Migration, Urbanity and Cosmopolitanism in a Globalized World: An Introduction

Overview & Synopsis

Globalization and migration have generated acute and often contradictory changes: they have increased social diversity while inducing global homogenization; they have sharpened differentiation of spaces and statuses while accelerating and amplifying communication and circulations; they have induced more complex social stratification while enriching individual and collective identities. These changes happen to be strikingly visible in cities. Urban contexts, indeed, offer privileged sites of inquiry to understanding the social dynamics of globalization, informal belonging and local citizenships, transient and multi-layered identities, symbolic orders and exclusionary practices. But cities are also material sites and they create multisensorial scapes that shape experiences of globalization and social change. They operate through multiple scales, connecting horizontal extensions and vertical layers of the city with generic, landmark, interstitial and neglected places. Far from being mere contexts, cities are both changing and being changed by migration and globalization.