By Sasa Ramos | Photos by Onjoli Palmer
On Tuesday, April 22, the Center on Forced Displacement, the Boston Urban Salon, and the Initiative on Cities welcomed Associate Professor Romola Sanyal (London School of Economics) for a lively discussion exploring how displacement – both structural and episodic – shapes people’s lives, identities, and urban spaces. Professor of Sociology Nazli Kibria and Associate Professor of Anthropology Ayşe Parla joined Sanyal to discuss the final chapter of her current book project, Displacement Urbanism: Forced Migration and the Making of Cities. Following the discussion, attendees joined Dr. Sanyal and the panelists in a reception.
Dr. Romola Sanyal is an Associate Professor in Urban Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research – primarily based in India and Lebanon – focuses on the relationship between forced migration and urbanization through the study of Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and Partition refugee colonies in Calcutta. She examines how refugees become citymakers by building and inhabiting cities.
The right to asylum
With a background in Geography and Planning, Sanyal studies the politics of poverty and informality. Born in India, Sanyal observes the dynamics of landlessness in cities defined by forced migration, such as Delhi and Calcutta. “India, for me, defines a lot of my work,” she said. She investigates the myth of “citizens by default,” which mediates human rights within the realm of housing. “How do you differentiate between the urban poor and refugee population when there is widespread endemic poverty? How do you uphold refugees’ right to asylum?” Her work on Syrian refugees in Lebanon seeks to answer these questions.
A significant increase in Lebanon’s refugee population has placed immense pressure on families and the local government. This change has prompted many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to support and extend protection to incoming migrants. As the local government prohibits refugee camps, Syrian refugees inhabit “informal settlements” throughout Lebanon. Because of this, Sanyal explains, the response has to be “urbanized.”
Humanitarian policymaking
Sanyal’s research seeks to bridge the gap between forced migration studies and urban scholarship, exploring how cities were crafted through significant displacement: “When you are talking about [urban issues], you have to consider forced migration as well.”
In her words, displacement is a concept, a process, and a category. Sanyal analyzes how these three facets work together to make cities, constituting the “force of urbanization.” Local governments and NGOs simultaneously drive and manage displacement, mediating relationships between local communities and displaced people and reworking “urban” through the logics of displacement.
Defining Southern Urbanism
Postcolonial scholars have defined Southern Urbanism in many ways. “A lot of the forerunners of this debate taught me as well,” Sanyal said. This conversation aimed to recenter cities of the Global South not as “variations of the ecological and economic model” of the Global North, but as urban identities crafted from specific historical processes. She explains how Greece blurs the line between the Global North and the Global South. Colonized by Northern and Western Europe, Southern Europe’s history reflects informality.
A government’s lack of engagement with edge populations stigmatizes and erases those who inhabit the margins of society. Edge populations describe the distinction of a “racialized periphery.” Sanyal explains how thinking about people who inhabit the margins of society helps us to unpack the city as a coherent concept.
The formation of ethnic enclaves captures how people move into urban spaces and receive care within their ethnic community. Similarly, Sanyal describes how racialized and gendered inequalities shift from the Global South to the Global North through migration. Though often used as shorthand for the Global South, she conceptualizes Southern Urbanism not as a physical location but as a power relation. “The entanglement of poverty and displacement is not always ‘over there.’ You can find it here as well.”
Migrants bring “histories and geographies” across borders. Can displacement knit together different identities? What kinds of identities are working-class people carrying across borders? When we attempt to geolocate, how do we render migrant identities invisible?
By reframing the narrative of refugees as “deserving victims,” Sanyal argues for extending rights to the urban poor. How can we foster solidarity when we see hostility? Sanyal pushes us to reimagine displacement as a “fact of life” while integrating urban policy into a broader framework of displacement.
Professor Nazli Kibria reimagines space and refuge by discussing the Global South not as a location but as a power relation. She draws from postcolonial scholars, such as Ranabir Samaddar, who have conceptualized internal migration alongside international migration. Kibria’s research on Taka, Bangladesh, demonstrates how profound power relations within Southern cities can be. The etymology of “refugee” captures the differentiation among migrant identities. The meaning of “refugee” is tied to history, and now is the time to re-examine vocabulary and terms. To distinguish from other marginalized and displaced populations, Bangladesh demonstrates a specific form of displacement due to partition.
The Bahari, or “slum,” is not racially distinguishable from motive, specific history, and space. Refugee-directed humanitarian centers have two issues: reclaiming moral legitimacy and creating hostility against the refugees. “The native poor are becoming resentful of migrants and what they bring with them,” Sanyal explained.
When defining the role of the state, Professor Ayşe Parla problematizes the use of moral markers to guide migrants’ access to state resources: “If we dichotomize too much, we might end up obscuring the migrant experience.” The vast anti-immigrant sentiment has become synonymous with the image of the “undocumented border-crosser.” The 2003 film It’s A Free World explores the nuances of citizenship, capturing a working mother complicit in exploiting migrant laborers. The film demonstrates the precarity of citizens and migrants in broader systems of inequality. It’s A Free World shows the divergence of the migrant-citizen dichotomy and how it is manageable to intervene in the “discursiveness of ‘deserving.’” Existing anthropological research suggests migrants carry their lived experiences: “Follow the people.” She urges scholars to approach with dignity, compassion, and solidarity. While shared dispossession can coexist, we cannot conceptualize cities without migrants.
The arrival of humanitarian aid complicates the state’s role; local government is often absent from the conversation. In times of decentralization, however, the local government is central to the discussion. Right-wing ethnocentrism shapes how political parties tie into the conversation on forced migration. Sanyal described how social suffering is manipulated for political ends by pitting groups who occupy the same political sphere against each other.
Closing the discussion, Professor Loretta Lees emphasized the importance of convergence: bringing a geographer, a sociologist, and an anthropologist into conversation. This talk highlighted the opportunity to re-engage with postcolonial scholarship, parallel to government and welfare agencies, to address the humanitarian crisis. Convergence cultivates conversations across disciplines. The built environment is responsive to migration. Spatial analysis reveals how the city prioritizes space. A push towards the middle class has stimulated more conversation about how marginalized people subdivide and share space. We must shape our infrastructure and policies to center people over profit.
