Performing the nation between us: urban photographic sets with young migrants

Tania Rossetto

doi:10.11143/45271

Abstract

First developed during the 1990s, the transnational paradigm in the study of migration has been associated with the notions of displacement, deterritorialisation and frictionless-ness. In more recent times, there has been a growing tendency to spatially ground transnational studies by locating and emplacing transnational practices. The emergence of the so-called transnational urbanism has led to a prolific urban stream within transnational research. With respect to the growing diversity of Western societies, this literature has tended to emphasise the potentialities of the city as the location of lived diversity, sharing, dynamism, vibrancy and encounter, in contrast to the deficiencies of the nation , identified with formal politics, discourse and ideology, singular belonging, fixity and constraint. Against this narrative of the city/nation divide, this article draws attention to the alternative conceptualisations of the nation that have emerged in recent debates and have embraced local, material and agency-based, rather than discursively-oriented approaches to the nation. As well as the city/nation divide, a progressive idea of the nation as shared experiences is analysed within an urban performance project which involved young migrants in the city of Padua (Italy) during winter 2013. These performances are read from the particular perspective of the scale debate, suggesting that, through the performance of urban heritage sites, those migrants physically and emotionally locate themselves within the hosting nation . Finally, I discuss this scalar shift and I propose extrapolating the concept of the “urban unconscious” to the national level, thus suggesting a way to think about the nation as a frame of co-existence and not as an identity bond.

Highlights

Since the 1990s, research on migration has focused primarily on transnationality, exploring transnational communities, ties, citizenship and belonging
Reflections on transnational urbanism and urban citizenship show how transnational studies have increasingly opposed the conceptualisation of the city to that of the nation-state
This article has aimed to reflect upon what seems to be a persistent conceptualization of the city as successful, and of the nation as inadequate, in the capacity of managing diversity within our growingly multicultural societies

Summary

Introduction

Since the 1990s, research on migration has focused primarily on transnationality, exploring transnational communities, ties, citizenship and belonging. Associated with the ideas of displacement and deterritorialisation, the transnational approach more recently has, at least partially, acknowledged the centrality of place. While some studies emphasise the deterritorialised, highly mobile and fragmented experiences of transmigrants, other concentrate on local/plurilocal/translocal attachments and relations (Blunt 2007: 687). The research on the local has brought the city and urban scale into focus. Reflections on transnational urbanism and urban citizenship show how transnational studies have increasingly opposed the conceptualisation of the city to that of the nation-state. The cities, as compared to nation-states, are revivified for their greater ability to face global processes and multicultural societies (Holston & Appadurai 1996). The recent emerging debates on the crisis of multiculturalism and, above all, the intercultural city approach (Wood & Landry 2008) strongly ar-

Objectives

Conclusion