Abstract
Although ‘arrival infrastructure’ is central to the experience of migrants arriving in a new city, is it sufficient to form a ‘hospitable milieu’? Our article compares newcomers’ experiences with ‘arrival infrastructure’ in two European cities: Brussels and Geneva. Based on ethnographic research with 49 migrants who arrived a few months earlier, we show that arrival infrastructure is Janus-faced. On one hand, it welcomes newcomers and contributes to making the city hospitable. On the other hand, it rejects, deceives and disappoints them, forcing them to remain mobile—to go back home, go further afield, or just move around the city—in order to satisfy their needs and compose what we will call a ‘hospitable milieu.’ The arrival infrastructure’s inhospitality is fourfold: linked firstly to its limitations and shortcomings, secondly to the trials or tests newcomers have to overcome in order to benefit from the infrastructure, thirdly to the necessary forms of closure needed to protect those who have just arrived and fourthly to those organising and managing the infrastructure, with divergent conceptions of hospitality. By using the notion of milieu and by embedding infrastructure into the broader question of hospitality, we open up an empirical exploration of its ambiguous role in the uncertain trajectories of newcomers.
Highlights
The notion of ‘arrival infrastructure’ has increasingly been used over the last five years to describe the places, services, institutions, technologies and practices with which migrants are confronted in their process of arrival in a new city
By mobilising the notion of milieu, we aim to emphasise that studying a network of infrastructures is not sufficient: What matters is to understand their role in the making of a ‘hospitable milieu’ that allows for each newcomer, alone or collectively, to take her place— temporarily or in the long term—in the city
We claim that such a shift towards both the question of hospitality and the processual concept of milieu is necessary in order to account for the Janus-faced nature of arrival infrastructure
Summary
The notion of ‘arrival infrastructure’ has increasingly been used over the last five years to describe the places, services, institutions, technologies and practices with which migrants are confronted in their process of arrival in a new city. It welcomes newcomers and contributes to making the city hospitable. Arrival infrastructure even leads newcomers to reconsider their project of settling and to continue their journey. The limitation of accessibility implies that benefiting from infrastructure requires overcoming certain trials or tests. These can be administrative (filling out a form) or logistical (arriving at a particular location or picking up a ticket in the morning to get a meal at noon). Geneva is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, offering rather large and diverse arrival infrastructure. Some newcomers do not wish to stay in Brussels, but rather see the Belgian capital as a stopover on their way to England.
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