Migrant infrastructure: Transaction economies in Birmingham and Leicester, UK

Infrastructure convenes social relations, thereby revealing how city dwellers access shared resources in the context of growing inequality. Our exploration of migrant infrastructure engages with how highly variegated migrant groups develop a ‘transaction economy’ (Simone, 2004) within marginalised c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2017-05, Vol.54 (6), p.1311-1327
Main Authors: Hall, Suzanne, King, Julia, Finlay, Robin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Birmingham England
Cities
Context
Cultural property
Decolonization
Deprivation
Deprived urban areas
Economic analysis
Empirical analysis
Inequality
Informal economy
Information services
Infrastructure
Insecure
Intergovernmental relations
Leicester England
Locality
Migrant workers
Migrants
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Postcolonialism
Power
Public infrastructure
Resourcefulness
Resources
Roads & highways
Self employment
Social relations
Streets
Texture
Transactions
United Kingdom
Urban studies
Value
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Summary:Infrastructure convenes social relations, thereby revealing how city dwellers access shared resources in the context of growing inequality. Our exploration of migrant infrastructure engages with how highly variegated migrant groups develop a ‘transaction economy’ (Simone, 2004) within marginalised city streets, exchanging goods and services, and information and care. In the context of ethnically diverse and deprived urban places, where state resources are increasingly diminished, we explore how a precarious yet skilled resourcefulness emerges through the street. Our empirical exploration of migrant infrastructure is located on Rookery Road in Birmingham and on Narborough Road in Leicester, and draws on qualitative surveys with 195 self-employed proprietors from many countries of origin. The streets reveal transaction economies that intersect local and migratory resources, eluding the categorisation of cities associated with either a global North or a global South. Further, the lively nature of street transactions decentres westerncentric measures of economic value. From the street, we develop a postcolonial analysis of infrastructure that relates properties of historic depth (power), socio-spatial texture (materiality) and locality (place).
ISSN:0042-0980
1360-063X
DOI:10.1177/0042098016634586