Relearning space after migration
Type de matériel :
39
This article explores the central role of space in processes of socialization after migration. Based on an ethnographic study of immigrants from Latin America living in Oakland, California, we compare the uses and representations of the city and the neighborhood in two distinct social groups among the immigrant working classes of the Fruitvale neighborhood. First, we analyze the conditions under which different ways of seeing and understanding one’s neighborhood and city in everyday life emerge. We analyze how the social group in the country of origin, gender, and family relations in the US all participate in this process. Indeed, social position, group dynamics, and the material resources individuals possess when they arrive in the US condition the ways in which immigrant men and women “learn space” after emigrating: how they move through the city, but also how and why they come to view its subspaces positively or negatively. Despite the observed diversity in the ways in which space is utilized and viewed, we see that the Fruitvale neighborhood operates as a common frame of reference from which these immigrant men and women situate themselves both geographically and socially. This allows us to see how divergent spatial socializations lead to different working-class lifestyles and reveals the social inequalities that exist within immigrant working-class groups established in the US.
Réseaux sociaux