MIGAMBIANCE intends to explore aspects of migrants’ embodied practices, relations and encounters in urban areas through the looking-glass of urban ambiance, which both determines migrants’ presence on the urban space and is transformed because of it. Its empirical perspective is organized along different “landscapes” of urban ambiance in relation to migrants’ presence: “fearscapes”, referring to spaces marked by xenophobic reactions, racially motivated violence and police harassment; “ethnocscapes”, relating to the infrastructures created by the migrants themselves such as shops and associations; and “commonscapes”, accounting for solidarity initiatives producing common spaces for locals and migrants. The project is innovative in combining critical geographic literature from urban and migration studies with recent works on urban ambiances, enrich thus the scholarly debates on migrants’ contribution to the production of space and the right to the city. The project will explore the above through an innovative combination of quantitative and especially qualitative methodologies, which give voice to migrant subjects and incorporate their perspectives in the research process itself, allowing for the production of critical cartographies of migrants’ (right to) urban ambiance(s) in Athens and Thessaloniki. “
The research project “Migrants’ right to urban ambience: Fearscapes, ethnoscapes and commonscapes in Athens and Thessaloniki” (MIG-AMBIANCE) is supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the “3rd Call for H.F.R.I.’s Research Projects to Support Faculty Members & Researchers” (Project Number: 23517).
The research project is hosted in the School of Spatial Planning and Development at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).