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Refugees and the politics of urban space

A series of projects conducted within the DPU aim to shed light on how governments, host communities and aid agencies are challenged by myths of refugees as subjects and spaces.

calais

13 December 2023

About this project series

With the increasing trend for the urban settlement of refugees, cities have a pressing responsibility to deal with refugees and asylum seekers. Urbanism has become a salient subject of public discourse and a symbol of civil society initiatives at various stages throughout the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. Cities are places where both migrants and non-migrants interact, be it through working, studying, living or raising their families or simply walking in the street. While cities offer great opportunities for migrants and refugees, at the same time they are also faced with challenges in creating opportunities for inclusion.

A series of projects conducted by DPU’s Dr Giovanna Astolfo, Prof Camillo Boano, Ricardo Marten Caceres, Hanadi Samhan, Harriet Allsopp, Jonah Rudlin, Ayesha Khalil and many others aims to shed light on how governments, host communities and aid agencies are challenged by myths of refugees as subjects and spaces of bare life and bio-politics, and to offer a perspective on the close and complex relationship that cities, refugee spaces and their residents have with each other.

Each project fostered interdisciplinary discussion and thinking between external experts and advisors, staff members, research students and civil society. Projects offered the opportunity for the development of collaborative research ideas, methodologies and activities.

Key themes: mapping the city of refuge, narratives of refugeness, the representation of the migration crisis, politics of counting, refugee housing policy and practice, homemaking in a limbo, urbanisation of refuge, paradigms of humanitarian discourse, ethics of hospitality, governmentality of migration.

    Research Projects

    Reframing The Paradigm Of Arrival. Transnational Perspectives, Governance And Policy (2024-2027)

    Project outline

    Aims

    The research aims to reframe the paradigm of forced migrants’ arrival as a policy framework and discursive realm. Taking the idea of unfolding crisis as background, the project will develop around different research strands. We will investigate how refugees’ action and agency are shaped by and shape the infrastructure of arrival in different locations. We will examine specific housing choices and dwelling strategies that occur under conditions of constraint within the humanitarian systems of care. We will try to understand how different spaces of refusal or acceptance, care and repair, can be opened up to go beyond binary approaches of power/resistance, or humanitarian myths of self-reliance and resilience.

    Research questions

    Within the entangled crisis, in this post-covid, post-Brexit, post-Arab spring context – how do forced migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Italy navigate their way through public space, transports and (hostile) housing? How do Ukrainian care workers live the home when this is both a place of work, exploitation and safety? How do Syrian families in London cope with the cost of living crisis, gentrification and eviction? How do migrants and refugees from Syria make housing choices in Istanbul, and how do they respond to local governance encouraging refugee presence in specific suburbs? These are few of the questions that we will examine in Italy, London, Hastings and Istanbul, paying attention to how refugees navigate housing precarity and belonging at the nexus of inclusion/exclusion generated by multiple overlapping crises.

    Research territories

    In Italy, we will engage with “Interstitial spaces of inhabitation: imperfect trajectories in the urban space”, by examining a) shelters for the unhoused operated by NGOs with limited state support; b) diffused hospitality; and c) makeshift solutions. In the UK, we will examine “Austerity, arrival and dwelling strategies.” Using the concepts of displaceability, deportability and evictability in relation to arrival regimes, in Hastings and London we will explore ‘home’ and homelessness through decontextualizing it from common associations with shelter to allow for understanding and practices of dwelling, the street and territories as a home. In Istanbul, we will assess “Trajectories of displacement and housing choices of refugees in response to governmental policies” and as a result of their own displacement trajectories. In particular, we will evaluate individual housing histories, pull and push factors for multiple relocation (e.g., earthquakes, migration policies, cost of housing, kinship networks) and type of house tenancy.

    Approach 

    In all these locations, we will take “a more-than-relational approach” to be able to recognise the role that forced migrants play as housing providers and as hosts of new refugees beyond host/refugees as distinct categories.

    In particular, the project will examine the topic from three angles:

    The entanglement of refuge, housing and living cost crisis in the context of austerity and how it evolved since 2015. We will focus on the impact of the rising living cost including food, energy and rent on refugees to look at how different marginalities intersect through the lens of housing. The role of activist housing networks and migrant led organisation in responding to the increased request to accommodate migrants and in thickening the ‘formal’ state provided infrastructure of arrival. The multiplicity of forms of ‘dwelling otherwise’ intended as alternative practices of inhabiting beyond formal accommodation, social housing, rented properties.

    Who we are

    The AHRC Team includes Giovanna Astolfo (UK Pi, DPU UCL), Harriett Allsopp (Research Fellow, DPU), Stefano Mastromarino (Research Assistant, DPU), Estella Carpi (Turkey Co-I, RDR UCL), Ouaees Hommous (Research Assistant) Negin Darvishahmadi (Research Assistant), Sepehr Roshanshomal (Research Assistant)

    The AHRC partners are Solidaunia (Italy) and Refugee Buddy Project (UK).

    The DFG Team includes Birgit Glorius (Germany Pi, Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany); Annegret Haase (Germany Co-I, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Leipzig, Germany).

