Navigating Urban Life in Lisbon: A Study of Migrants’ Mobilities and Use of Space

Abstract

Besides a more general concern over transport infrastructure, its quality and availability, mobility is also a pre-condition for city dwellers to access urban resources, facilities, employment, local services and leisure. Moreover, mobility allows urban inhabitants to uncover a city's potentialities and to fully participate in urban life. Migrants, nevertheless, face the issue of learning to do mobility in a new environment together with the urgency for settlement, finding work, making personal connections and attending to the mundane needs of everyday life that require one to move about. This article looks at migrants' urban mobilities in Lisbon, Portugal, from two perspectives. First, we look at migrants' urban knowledge and skills and at how they employ their abilities to use Lisbon's urban resources. Second, we address some of the ways placespecific urban resources of a religious nature sustain and are sustained by various (im)mobility practices. More specifically, we look to a suburban mosque run by Guinean migrants and to a Sikh Gurdwara. This mobile/place-based contrast points to the variegated (and often overlooked) forms of mobility (or lack of) that are put to practice by migrants and to how they shape the everyday of migration journeys and their capacities to enjoy city-living.

Integration, urban citizenship, and spatial aspects of (new) mobilities: Greek migrants' constructions of integration in European cities

“…Existing research on migrant integration focuses predominantly on migrants and refugees from the Global South. Even the growing field of urban studies which explores intergroup relations and coexistence in local contexts (Buhr, 2018; Buhr & McGarrigle, 2017; Cwerner, 2001; Griffiths, 2014), has not shown considerable interest in the study of intra‐European migration. As it is aforementioned, this tendency reflects (at least partly) particular understandings of Europeanness and ‘otherness’ which conceal important intra‐European hierarchies and divisions and stigmatize mobilities from non‐European/non‐western countries.…”

Space, time, and urban citizenship: Reconsidering migrant integration in critical social psychological research

“…Departing from the idea that to “be integrated” to urban space involves being able to navigate it and being aware of its resources, Buhr (2018) has explored the ways in which migrants learn to use the city of Lisbon, Portugal. Urban strategies, experiences and narratives formulate migrants as skillful agents in the practice of city life and in the process of “becoming local,” tracing migrants' spatial integration and mobility within a situated effort as active local actors (see also Buhr & McGarrigle, 2017). Also, Wessendorf and Phillimore (2019) have focused on sociability of emplacement in newcomers' social relations when settling in the United Kingdom, on how these relations evolve over time and on their implications on their sense of belonging and access to resources (see also Goodson & Phillimore, 2008; Noussia & Lyons, 2009).…”

Migrants’ Mental Maps: Unpacking Inhabitants’ Practical Knowledges in Lisbon

“…Yet, learning how to use a city does not happen from one day to the other, nor does it result from internalizing a compendium of ready-made urban information: urban apprenticeship takes time and comes about as city dwellers interact with urban space in order to comply with the practicalities of everyday life. Migrants, nevertheless, face the challenge of learning how to attend to those everyday needs in a new environment together with the urgency for settlement, finding work, services, leisure and making personal connections (Buhr & McGarrigle, 2017). Migrants' urban practical knowledges become, therefore, a privileged standpoint from which to understand their connections to urban resources and the kinds of urban experience available to them.…”