Making Heimat
Pablo Garrido Arnaiz
Guillem Pujol Borràs
Júlia Trias Jurado
You have theorized about the incapacity of the term “migration” to define the current migration phenomena, incapable to grasp the nuances and complexities this entails. What could be a more appropriate way to define or refer to these current phenomena? There is a new type of migrant that is emerging from what I think […]
You have theorized about the incapacity of the term “migration” to define the current migration phenomena, incapable to grasp the nuances and complexities this entails. What could be a more appropriate way to define or refer to these current phenomena?
There is a new type of migrant that is emerging from what I think of as a massive loss of habitat –this is a migrant who has no home that he/she leaves behind. This is a new type of refugee resulting from destructive forms of economic development and from climate change1.
Extreme violence is one key condition explaining these migrations. But so are thirty years of international development policies that have left much land dead (due to mining, land grabs, plantation agriculture) and expelled whole communities from their habitats2. Moving to the slums of large cities has increasingly become the last option, and for those who can afford it, migration. This multi-decade history of destructions and expulsions has reached extreme levels made visible in vast stretches of land and water bodies that are now dead. At least some of the localized wars and conflicts arise from these destructions, in a sort of ‘fight for habitat’ and climate change further reduces livable ground. These are all issues I develop at length in “Expulsions”. (published in German by Fisher Verlag – 2015)
Making Heimat addresses the question: ‘How can refugees and migrants who have left their familiar environments, settle and be ‘at home’?’ Which benefits do you think building and urban development can bring to refugees and migrants arriving in Germany? And which benefits might it bring to Germany?
Think of these migrants as usually well educated and trained, with skills, and the will to make a new life, precisely because there is no home to go back to as home is now a warzone, a mine, a plantation, a desert, a flooded plain. Think of these migrants as having the will to ‘make’, that being to make an economy, make a culture, make a sociality. And then think of abandoned or semi-abandoned localities in Germany, and remember those migrants who have been offered to live in half empty or almost completely empty villages, and how they managed to make… yes, an economy, a culture, a sociality…3
Architecture and urbanism are disciplines that can take long periods of time to materialise. How can this inherent slow speed be managed in order for these disciplines to be relevant and helpful in dealing with the radical changes in migration matters?
What I described above is one way. This would be one option where architects, builders, water engineers, agricultural experts could help make it happen, and it would all add to the region, the country. I am also reminded of a group of techies, Spaniards, in one of Spain’s major cities, I think it was Barcelona, who lost their jobs and decided to go into the arid mountains, to an abandoned village. It took them two years and then they had a live economy, selling rural products to …guess what, the big cities in Spain.
What we do not want is what is happening increasingly in major cities – which is the buying of urban land by major corporations4,5.
Immigrants, with their capacity to make neighborhood economies, can be a major plus to resist this, though if a big firm really wants a plot of land they are ready for just about everything.
Building and urban development play a key role in integration. Which concrete policies should be included in an urban development plan aimed at achieving a successful process of integration?
When we speak of urban environments –and not the under-inhabited environments I’ve described above — the picture becomes more complex. But one key fact that we know from the experience of so many immigrants across the world – from New York, to Nairobi, to Tokyo, is that immigrants, if allowed to live a normal life (not be secluded in camps) make jobs. Immigrants are famous for this: they make jobs, and if you live in any big German city you know that. The issue is the dying cities due to deindustrialization where jobs are being lost, and the residents feel that if immigrants came they would take away the few jobs that are left. There are mostly no immigrants in these cities , so its residents just know the fear of jobs, not what immigrants can do. They have a hard time imagining (and one can understand this) that if immigrants came, they would not take away jobs, because all they know is that the jobs keep disappearing from their cities. But if immigrants were given a chance to come, most of them would make jobs.
Which qualities are desirable for the public space of arrival cities? Are there any particular spaces or buildings that promote engagement and identification?
Public spaces, especially streets, are critical and I have a whole project on the street. I think of the street as an indeterminate space where even those who are not fully accepted can feel comfortable. The piazza, the boulevard, are overdetermined spaces, and many newcomers, especially if immigrants and refugees, can easily feel that it is too overdetermined and really, even if public, are not “their” Piazza or “their” boulevard. So alienation can set in. I am doing a project on this, a big project in Paris, supported by the College du Monde, a newly invented organization by Michel Wievorka which is quite exciting. And my husband, Richard Sennett is doing a parallel project there on Theatrum Mundi. So, back to your question, it has to be a mix of design, yes, but also the cultural, very broadly understood, background6.
What specific characteristics should social housing have in order to contribute to the integration of refugees and economic migrants?
Housing should also be a place for productive work – it cannot be reduced to sleeping and eating The work that Teddy Cruz has done on this type of housing and neighborhood on the Mexico-US border is interesting. The larger setting or neighborhood where the housing is built, should have streets that are public spaces, should have broad sidewalks and small squares where people mix, should have authorization for holding events, for making music, for teaching each other crafts and how to play instruments, so that it would draw all ages and locals and foreigners.
The idea of ‘integration through segregation’ is recurrent in migration development discourses, arguing that migrants find it easier to settle if they share space with people from their same community of origin. Would you agree with that idea?
I think what should happen is what I have been describing above and small numbers matter, so multiple little squares and centers. This allows both immigrants to keep their culture, but also to share that culture and begin to share in the host culture, it is not a case of ‘either/or’.
The cities are often unable to take quick architectural and urban decisions in order to handle the migrational fluxes. Could they go beyond both socio-economic global forces and government policies and return to local control?
De facto cities have had to engage in more local control because so much of our economies and hence politics are being urbanized. And yes, some of this authority should be formalized because that would justify central governments passing on more resources to cities.
The impact of the migration fluxes is usually analysed in the urban context, but what is the role of the countryside in the migratory phenomenon
As I said earlier, we need to bring in the rural, especially in the form of under-inhabited villages, and even completely abandoned villages. If support for infrastructures can be mobilized, there will be significant numbers of migrants who will take on such possibilities and make it work.
New technologies have had a key role in many of the recent social revolutions. Are they also relevant in migrational processes?
Definitely: we have all heard from the recent flows of desperate people coming from the war zones that having their phones mattered a lot for a series of reasons, however much more could be done. All the items I have described above, that I think matter for incorporating migrants, should have a digital platform that can then also expand across a country and serve to help and inform on situations where matters are not going well. I have worked on some of this for the case of low-income neighborhoods in major cities in the US. Also interesting is the notion of open-sourcing the neighborhood7.
The process of ‘making heimat’ is to be accomplished by both the arrival country and the immigrants themselves. What role do you think refugees and migrants should play in their process of integration?
I think I have answered this above, but let me add also that the migrant should be allowed to keep parts of her culture and should be invited to learn about local cultures for example in local weekend street or small square events, where small groups of locals and foreigners can actually mix. To help this there should be a central activity that can be share like music making, where everybody brings an instrument, including a pot that can be a drum, or your voice, is often something that works well. Events around cooking is another example when understood as cooking plus talking about food, demonstrating to each other, and above all-eating together. Participants should be old, young, both men and women and should always be in small numbers. When the 2000 crisis hit in Argentina, I remember in Buenos Aires fired workers re-entered abandoned factories and opened them up to the community8. They kept part of the space for working and selling what they had done before under a boss, and the rest of the space was for the community where they would meet and cook collectively etc., and it worked!