    Bios

    Giovanna Astolfo is Associate Professor, architect by training, and urban researcher with over ten years of experience working at the intersection of housing justice and displacement urbanism at the DPU. Since 2015, her research interest revolves around three core themes. Domopolitics, or how refugees and migrants are often trapped within humanitarian systems that function more as systems of control, turning homes into prisons. Necropolitical infrastructures, or how the arrival, reception, and overall management of refugees in Europe is built on the creation of a racialized subject and their subsequent erosion. Homing and domesticity, or how people create and sustain a sense of home in often hostile environments, whatever "home" might mean to people. In the UK, I am particularly focused on the hostility migrants face and how domesticity persists in such conditions.

    Harriet Allsopp has a disciplinary background in IR, Politics and Middle Eastern Studies. Her expertise and experience extend from political-economy to micro level social organisation, with particular focus on global and local integration and exclusion mechanisms, migration and displacement and on the intersectionality of these with racial discrimination and structural inequalities. Her independent research has focused on disputed/border territories and spaces, the organisation of groups with restricted rights and their underlying political and socio-economic relations and geo-political contexts, employing mixed and adaptive methodologies to negotiate challenging research environments. Her research on Syria examined political and social organisation and strategies of Kurdish populations, including post-2011 responses and adaptations to conflict and autonomous governance. At the UCL she has worked on the RELIEF Project and, within the DPU, on HOUSE-IN; EPIC; Curing the Limbo. 

    Estella Carpi is a social anthropologist, presently Associate Professor of Humanitarian Studies at University College London. She is author of The Politics of Crisis-Making. Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon (Indiana University Press, 2023). Estella’s research mostly looked at humanitarianism, forced migrations and identity politics in Lebanon and Türkiye.

    Negin Darvishahmadi has seven years of professional experience working with refugees and immigrants in Türkiye. She works as an independent Persian- and Turkish-speaking field researcher for several EU-funded projects and beyond. She completed her masters degree with a focus on irregular migration and Afghan women in Istanbul.

    Ouaees Hommous is an Architect and Urbanist, currently pursuing an MA in Sociology at Ibn Haldun University. He aims to leverage his expertise to foster positive social, political, and spatial change through activism and policy-making initiatives, with a current focus on migrant communities and host societies.

    Rossana Leal is founder and CEO of the Hastings & Rother Refugee Buddy Project. Her innovative community leadership work was recognised at the Women of the World Festival in London, and she was awarded The Women on the Move Award in 2019.  The Refugee Buddy Project is a refugee and migrant-led organisation that stands in solidarity with people seeking refuge in Hastings, Rother and Wealden. It is a registered charity, supporting the most vulnerable in our community. The organisations works to create a culture of welcome, where people seeking refuge can thrive. It does this through offering advice, advocacy, support and connecting people seeking refuge with volunteer buddies from the community. They also work with local artists, businesses, individuals and community groups through workshops, events and projects that build the culture of welcome and support community engagement

    Stefano Mastromarino is an architect, refugee support worker and PhD candidate at The Bartlett DPU, UCL, funded by an ESRC UBEL studentship. A former research assistant at the Ipraus Lab in Paris for the development of the platform “Architecture et précarités”, he worked and studied Architecture at Politecnico di Torino, ENSA Paris-Belleville and TU Dortmund. Besides academia, he engaged in different forms of migrant support and activism in France, Italy and the UK and worked as a UASC Support Worker for a non-profit organisation providing housing and aid services to young people seeking asylum in the UK. 

    Sepehr Roshanshomal is a PhD candidate at Halic University, Istanbul. He received his MSc in Architecture from Bahçeşehir University. He primarily works on natural structures and the human-nature relation in architecture and the built environment.

    Research territories

    Interstitial spaces of inhabitation: imperfect trajectories in the urban space, Italy

    This stream of the research focuses on the Pista di Borgo Mezzanone, a so-called "informal ghetto" primarily inhabited by migrant agricultural workers, located in the Apulian Capitanata region in the province of Foggia. The aim of the research is to explore the site beyond its visible form and the dominant rhetoric of extraction and exclusion that often define it. Instead, the focus is on understanding the complex entangled assemblage that sustains this space, one that exists at the intersection of subtractive bio/necropolitics and forms of fugitive existence.

    Delving into the specific genealogies of accumulation, labour ecologies, and institutional sheltering prospects in and around Borgo Mezzanone, the project employs a variety of situated approaches, from historical narratives, to interviews with government stakeholders, design and art-based interventions, photography, and cartography.

    Austerity, arrival and dwelling strategies, UK

    This stream of research consists of a longitudinal examination of different forms of hosting, holding hostage, and housing between metropolitan London and the coastal city of Hastings. It is an extended inquiry into spaces of domesticity, homing, and disturbance—exploring how people escape capture, live, and create a sense of home, whether on or off the grid. The project also delves into the history and contemporary practice of modern banishment (the unmaking of citizenship) and the creation of penal colonies, analysing how the UK, in connection with other European countries, makes arrival an impossibility for many migrants.

