Intersections of Social and Geographic Marginality in Contemporary Urban Spaces

University Of Vermont & State Agricultural College, Burlington VT

Investigators

Abstract

The research supported by this award investigates the complex and changing intersections between social marginality and geographic marginality in contemporary cities. Marginal urban spaces, such as highway underpasses, urban forests, and abandoned lots, increasingly are co-inhabited by distinct marginal groups who may differ in language, religion, culture, and history. The goal is to understand what transpires in these spaces, how the people who inhabit them relate to each other, how they relate to the rest of society, how the comings and goings of different groups may affect all of those relationships, and what these processes may reveal about marginality more broadly. The conjunction of social and geographic marginality is an increasingly visible global phenomenon but many aspects of its social dimensions remain unknown. Do the people in these spaces see themselves as marginal? Does co-habitation produce solidarity or competition? When new groups come in does that change opportunities and experiences of older, more established groups? Is this phenomenon best described as social segregation or hiding? In response to these and other unknowns, the fundamental concern of this research is to develop a general theory of how spatial and social marginality intersect wherever they co-occur. The research will be conducted by University of Vermont anthropologist Dr. Jonah A. Steinberg, who will employ the case study method, alongside a range of techniques of detailed spatial analysis and mapping. He has chosen to conduct the research in the industrial conurbation of Marseille, France, where a long-present pariah group, mobile Roma (sometimes erroneously called "Gypsies") from Danube and Balkan territory in Eastern Europe, are now overlapping extensively with Muslim refugees, in particular from Syria and Afghanistan. This is an appropriate site because it presents a convergence of forces that occur independently elsewhere: a large influx of migrants, attacks by members of transnational political movements, and ascendant nationalisms. He will focus his detailed spatial observations on four hyperdiverse zones of the city with high levels of intercultural contact, incorporating several marketplaces and sites of informal housing. Through participant observation, surveys, interviews, and archival research, with a focus on differentiating consistent inhabitants and shorter-term residents, he will collect data on both people and space, exploring through microspatial analytical methods precisely how individuals and families from multiple groups interact in urban marginal zones over variable scales of time. These data will be complemented with "life cartographies," map-like descriptions of trajectories through space over time elicited from individuals. Results from the research will be shared with policymakers and the research community, and, through partnerships with schools and museums, the broader public.