Assertion and Peaceful Co-Existence: Understanding Place Making in the Context of Migration in Urban Spaces

Urban spaces entails in itself complex network of people involved in the everyday processes of assertion and peaceful co-existence. The interaction between the various actors through various conceived and perceived ideas constantly reshape one’s experience of being in the city. Among them all, migration plays a major role in reorientation of places through the production of space. With increasing mobility into the city, new identities are created and with the passage of time, these identities reinvent new forms of assertion and place making. 

The restructuring and re-orientation of the place begins with re-organization of the history and the mental mapping of the place. Every generation would perceive the same place relatively in a newer and different fashion .The same place would mean different to different people at different times and the latest generation would claim their version as the best.  Herein would lie the role of hegemony which would not only determine the nature of the place to be understood by historians, sociologists and anthropologists but also the version of visualization that these people have through their expertise. The representation of the place would be determined by those in power who control the conceived universe of ideas. The name of places with its functionality change and any bitter cultural experience would also be reflected in the place.

Such narratives of spatial representation in the context of migration is immensely important because as nation states are becoming more rigid, settlements by  migrants or their descendants face severe existential challenges during any local or global crisis. Because the mental maps of settlements in the consciousness of non-migrant or local population is clouded by desired ideas of the hegemonic groups, as a result many a times any form of place making by any non-local group is taken as a threatening assertion. This not only hampers peaceful co-existence but imprints the negative stereotype about each other in the everyday perceived spaces. This analysis is an endeavour to examine how assertion and place making are important for fulfilling the standards of what we refer as urbane. Through some cases, I will put forward my point of the need of multiculturalism in the modern urban society and how place making is an important tool to ensure peaceful co-existence in the city.

Mukunda Upadhyay is with the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is currently finishing his PhD project “Migration and Urban Spaces: Exploring the Dynamics of Nepali and Bengali Migration in Assam”, focusing on the components like settlement history in urban areas by migrants, process of place making, intergenerational livelihood, negotiation of urban spatiality and identity formation in urban Assam. He works in Oxfam India as Programme Officer for disaster risk reduction activities in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and is also responsible for the implementation of the SIDA funded TROSA (Transboundary Rivers of South Asia) project in Uttar Pradesh working in collaboration with Indian partners and OXFAM Nepal.

The seminar is organized within the Research Program "Global Conflicts and Local Interactions" Strategy AV21.

Seminar will be held in English. No registration is needed.