    In London, the research focuses on how people build life, space, and home while being banished and stripped of their right to the urban environment. It is situated at the intersection of arts and politics, a potent space where research (what we know or don’t know) can intersect with advocacy (what we believe should be). The project rests on the principle that research and knowledge are inherently political, but art—specifically theatrical performances—creates a unique space of visibility that more effectively challenges power asymmetries and exclusions. Through performance, the project seeks to convey acts of refusal and resistance, serving as a form of critique against dominant systems of control, detention and deportability.

    In Hastings, the project collaborates with the Refugee Buddy Project to understand and address the barriers to housing and houselessness faced by asylum seekers and refugees locally. Using the concepts of displaceability, deportability and evictability in relation to arrival regimes, in Hastings we will explore ‘home’ and homelessness through decontextualizing it from common associations with shelter to allow for understanding and practices of dwelling, the street and territories as a home. Through the voices and testimonies of those directly affected in Hastings, the project generates a body of housing stories, knowledge exchange activities, and local policy recommendations aimed at reframing housing as a reparative infrastructure of care. By resituating housing within this framework, the project advocates for more just housing policies.

    Trajectories of displacement and housing choices of refugees in response to governmental policies

    This case study will look at how migrant and refugee groups (which we know speaking Arabic or Persian primarily) make mobility and housing choices and the extent to which that is determined by disasters (getting prepared for future earthquakes or as a result of past ones). We will also examine the extent to and the modalities in which such groups influence each other in such choices. We endeavour to identify their patterns of mobility from overseas to Türkiye and their Istanbul district and the extent to which that happens on a group basis. Methodologies used include large-scale survey, one-to-one interviews, one nationality-based and one mixed focus group. The goal of this research stream, theoretically is to: a) Contribute to tracing the inter-cross between migration and disaster in the literature as well as on the ground (policies and governmental/municipal spatial/housing politics); b) Contribute to carve out a collective social psychology of disaster preparedness within and across the groups considered.

    The goal of the research stream, practically is to advocate for municipalities to integrate their afet bilinci egitimleri with group-focused histories and peculiarities (such programs are now merely providing technical information, and if ever, are simply translated into other languages. We need more than mere translations to get the migrant and refugee segments of a society in which most of them tend to be vulnerable prepared vis-à-vis earthquakes)

    Upcoming events

    Stitch for change: Arrival and housing (February-March 2025, Hastings)

    Stitch For Change is a textiles, embroidery and storytelling project series, hosted by The Refugee Buddy Project, Hastings since 2020. It aims to promote the healing benefits of hand stitching and to provide a method of connection and sharing. In 2025, the project will see the creation of a giant patchwork of individual stories, experiences and names, on and about housing and arrival, stitched together into one quilt – a record of shared narratives of movement and settlement. The finished piece will be displayed in a local exhibition space for the public to view during Refugee Week 2025

    Listening workshop (April 12, 2025, Istanbul)

    The Istanbul listening workshop will be organise to receive testimony from all interested parties around housing choices vis-à-vis future disasters in Istanbul, and to discuss the strategies migrants and refugees have been developing to make themselves safe and settled. They will share their mobility stories and have exchanges about housing choices and policies.

    Workshop/Art Residency (12-24 May, Foggia, Italy)

    This is a one-week series of events, talks, presentations and ex tempore artistic interventions, and installations that will occur in Pista di Borgo Mezzanone and surrounding areas. It will involve the collective of activists and Pista’s inhabitants Dar Assalam, local associations and networks, artist Luigi Coppola and the collective of architects and artists Colletivo TOMA.

    Knowledge sharing workshop (16-22 June, London-Hastings)

    This is a one-week workshop that will be held between London and Hastings on the Refugee Week 2025. It will involve a number of sharing moments, talks and dialogues between partners, researchers, local policymakers, migrant organisations

    The architecture of refuge. Exploring a time ontology

    Panel for ‘Current shifts in discourses on migration’ (IMISCOE conference, Paris, 4-9 July 2025)

    Outputs

    Talks

    Carpi, E. (2024) “Fy Intizar al-Karitha. Khayarat al-Muhajirin wa al-Laji’iyn al-Sakaniyya fy Istanbul” [Arabic], trans. “In the wait for a Disaster. Housing Choices of Refugees and Migrants in Istanbul”, al-‘Araby al-Jadeed, 26 April, 2024. https://shorturl.at/otG59.

    Mastromarino, S. (2024) [GA1] “Borgo Mezzanone. Prospettive istituzionali, contro-archivi e condizioni di possibilità future” [Italian], trans. “Borgo Mezzanone. Institutional prospects, counter-archives and future conditions of possibility”, Belluno, Italy: Mediterranea Saving Humans, 28 September 2024

    Blogs

    Allsopp, H “The UK-Rwanda deal: a cruel experiment in inhospitality” at https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dpublog/2024/06/27/the-uk-rwanda-deal-a-cruel-experiment-in-inhospitality/

    On 23 April 2024, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act was passed. By writing into law that the Republic of Rwanda was a safe third country, it gave legal provisions for the deportation to the African state of people seeking asylum in the UK. The Act and the UK-Rwanda treaty that it supports have taken the UK’s “hostile environment” policy a dangerous step further than other deals that offshore asylum processing. By transferring both asylum claims and refuge, even successful asylum seekers will not return to the UK where they sought asylum but will only be eligible to stay as refugees in Rwanda.

