Convivial reflexivity in the changing city – a tale of hospitality or hostility?

Afroditi-Maria Koulaxi

doi:10.1177/13678779211055490

Abstract

The article interrogates whether citizens’ (embodied) encounters with migrant populations (newcomers and settled) enable or hinder convivial reflexivity in a multicultural city of compounded crises. Convivial reflexivity refers to the embodied process of identity-making that is rooted in the context of everyday life and emerges at the juncture of embodied encounters with the Other and the intense mediation of migration that shapes citizens’ perceptions and practices. The article draws on a four-month intense ethnographic study in an Athenian neighbourhood and reveals how, even in a very tense environment of crises and intensified racism, everyday encounters in the city could mediate class solidarities and support the emergence of networked commons against national and racial hierarchies. The article aims to move beyond claims of conviviality as a natural outcome of urban encounters, and instead to reveal a convivial reflexivity that understands urban encounters as an assemblage of cognition, affect and embodiment.

Highlights

Changing cities in the context of migrationProcesses of globalization and post-industrialization that have led to the continuing rise in new patterns of migration have changed the city and redefined its cultural boundaries.International Journal of Cultural Studies 0(0)Cities have historically been primary destinations for migrants seeking opportunities for a better life (De Genova, 2015; Isin, 2002)
How are citizens’ identities shaped when living with non-citizens in such close proximity and having to negotiate their spatial and ideological boundaries for peaceful coexistence? The following section synthesizes ideas that address the notion of togetherness-in-difference through the concepts of reflexivity and conviviality, with a particular focus on embodied encounters in order to gain an understanding of citizens’ identities in the context of globalization and intense mediated communication in the changing city
The last section of this article will bring the concepts of reflexivity and conviviality together to explain how participants in this study rely on affect, embodiment and cognition in the process of identity-making, as well as to critique existing literature that celebrates conviviality as being the endpoint in politics of living with difference

Summary

Introduction

Changing cities in the context of migrationProcesses of globalization and post-industrialization that have led to the continuing rise in new patterns of migration have changed the city and redefined its cultural boundaries.International Journal of Cultural Studies 0(0)Cities have historically been primary destinations for migrants seeking opportunities for a better life (De Genova, 2015; Isin, 2002). The following section synthesizes ideas that address the notion of togetherness-in-difference through the concepts of reflexivity and conviviality, with a particular focus on embodied encounters in order to gain an understanding of citizens’ identities in the context of globalization and intense mediated communication in the changing city.

Results

Conclusion