Search

For refugees, arriving in a new place is inherently emotional – fraught with experiences of disorientation and fear of the unknown – but it can also be liberating and result in new connections. This article explores a series of questions around how forced displacement is experienced and turned into local emplacement. It is argued that it is important to recognize that global migration is grounded through attention to the ways in which such processes are locally lived and produced. I acknowledge that, on arrival, forced migrants become entangled in an infrastructure – laid out for them as a special category of migrants – that is directing them towards certain institutions and places; however, at the same time, I argue that this is not the only infrastructure which they use and explore. Starting from the issue of how refugees themselves try to build connections and find their way in a new city enables the exploration of potential overlaps, gaps and tensions between the official response to arrival and the everyday lived experiences of refugees. The city as a whole is explicitly taken as the unit of analysis in this article, without limitations to specific places dedicated to refugees or specific neighbourhoods where it is known that refugees arrive and/or are housed. It is argued that a focus on public and semi-public spaces is important as it allows an exploration of spaces that are meaningful to refugees and might result in new insights on connections or disconnections with already existing infrastructures. This approach offers more room for the unexpected – but also the mundane and the everyday – which all play an important part in the production of a counter-narrative against the formal and institutionalized way of framing the arrival of refugees in which refugees’ own experiences are the more central focus.

We reason that the dominant migrant-network approach enables us to understand the (differentiated) choices of migrants during their journeys while not denying their agency, but also faces several limitations in terms of the rigid understanding of localities, the narrow focus on linkages that matter and the neglect of reciprocal exchange and obligations. This comes at the expense of the explanatory power of this approach in contemporary society, where migration control is omnipresent and migrants’ journeys are much more fragmented in time and place. We suggest not to restrict this approach to the given points in our social networks (relatives, friends, co-nationals) that facilitate the migrants’ journeys but, instead, opt for a broad, holistic, and dynamic perspective on them, in which human and non-human actors, strong and weak ties, old and new linkages as well as the obligations that exist and are created within these interactions should be centre.

The city – rather than the state – plays an important role in refugee youth’s everyday experiences. In this chapter, we draw upon participatory research among young refugees and asylum seekers in Amsterdam to illustrate the lived experiences of these youngsters in public spaces in the urban fabric of Amsterdam. We illustrate their favourite places, the use and meaning of these spaces, and how these spaces impact their sense of belonging in both the Netherlands and Amsterdam. The findings show that it is not self-evident for refugee youth who are new to the city to immediately exploit the potential of public space. Semi-public spaces can fill an important role in providing a safe and meaningful space for refugees’ integration and participation in society. At the same time it is not self-evident to transmit these encounters beyond these semi-public places, which illustrates that conviviality is spatially bound to specific places.