    Papers

    Carpi, E., Ghaffarian, S., Hommous, O., & Johnson, C.  (2024, April 17). Waiting for Disaster? Housing Choices and Disaster Knowledge Among Migrants and Refugees in Istanbul’s Southwestern Districts. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. Retrieved 13 Oct. 2024, from https://oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389407-e-494.

    This study documents how disaster knowledge among Arabic- and Persian-speaking, Türkiye-based migrants and refugees residing in Istanbul’s southwestern districts (namely Avcılar, Zeytinburnu, Küçükçekmece, Bakırköy, Bağcılar, Fatih, Esenyurt, Bahçelievler, Başakşehir and Beylikdüzü) cannot fully reflect their housing choices. The paper is the outcome of a different project but it creates a knowledge substrata upon which the AHRC project will build

    Web 

    Inappropriable https://inappropriable.com/  is a repository of collective investigations and archives set out to interrogate practices of inhabitation, infrastructures of life and fugitive wording, focusing on labour ecologies in territories of migration. It is led by a research collective of architects, anthropologists, artists and geographers from Politecnico di Torino and UCL staff involved in the AHRC Reframe project.

    Short doc Link by Alaraby Aljadeed (Arabic version) that presents Estella Carpi's Istanbul research with Saman Ghaffarian, Ouaees Hommous, & Cassidy Johnson and includes a part of her interview with them (27 July, 2024)

    The 'colonial face’ of housing refugees in the EU: building a set of online resources (2023) 

    Project outline

    The project will collect material and produce a set of open access online resources (a curriculum) through which those engaging with it can explore the intersection of displacement, migration, ‘race’’and housing. Through the curriculum, we offer a multiperspectival reading of the link between ‘race’, migrant and refugee housing practices.

    Our precedent research has found that housing, including housing for refugees is yet another form of racialised practice. Everyday and structural racism are constitutive of welcoming and accommodating black and brown refugees in European small and medium cities. We evidenced forms of selective solidarity in welcoming migrants, as well as the reproduction of difference in the housing market.

    The curriculum is inspired by and follows the “Bartlett ‘Race’ and Space” curriculum, and the ‘Race, space, architecture’ curriculum by Huda Tayob and Suzanne Hall, and their innovative ground breaking self-learning approach.

    Team

    Dr Giovanna Astolfo, Dr Harriet Allsopp

    Outputs

    Paper: The colonial face of ‘housing’ refugees: the construction of the racialised subject within a necropolitical infrastructure

    HOUSE-IN (2021-22)

    Project outline

    This is a 2-year project funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and JPI Urban Europe.

    Housing remains an intractable challenge, due to global challenges of the current urban condition such as socio-spatial inequalities and segregation as well as challenges of participation and knowledge integration. An adequate response to these conditions needs to involve inter- and transdisciplinary, cross-sectoral knowledge, new paradigms of discourse, innovative strategies for practice and new capacities for policy and action in order to create a pathway allowing for an articulated portfolio of housing solutions and trajectories to be targeted on individuals. The current Covid-19 crisis has reinforced generally existing housing market inequalities as well as discrimination and exclusion through practices at many places, but several measures to counteract the crisis (eviction ban, rent freeze etc.) bear the potential for policy change as well. Hence, a focus on co-designing innovative housing strategies, that operate at a higher level than housing policy and programmes and are based on a vision of structural change, might contribute to address gaps/inequalities in existing housing systems. Set against this background, HOUSE-IN will assess existing research findings and on-going projects with respect to a common understanding of a Housing-Integration-Nexus and identify structural, organizational and knowledge gaps towards implementation of integrative housing strategies, with a focus on the situation of migrants and refugees in European cities.

    Team and partners

    DPU team includes Giovanna Astolfo (Pi), Harriett Allsopp (Research Associate) and Camillo Boano (Co-i)

    Partners: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany (Lead Applicant); Development Planning Unit, UCL; University of Latvia (UL); Eutropian GmbH (EU); Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW); Lund University (LU).

    Outputs

    Policy Brief #1 - Forced migrants’ access to housing: Challenges, responses, and recommendations to enable arrival through supporting the right to adequate housing

    Policy Brief #2 - Enabling settling down and belonging Creating structures that facilitate forced migrants in becoming part of the urban society

    Policy Brief #3 - Discrimination against forced migrant newcomers in the housing market – challenges and possible governance responses The responsibility to address racism and inequality and the need for anti-discrimination mainstreaming in the urban housing-integration nexus

    Webinar. Between humanity and selective solidarity: The current governance of refugee arrival in Riga/Latvia, Leipzig/Germany, Vienna/Austria, Lund/Sweden and Warsaw/Poland. 30 May 2022

    Blog post. Now and then. Precariousness, double standards and racism in housing refugees

    Webinar. Connecting racism and discrimination in refugee housing and home-making. 20 September 2022

    News. DPU co-hosts discussion on racism in refugee housing

    Webinar. How to cope with future refugee challenges? learning with Ukraine. 28 Sept 2022

    Paper. Refugee migration from Ukraine to other parts of Europe – challenges with regard to the housing-integration intersection at the city level.  

