Abstract
Covid-19 pandemic has had widely differential impacts on different populations around the globe, including diverse migrant populations. In Denmark it had been in particular those without an official registration (CPR) number - albeit not necessarily without a legal basis to reside - that have been most severely impacted. Unlike asylum seekers, whom the state has enrolled, if increasingly repressively, into the basic service provision, those without CPR numbers have no official access to resources channeled almost exclusively through the thoroughly regulated welfare system. Often precariously housed or homeless, they rely on mostly small-scale, often migrant-driven or -staffed non-profit organizations and charities to access basic resources like warm shelter, shower, basic care or individual legal support. Understanding citizenship as a socio-political relation between a subject and the political community, regardless of that subject’s formal legal status, and drawing on Simone’s (2004) conceptualization of people as infrastructures, in this paper we conceptualize these migrant service providers, their practices and spaces, as a crucial component of urban infrastructure of migrants’ citizenship. Empirically we draw on ethnographic research and interviews with such migrant service providers in Copenhagen, conducted in fall and winter 2021 as a part of a wider research on the pandemics’ impact on these providers’ work of infrastructuring. We focus here in particular on their responses to the wider framings of covid-19 as a “crisis” vis- -vis what many of them understand as a perpetually re-emerging crisis-like landscape of their work. We attend here also to their everyday, tactical and more long-term, strategic navigations of openings and closures for practical interventions and political reframings of/for urban migrant citizenship afforded by the fluctuating crisis-ness of the pandemic. Theoretically we draw on the recent work on slow emergencies (Anderson et al 2020; Grove et al 2021) to make sense of these responses and navigations.
| Original language | English |
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| Publication date | 2022 |
| Publication status | Published - 2022 |
| Event | 3rd International Conference on Migration and Mobilities - St Andrews University, St Andrews, United Kingdom Duration: 6 Jul 2022 → 8 Jul 2022 Conference number: 3 http://www.imigmob2022.org/home |
Conference
| Conference | 3rd International Conference on Migration and Mobilities |
|---|---|
| Number | 3 |
| Location | St Andrews University |
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | St Andrews |
| Period | 06/07/2022 → 08/07/2022 |
| Other | The conference is oriented around (though not restricted to) four themes:<br/>Internal migration and urban change, Forced migration and bordering, Big data<br/>and visualising mobilities, European migration in turbulent politic. The<br/>programme offers a fascinating range of topics and methodologies across these<br/>themes and we are pleased to host colleagues from institutions across the<br/>world. We are looking forward to insightful keynote presentations from<br/>Professor Darren Smith (Loughborough University), Dr Kate Botterill (University<br/>of Glasgow), Professor Alex Singleton (University of Liverpool) and Professor<br/>Nick Gill (University of Exeter).<br/>As well as enjoying the stimulating papers on offer, we very much hope that you<br/>will relish the opportunity to converse with colleagues in-person. We have tried<br/>to maximise opportunities for this in the programme: do join us for the wine<br/>reception and walking tour on Wednesday evening, and the Conference Dinner<br/>on Thursday evening should be a splendid occasion. It was not an easy<br/>decision to postpone iMigMob in 2020 but we hope that the delay to enable us<br/>to meet in-person will reap benefits through the connections and conversations<br/>this week. |
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