Arrival city: how the largest migration in history is reshaping our world

Abstract

One of the greatest anomalies in the social sciences is the ever increasing tendency to subdivide. Migration is one unfortunate victim. There is a field of research called 'migration studies', different and distinct from urban studies, and development studies. In a debate with the economist Gustav Ranis, the distinguished migration scholar, Stephen Castles argued for a holistic approach towards migration studies in his paper for the Social Science Research Council Conference, held from 28 February to 1 March, 2008 in New York. I too consider this fragmentation disturbing. Urban scholars have always been interested in migration and, while urbanism is not all about migration, migration constitutes an important part of the field. The subdivision and territorialisation lead to a loss in our understanding of the migration phenomenon. In Arrival City, the journalist, Doug Saunders tries to see both like an urbanist and a migration writer. Seeing as an urbanist, he explains the processes of rural-urban migration and how cities across the world are expanding because of an urban drift of dwellers in the countryside. Wearing the hat of a migrationist, he describes how migration into some of the world's biggest cities such as Nairobi, and London, Toronto, Amsterdam, and Istanbul is changing their urban environment. From both perspectives, cities are important. To this extent, Arrival City has a similar emphasis as Triumph of the City, a book written by Harvard University economist, Edward Glaeser. The concept of 'arrival city' refers to various experiences. The arrival city is that part of the village which has become urbanised. It is also that part of the already established city where migrants first settle when they move away from their village. The arrival city is the part of Paris and Chicago, among other cities of the world, where transnational migrants settle when they arrive in the host country for the first time. These parts of the city serve as springboard for migrants to jump to the more affluent neighbourhoods. Although the arrival city may be regarded as the 'margins' (p. 57), it is 'neither rural nor urban' (p. 16). It is the peri-urban. The arrival city performs many functions but, according to Saunders, its most important function is to provide opportunities for social mobility. Synonyms such as the 'gateway city' (p. 82) clearly emphasise this function. Others such as 'outskirts' (p. 71), 'slum' (p. 11), 'informal settlement' (p. 13), and 'informal economy' (p. 41) are commonly used in reference to the lack of such opportunities, but they also connote or constitute 'arrival'. The author believes that 'arrival cities' should be encouraged, defended, and extended. While he identifies a few failed 'arrival cities' such as many settlements in Chad, Ethiopia, and Niger, He argues that they would disappear if there were investment in title formalisation, education, financialisation, and entrepreneurship (p. 270). The test of an 'arrival city' is based on how much social mobility role it performs. Proof that some r...

New power configurations: City mobilization and policy change

“…These persons, their vision and commitment, have no doubt advanced progress. However, the secret weapon-the surprise element-comes from the potential of local leaders to build vision, ideas, and consensus from the ground up (Barber, 2013;Saunders, 2011;Miller, 2020). As presented elsewhere, what changes from the 2013 period onward is mayors began via established global platforms and through the use of social media, to convey: 'this is how it should be done, and this is how it can be done' .…”