    European Platform of integrating cities (2020-2022)

    This is a 3-year project funded by the European Asylum, Migration and Integration fund (AMIF). The aim is to establish a learning platform for and by local authorities, NGOs, CSO and migrant-based organisations in ten European countries. The aim of the platform is to:

    a)    To co-produce, analyse and confront ‘situated’ and people-centred knowledge on migrant practices of ‘integration’ in selected cities;

    b)    To facilitate and support intra- and inter-regional knowledge exchange as well as capacity building to build a knowledge eco-system that can sustain and continually enrich new knowledge;

    c)    To promote research translation into people-centred policy that address migration and integration through socio-economic development programmes within the built environment.

    Project outline

    Integration is an ambivalent concept. It often rests on the precarious and difficult balance between the need for recognition of diversity, which allows the migrant not to feel the object of contempt as a member of an ‘other’ culture, and the desire for assimilation, which is motivated from the legitimate aspiration to equal perspectives of social and occupational advancement. Scholars have pointed out that the concept of integration is multidimensional, in the sense that it extends to different spheres of social life, multidirectional, and often conflictual (Castles et al. 2002; Musterd, 2003; Phillips, 2006a; Fiddian- Qasmiyeh, 2015, 2016a; Grzymala-Kazlowskaa & Phillimorea, 2018).

    As evidenced in an earlier review conducted by DPU in 2018/19, in many European countries, there persists a gap between national policies and local implementation with negative implications for economic and social inclusion (exploitative labor, segregated and marginalised living, and decreased access to education and health). Furthermore, the current policy formulation of the migration/integration nexus is conceived as a continuum from arrival to citizenship not accounting for forms of integration that happens formally and informally at multiple stages and on multiple scales (Fawaz 2016; Scholten 2018). The dominant ‘integration’ paradigm presupposes immobility, a condition not possible for many (Grzymala-Kazlowskaa & Phillimorea, 2018; Darling 2016). There is still little knowledge on the impact of policy on individuals (as findings are not coherent, and of quantitative nature), as well as on how the impacts of migration and integration are negotiated on a daily basis through strategies from below, and what obstructs integration, intended as the multiple dynamics and drivers that reproduce exclusion and inequality. Finally, current national and local policy hardly capture individual trajectories, about which little is still known because existing top-down integration measures do not engage refugees and migrants as actors in their making. Lack of refugee voice in the policy is an issue that has been advocated for widely.

    Following this line of argument, the project wishes to reframe integration away from the current dominant, colonial and top-down paradigm, and instead conceptualize it as a relational practice constituted by multiple incremental and transformative formal and informal encounters between displaced people, places, institutions and services that are developed to endure and maintain life. Integration is ultimately the result of complex daily strategies of learning, navigating and governing the city. Such an understanding enables us to shift our focus onto the historical and present experiences of those who ‘have to integrate’, recognizing the centrality of migrants’ own assessments to policy innovation. To achieve its objectives the project has been designed to establish an international environment for building knowledge and exchange good practices between partner institutions. Particularly, the project identifies and comparatively analyses under-recognized and under-valued practices in small and large cities. For each case the project will build an urban biography to understand the complex entanglements and assess the practices and effects of migration and integration on people, places and institutions – amidst improvisation, precarity, alternative scripts of citizenship and how state rules are negotiated. Rather than simply collecting and comparing practices, successful or not, across different geographies we see such modes of practice rooted in space and time, and we will look, listen and pay attention to the current instantiations of practice and their relationship to place. We will select and reflect onto a number of practices that are under-valued precisely because of their distance from formal sectors and domains of professional practice, and the mainstream media. These exchanges will constitute the foundation of a capacity building effort that will target local institutions, civil society and future professionals through training, online courses and summer schools.

    Team and partners

    Giovanna Astolfo (DPU); Camillo Boano (DPU), Harriet Allsopp, Jonah Rudlin and Hanadi Samhan (DPU); Lead: Association Des Agences De La Democratie Locale (France). Kitev - Kultur Im Turm (Germany); Stadt Oberhausen (Germany);  Association Europeenne Pour L'information Sur Le Developpement Local (Belgium);  Municipality Of Ioannina (Greece);  Symbiosis Astiki Mi Kerdoskopiki Etaireia (Greece); Grad Sisak  (Croatia); Isusovacka Sluzba Za Izbjeglice (Croatia); Solidaridad Sin Fronteras (Spain); Regione Autonoma Della Sardegna*Ras (Italy); Studio E Progetto 2 - Societa Cooperativa Sociale - Onlus (Italy); Camara Municipal De Lisboa (Portugal); Associazione Adl Zavidovici Onlus -Impresa Sociale (Italy) ; Comune Di Brescia (Italy); Jrs Portugal - Servico Jesuita Aos Refugiados Associacao Humanitaria (Portugal); Obszar Metropolitalny Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot (Poland) 

