. What is produced in our cities today? What are the new arts to teach? Who are the masters and apprentices who? How is the knowledge inside them? There are new forms of learning in the city body that are also expressed according to other trajectories less institutionalized? The existence of fitness gyms, boxing, dance, football pitches and cricket thought of as areas for recreation, mental well-being and socialization through the exercise of a sport or physical, must be seen to ' interior of a wider reflection on the relationship between body and space and place that must cover corporeality in urban space. There are such bodies which are considered the “natural” occupants of specific urban spaces and others that are considered “out of place” or as the “invaders” as they become visible in !1 places that were not intended for them. At the same time, the emergence of new bodily practices directly in the urban space and outside of these places specifically deputies physical activity, describes new processes of appropriation of the city and the construction of citizenship that deserve to be investigated in more depth. The spatial dimension is essential in sports, whether it takes place in a public or private space, in a regime of gratuity or payment. Social actors do not move it in a vacuum space-time, but are in a continuous dialectical relationship with spaces. In defining the blurred boundaries between sport and geography and highlighting the centrality of two fundamental concepts such as “place” and “space” there are scholars who define the sport as “a space science.” From here the link that we want to develop in this issue between sport and urban areas, between bodies and cities, including differences and socio-spatial urban.