The Role of Arrival Areas for Migrant Integration and Resource Access

Abstract

Research on socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods with high numbers of migrants tends to problematise such areas as hindering upward social mobility and further enhancing disadvantage. However, an emerging body of research on arrival areas is highlighting how such areas can provide newcomers with specific arrival resources, helping them to come to grips with their new circumstances. This article provides a conceptual overview and discussion of this newly emerging body of literature on urban arrival areas in the Global North. It argues that arrival areas offer infrastructures which can provide important support for newcomers, ranging from overcoming day-to-day problems to potentially enabling social mobility. In many cases, previous migrants act as knowledge brokers facilitating newcomers’ access to resources. The article shows how different forms of arrival-specific knowledge can be found in these areas, facilitating the exchange of resources across different migrant groups and across localities. However, arrival-specific infrastructures can be both enabling and disabling with regard to social mobility, as they often emerge in contexts of underlying disadvantage and discrimination where access to resources such as housing and jobs can be highly contentious. The article argues that understanding the dynamics of urban arrival areas and infrastructures and their specific role in providing resources for newcomers can contribute to our knowledge on integration and help us rethink the role of policymaking and urban planning in increasingly complex and mobile urban societies.

Channelling mobilities: migrant-owned businesses as mobility infrastructures

“…They include a wide range of actors, such as state or religious institutions, NGOs, or social networks and are often concentrated in neighbourhoods characterised by great levels of diversity and a high number of immigrant newcomers. In these areas, newcomers can access resources that ease the arrival and settlement process, which may include information on housing, the local labour market, language courses or processes of documentation (Hall, King, and Finlay 2017;Hanhörster and Wessendorf 2020). However, Felder et al (2020) point out that arrival infrastructure may also create inhospitable environments and enhance forms of exclusion, e.g.…”

“…However, Felder et al (2020) point out that arrival infrastructure may also create inhospitable environments and enhance forms of exclusion, e.g. by directing and locking newcomers into low paid jobs (Hanhörster and Wessendorf 2020).…”

Migrants’ Access to the Rental Housing Market in Germany: Housing Providers and Allocation Policies

“…As in many other countries in Europe, there has been a decades-long political and academic discourse in Germany on the effects of social and sometimes explicit ethnic segregation and on ways of combating it. Much research highlights the benefits of living (at least temporarily) in migrant neighbourhoods ('urban enclave'; Zhou, 2009), pointing to forms of voluntary (ethnic) segregation based on migrants' housing preferences, e.g., regarding local networks or migrant infrastructures (Hanhörster & Wessendorf, 2020). However, a critical view of ethnic segregation remains dominant in local housing policy.…”

The Role of Natio‐Ethno‐Cultural Difference in Narratives of Neighbourhood Change – An Arrival Area in the East German Context

“…An instructive example is the city of Leipzig, whose demographic development was characterised by distinct out-migration processes after reunification, but which recently shows strong population growth and is considered a pioneer in terms of international migration in the new federal states of Germany (Bernt 2019). Using the example of an 'arrival' neighbourhood (Saunders 2010;Haase et al 2020;Hanhörster & Wessendorf 2020), the paper examines how differentiated exclusions and belongings referring to 'migration' are reflected and reproduced in media discourses and subjectivities of local actors. The following complimentary research questions are at the heart of the analysis:…”