    Conversation series. Online. 17-19 June 2020

    DPU's Giovanna Astolfo conducts conversation series as part of project on the pandemic on migration

    Identification of Priorities. Online Workshop 16-18 November 2020

    DPU’s Giovanna Astolfo presents the research report 'Unsettling Integration'

    Outputs

    Unsettling integration. Research Report

    DPU Working Paper 208. Unsettling integration

    This working paper examines current migration and integration literature in order to dissect and move beyond the notion of integration. It provides a discursive context for and background to the need for concept revision and to how processes and practices of adaption are perceived of and understood. The working paper also discusses the findings of surveys and interviews conducted as part of the EPIC project, based on an alternative framework of care, repair and maintenance, drawing out the dominant dimensions and themes within subjective definitions and experiences of ‘integration’

    Designing for inclusive cities. Refugee reception and housing practices in the Mediterranean context

    This is an ongoing investigation into accommodation and integration policies and practices responding to the current change in the pattern of forced displacement in the Mediterranean region. Particularly, it confronts policy frameworks in Greece and Italy, two of the major entry points to Europe, in the attempt to establish a dialogue and the possibility for a translocal learning. By examining existing forms of dwelling, as well as identifying the potential impact of novel housing strategies and legal frameworks, the ongoing collective exploration wishes to address how participatory planning could better support the long-term inclusion of refugees.

    Team and partners

    Camillo Boano (DPU)
    Giovanna Astolfo (DPU)
    Ricardo Martén (DPU)
    Carlotta Fontana Valenti (    BUDD alumna)
    Panagiotis Tzannetakis (Help Refugees)

    OMNES, Philoxenya International, Harokopio University, University of Macedonia, Stefania Gyftopoulou (CRS)
    Agostino Zanotti (Local Democracy Agency in Zavidovici)
    Chiara Marchetti (ESCAPES), University of Parma

    Outputs and activities

    Workshops

    BUDDcamp

    The Design Workshop (BUDDcamp) is a week-long design exercise in which students are exposed to social-spatial challenges in a particular place. After an introduction to the case through lectures and seminars, the students undertake a 3-day intensive field exploration of the place, exploring the impact of urban design on issues of equality, inclusion and social integration. BUDDcamp is part of the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development.

    Planning for Inclusive Cities workshop

    The workshop, held in Thessalonikki in April 2018, aimed to bring together Mayors, Institutions and CSO from Greece and others cities in Europe to open a cross-country dialogue and a learning exchange platform on inclusive practices for the accommodation and housing of refugees.

    Summerlab Athens

    The 2018 Summerlab held in Athens between 10-15 September in collaboration with Stefania Gyftopoulou (Open Architecture Collaborative) focuses on the “Arrival city in age of austerity”. Athens has been marked as a city in crisis. Austerity policies have generated rapid social and economic changes, which are already evident in the physical and social urban fabric. Urban development policies have intensified the conflictive transformation of urban space. The workshop offers a testing ground for the proposing of contextual, hybridised spatial interventions.


    Article
    Boano, C, Astolfo, G (forthcoming) The imperfect ethics of hospitality. Engaging with the politics of care and refugees dwelling practices in the Italian urban context. In "Hospitality and Hostility in a Moving World", by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (ed). UCL Press

    From emergency to integration: housing and meaningful lives

    Housing has recently emerged as ‘an essential step on the integration path and a precondition for the full enjoyment of social and civil rights’ (Bolzoni et al, 2015:1) While there seems to be an agreement on the role of housing as a tool for promoting integration, there is a less clear appreciation on how to make it effective at the local level. The desk review conducted for the project Curing the Limbo (Urban Innovation Action) identifies and analyses global affordable housing practices in order to show the possibility of application to the case of Athens’ registered refugees moving from state-led accommodation to independent housing.

    Outputs

    Report
    This review identifies, and analyses affordable housing practices emerged from the literature in order to show the possibility of application to the case of Athens’ registered refugees moving from state-led accommodation to independent housing. The report suggests that good housing practices: enhance participation of refugees in city making as a means to achieve social cohesion and city prosperity; leverage refugees’  abilities to negotiate access and rights and to develop innovative solutions to their own housing problems; promote urban alliances towards integration and reduce competition and discrimination in the housing market; and foster refugees as well as host communities’ wellbeing and meaningful lives.

    News

    BUDD alumni initiative selected as part of Athens' selection as European Capital of Innovation 2018

    Infrastructure of care

    Yangon

    Formal and informal spaces of displacement and refuge along with the ever-changing infrastructures of care and provision often destabilise the dichotomy between the city and camp and the meaning of concepts such as shelter and relief. This in turn suggests a re-thinking of how figures such as the forced migrant and the aid worker are understood. While foregrounding the role of space, this initiative takes as a starting point the infrastructures of care which are varyingly understood as spatial, human, material and institutional mechanisms of support and agency, as well as of control and restriction.

