Multiscalar Perspectives: Studying and Theorizing about the Relationships Between Migrants and Cities

Abstract

This talk introduces a different perspective on the question of migration and urban regeneration than those common in debates on mobility, migrant integration, urban restructuring, and the struggles for rights to the city. I offer a multiscalar conjunctural examination of the relationships between migrants and cities. Multiscalar analysis explores the mutual constitution of the local, regional, national and global as processes of place making. Conjunctural analysis addresses transformations through time. Multiscalar conjunctural analysis is an approach that is simultaneously both a method and theoretical orientation directed towards the transformations of social, political, economic, and cultural practice within multiple, intersecting. hierarchical institutionally linked networks of power. Unlike other modes of examining the relationships between migrants and cities, multiscalar analysis offers an examination of the relationships of all of us everywhere to the dispossessive power of contemporary capitalism, as these relations of power are constituted and transformed. Therefore, this analysis paves the way for broader discussions of dispossession, displacement, emplacement, and a politics of social justice.

Biographical Note

Prof. Nina Glick Schiller (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany & University of Manchester, UK)
The grandchild of immigrants to New York City, Nina Glick Schiller has turned her lifelong interest in cities and migration into a comparative and historical perspective on migration, transnational and diasporic processes, methodological nationalism, urban restructuring and the displacements of poor and working people including migrants. Her research has been conducted in Haiti, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany and she has worked with migrants from all regions of the globe. She has published over 100 articles and nine books. Currently a co-editor of the international journal, Anthropological Theory, Glick Schiller is Emeritus Profess of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK; Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, USA; an Associate of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany and; Honorary Professor at the University of Aalborg, Denmark.