The spatial dimension of shifting commonsensical understandings

Abstract

In this article, I engage with the spatial dimensions of Gramsci’s work and look at common sense through a primarily spatial lens. I discuss how changing commonsensical understandings concerning migration do more than redefine persons as “migrants” or “non-migrants.” As such, I underline how socio-spatial relations are also renegotiated symbolically, in practice, and on multiple scales. Thereby, I take the role of common sense in Lefebvre’s idea of spatial production as an entry point for the analysis. I then link this perspective to migration scholarship that discusses how the relational positioning of localities at specific historic conjunctures influences the differentiation between “migrants” and “non-migrants.” The empirical material was gathered in two fieldwork periods in 2011 and 2018 in the Monte Laa neighborhood of Vienna, Austria. I describe the repositioning of the neighborhood in everyday practices and commonsensical imaginaries both in an urban context and the transnational context of Central and Southeast European space. Comparing commonsensical imaginaries from 2018 with those from 2011, the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis” emerges as a moment of conjunctural rupture.