    Organisers

    Dr Huda Tayob (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)

    Dr Giovanna Astolfo (Development Planning Unit, UCL)

    Dr Irit Katz (Cities Programme, LSE and University of Cambridge)

    Outputs and activities

    Download the Call for papers

    Symposium and exhibition
    1st February 2019

    Infrastructures of Care: Spaces of Refuge and Displacement

    issuu Widget Placeholderhttps://issuu.com/dpu-ucl/docs/infastructures_of_care_final_d3c46523d4910d

     

    Refugee spaces

    refugee spaces
    The Cities of Refuge platform aims to stimulate and demystify the ways in which the current refugee wave has been represented in Europe, particularly by bridging insular experiences into a wider continental dialogue. The platform is a systematic repository of data and information made available by governments, international agencies and NGOs. The research was supported by the Bartlett Research Materialisation Grant (2016-2018)
    Team and partners

    Camillo Boano (DPU)
    Giovanna Astolfo (DPU)
    Ricardo Martén (DPU)
    Ed Manley (CASA)
    Stephan Hugel (CASA)
    Keyvan Karimi (Space Syntax)
    Falli Palaiologou (Loughborough University)

    With Tahmineh Emami, Gala Nettelbladt (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space) and Asimina Paraskevopoulou (Danish Research Council).

    Advisors: Roger Zetter (Refugee Studies at the University of Oxford); Marta Welander (Refugee Rights Europe); Estella Carpi (UCL Geography); Nando Sigona (Birmingham University).

    Outputs

    Website
    Visit our website: www.refugeespaces.org

    Report
    Download our report: Part 1 Part 2

    News
    Launch of book on mapping by University of London Press with contributions from DPU staff

    Article
    Book chapter. Astolfo, G, Marten Caceres, R, Palaiologou, G, Boano, C, Manley, E. (2020) The role of data collection, mapping and analysis in the reproduction of refugeeness and migration discourses. Reflections from the Refugee Spaces project. In Mapping Crisis: Participation, Datafication and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping, edited by Doug Specht. University of London Press. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14rms6g.13?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

    Workshops and presentations

    Platform Launch
    December 2018


    Research workshop
    September 2017


    Humanitarian Summit
    22 June 2017, UCL Roberts Building

    Borders and camps

    borders and camps
    Makeshift camps, created in various and dynamically changing locations across Europe (near and within cities, ports, forests, borders), have become an integral part of the so-called current refugee crisis. This collaborative preliminary step between DPU in partnership with Cambridge University and others civil society groups, aimed to set a possible action-research agenda around the complex territory of camp-city and the manifold dimensions of cosmopolitanism, refuge and migration. The research was supported by the urban transformations and the diversity, social complexity & planned intervention research clusters at DPU (2016).
    Team and partners

    Camillo Boano (DPU)
    Giovanna Astolfo (DPU)
    Ricardo Martén (DPU)
    Irit Katz (Department of Architecture University of Cambridge)
    Nando Sigona (Birmingham University)
    Sharon Ambrosio (BUDD alumna)

    Outputs

    Blog post
    Life at the edge: reflecting on Calais, borders and camps

    Video

    Conference
    Space, politics and imperfect citizenship. A debate on migration policy and forms of life at the edge of Europe.

    Book chapters

    Boano, C., Marten R., Sierra A., (2018), The Post-Disaster Camps in Ecuador: Between Emergency Measures and Political Objectives, in Minca C., Katz, I., Martin, D., The geography of camps today. Bloomsbury, London.
    https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786605801/Camps-Revisited-Multifaceted-Spatialities-of-a-Modern-Political-Technology
     
    Astolfo, G. Boano, C (2018) Rethinking urban borders with Agamben: dispositives and paradigms, in Ortiz, C. (ed) Comparative urban design: Border making practices in Medellín & Beirut. DPU, London
    https://issuu.com/dpu-ucl/docs/budd_book_v2_online_low

    Marten Caceres, R (2018) Drawing the line: the calculated production of urban borders, in Ortiz, C. (ed) Comparative urban design: Border making practices in Medellín & Beirut. DPU, London
    https://issuu.com/dpu-ucl/docs/budd_book_v2_online_low

    Astolfo, G. Marten, R (2016) When borders collapse: on crises, biopolitics and representation. BUDDlab, vol 8, June 2016. DPU, London.
    https://www.academia.edu/29609349/WHEN_BORDERS_COLLAPSE_ON_CRISES_BIOPOLITICS_AND_REPRESENTATION

    Publications

    Allsopp, H., Astolfo, G, Haase, A., Schmitt, A, Laksevic, K, Bahanur, N, Kalhil, A. (2024) Migrant housing struggle and racial discrimination: The case of postsocialist Leipzig and Riga, Radical Housing Journal, 6(2), pp. 97-114; https://doi.org/10.54825/CMKM2131

    Haase A, Arroyo I,Astolfo G, Allsopp, H, and others (2023) Housing refugees from Ukraine: preliminary insights and learnings from the local response in five European cities Urban Research & Practice1-7

    Astolfo G, Allsopp, H, (2023) The coloniality of migration and integration: continuing the discussion Comparative Migration Studies11(1)

    Astolfo, G (2023) Yangon: Displacement urbanism, housing provisionality, and feminist spatial practices—an infrastructure of care at the urban margin, Routledge Handbook of Asian Cities. Routledge.

