Place, Culture and Vulnerability in the Metropolis: Conflicts and Implications for migrants

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Place, Culture and Vulnerability in the
Metropolis Conflicts and Implications for
migrants
Themed session Demography and the vulnerability
of populations THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON POPULATION GEOGRAPHIES 10-13 July 2007, Hong
Kong
Theme Vulnerability at stages in the migration
process departure, arrival, settlement and
integration

• Eduardo Marandola Jr.
• Institute of Geosciences, State University of
  Campinas, Brazil. eduardom_at_ige.unicamp.br
• Daniel Joseph Hogan
• Population Studies Center, State University of
  Campinas, Brazil. hogan_at_nepo.unicamp.br

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Population Vulnerability and Vulnerability of
Place

• The conjunctive perspective (holistic approach)
  includes space-society relationships there is no
  population vulnerability without vulnerability of
  place
• Because population vulnerability is configured
  from situations (population conditions) and
  position (relative localization), it is
  impossible to separate vulnerability from its
  spatiality
• Place is key to a comprehensive perspective on
  vulnerability, because it is in place that the
  materialization of multi-dimensional phenomena
  occurs

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Mobility, Culture and Place

• Mobility is an ambiguous phenomenon because it
  can produce or diminish vulnerability, involving
  both short and longer movements
• Movements may be of short distances from home and
  immediate life spaces
• Movements may also be to destinations farther
  from home (protection place par excellence)
• Mobility-generated risks are ambivalent
• Risks related to mobility (traffic, pollution,
  stress) may increase
• Risks of isolation from the fragmented social
  fabric may be diminished, allowing maintenance of
  relations and strengthening social capital

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An example for discussionmigrants in Sumaré,
São Paulo, Brazil
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Sumaré, Campinas Metropolitan Region (CMR), São
Paulo State, Brazil
CMR
SPMR
BSMR
Source IBGE, 2000.
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Campinas Metropolitan Region Urban Plan, Roads
and Railways
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Spatial mobility of population and migration

• Spatial mobility can both increase and diminish
  vulnerability
• The same is true of immobility it may represent
  organic relations (cultural and identity links)
  as well as the impossibility of mobility to
  search for better conditions
• Metropolitan spaces, as in Sumaré/Campinas, allow
  people to use these possibilities in varied
  forms the number of options for daily mobility
  is continually greater.
• Choices of migrants and non-migrants are based on
  different elements, affecting vulnerability
  directly

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Population dinamic 1970-2000
Source IBGE.
Source IBGE.

Estimativa.
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Migrants per year of residence in relation to the
population
Source IBGE.
Source IBGE.
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Time of the residence ininterrupted in the
curretily city - Sumaré, São Paulo, Brazil - 2000
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Migration origin (in July 1st 1995)
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Urban plan of Sumaré - fragmentation and areas
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Commuting
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Commuting
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Places and risks differences between migrants
and non-migrants

• This intense spatial mobility of the population,
  both migration and commuting, makes integration
  with the local systems of security difficult, and
  mobility (work, study, entertainment, family
  interactions) becomes part of a lifestyle,
  producing vulnerabilities beyond those of the
  city
• Both migrants and the city itself are always
  evolving, since there are many interruptions and
  discontinuities
• The relation with places is different from the
  relations established and maintained outside of
  the city (greater or lesser mobility)

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Especific vulnerabilities the migrants in
fragmentation space

• For upper and upper middle income migrants, the
  most significant vulnerability is existential
  lifestyle choices, mobility, violence, culture
  and leisure
• For lower and lower middle migrants, besides
  existential vulnerability, social vulnerability
  is very important where to work, cost of living,
  conditions of life, violence, poverty
• High mobility is put into motion in order to
  maintain relations with the place of origin or
  with other migrants from the same origin, as well
  as to satisfy the necessities of existential
  security

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Commuting and vulnerability of the city

• Commuting is an ambivalent element in the
  promotion of the existential security/insecurity
  it adds and it disaggregates in the same movement
• However, it increases the vulnerability of
  places, promoting new cultural and political ties
  which weaken involvement with places, and reduces
  their scope (housing is limited to the house
  itself, neighborhood and city diminishing in
  importance)
• Hyper-mobility makes cities and populations more
  vulnerable

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Perspectives and conclusions theoretical and
conceptual ways

• It is necessary to comprehend and investigate
  mobility-vulnerability relationships, in their
  multiple aspects
• Differences between migrants and non-migrants
  influence individual and collective vulnerability
  as vulnerability of place, since they interact
  with social and cultural dimensions in the
  production of space
• It is necessary to incorporate commuting in
  vulnerability studies, including other movements
  besides work and study, since in the contemporary
  metropolis all dimensions of the life of families
  are involved