    Astolfo, G., Allsopp, H., Duszczyk, M., Franz, Y., Haase, A., Laksevics, K., Nasya, B., Raubisko, I., Reeger, U., Schmidt, A. (2022): Now and then. Precariousness, double standards and racism in housing refugees. University College London Blog, 20.06.2022 and Cooperative City Magazine, 12.06.2022.

    Haase, A., Allsopp, H., Arroyo, I., Franz, Y., Laksevics, K., Lazarenko, V., Nasya, B., Raubisko, I., Reeger, U., Saadeh, B., Schmidt, A., Stevens, U. (2022): Refugee migration from Ukraine to other parts of Europe – challenges with regard to the housing-integration intersection at the city level. Radical Housing Journal 4(2): 211-216. https://doi.org/10.54825/FIQX5453

    Astolfo, G., Allsopp, H., Rudlin, J., Samhan, H. (2021). Unsettling integration (DPU Working Paper 208). London: DPU.

    Boano, C., Astolfo, G. (2020). Inhabitation as more-than-dwelling. Notes for a renewed spatial grammar. International Journal of Housing Policy. doi:10.1080/19491247.2020.1759486

    Boano, C., Astolfo, G. (2020). Notes around Hospitality as Inhabitation Engaging with the Politics of Care and Refugees’ Dwelling Practices in the Italian Urban Context. Migration and Society: Advances in Research, Vol 3, 222-232. https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/migration-and-society/3/1/arms030118.xml

    Astolfo, G., Marten‐Caceres, R., Palaiologou, F., Boano, C., Manley, E. (2020). The role of data collection, mapping and analysis in the reproduction of refugeeness and migration discourses. Reflections from the Refugee Spaces project. In D. Specht (Ed.), Mapping Crisis. Participation, Datafication and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping. Institute of Commonwealth Studies. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14rms6g

    Astolfo, G., Boano, C. (2020). The imperfect ethics of hospitality: Engaging with the politics of care and refugees’ dwelling practices in the Italian urban context. In E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (Ed.), Refuge in a Moving World. Tracing refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines. UCL Press. https://library.oapen.org/viewer/web/viewer.html?file=/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/40015/9781787353176.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

    Astolfo, G., Boano, C. (2019). Rethinking urban borders with Agamben: dispositives and paradigms. In C. Ortiz (Ed.), Comparative Urban Design Studio: Exploring Border-Making Practices in Medellín & Beirut. DPU London. https://issuu.com/dpu-ucl/docs/budd_book_v2_online_lw

    Astolfo, G., Allsopp, H. (2024). The colonial face of ‘housing’ refugees: the construction of the racialised subject within a necropolitical infrastructure. Housing Studies, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2024.2373992

    Astolfo, G, Boano, C, Desmaison, B (2024) Displacement as Precarious Inhabiting: Care and Repair at the Urban Margins In: Beyond Houses Architectural Thinking and Practice for Climate, Disaster and Forced Displacement Crises. Springer.

    Boano, C., Astolfo, G., Desmaison, B. (2024) ‘When the house burns down’: displacement, precariousness and inhabitation, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, DOI: 10.1080/17549175.2024.2327599  

    Project reports:

    Astolfo, G., Allsopp, H., Rudlin, J., Samhan, H. (2021). Unsettling integration. DPU Working Paper 208. DPU London. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/publications/2021/jul/dpu-working-paper-no-208

    Astolfo, G., Allsopp, H., Rudlin, J., Samhan, H. (2020). Unsettling Integration. EPIC Research Report. https://epicamif.eu/unsettling-integration-epic-research-report/

    Astolfo, G., Boano, C. (2019). Affordable housing policy and practices: case studies review. DPU London. https://www.uia-initiative.eu/sites/default/files/2019-02/Curing%20the%20Limbo_report%20on%20housing_Feb%202019%20%281%29.pdf

    Boano, C., Astolfo, G. Marten‐Caceres, R, Palaiologou, F, Keyvan, K. Manley, E. (2018). Refugee spaces. A Bartlett Materialisation Grant Project Report. DPU London https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/sites/bartlett/files/refugee_spaces_report_part_1_0.pdf

    Other:

    Migration. In: DPU News 68 – (post)Covid Lexicon. April 2021. p15. Available at : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/sites/bartlett_development/files/issue68bn_v.09.pdf

    Displacement Urbanism. Urban Design Conversation 2. MSc Building and Urban Design in Development. DPU London. 12 February 2021 Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFYvYgaw6kw

    Migration and displacement. In: Thinking Cities. Episode 6. DPU London. Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/digital-media/podcasts/thinking-cities-debating-just-development-global-south/episode-6-migration

    Astolfo, G. (2017). The imperfect ethics of hospitality BUDDlab. DPU London. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/sites/bartlett/files/buddlab_2017.pdf

    Astolfo, G., Marten, C. (2016). When borders collapse: on crises, biopolitics and representation BUDDlab. DPU London. https://www.adl-zavidovici.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BuddLabVol82016.pdf

    News

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