IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/urbpla/v5y2020i3p67-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urban Arrival Infrastructures between Political and Humanitarian Support: The ‘Refugee Welcome’ Mo(ve)ment Revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Rivka Saltiel

    (Universität Graz)

Abstract

Maximilian Park in Brussels was the site of a makeshift refugee camp for three months in 2015 when the institutional reception system was unable to provide shelter for newly arriving asylum seekers. Local volunteers stepped in, formed a civic initiative and organized a reception area under the banner ‘Refugees Welcome!’ The civic platform which emerged claimed and asserted (existing) rights for one specific group, asylum seekers, exclusively, and thus did not challenge the exclusive migration regime nor demand transformation. While such a humanitarian approach risks reproducing the exclusive border regime and the inequalities it engenders, political support is a disturbing rupture in the name of equality that resists normative classifications and inaugurates transformation. This article maps out the complex dialectical interrelation between political and humanitarian support and argues that political implications can only be understood through longer-term research, emphasizing processes of transformation that have resulted from these moments of disruption. Therefore, the article revisits Maximilian Park two and four years after the camp and reveals how the humanitarian approach chosen in the camp sustainably transformed the park, adding arrival infrastructures beyond the institutional, and had an impact on how refugees were dealt with and represented. Concluding, the article suggests the notion of ‘solidary humanitarianism’ that providing supplies, meeting acute existential needs and simultaneously articulating political claims that demand structural transformation: the right to shelter, basic supply, presence, and movement for all in the city.

Suggested Citation

  • Rivka Saltiel, 2020. "Urban Arrival Infrastructures between Political and Humanitarian Support: The ‘Refugee Welcome’ Mo(ve)ment Revisited," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 67-77.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v5:y:2020:i:3:p:67-77
    DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i3.2918
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/2918
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/up.v5i3.2918?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mustafa Dikeç & Erik Swyngedouw, 2017. "Theorizing the Politicizing City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 1-18, January.
    2. Martin Deleixhe, 2019. "Biopolitical Sovereignty and Borderlands," Journal of Borderlands Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(5), pages 649-664, October.
    3. Sutkutė, Rūta, 2019. "Shaping Of The Public Discourse On Refugees In Social Media: "Refugees Welcome Lithuania"," EUREKA: Social and Humanities, Scientific Route OÜ, issue 1, pages 35-52.
    4. Larissa Fleischmann & Elias Steinhilper, 2017. "The Myth of Apolitical Volunteering for Refugees: German Welcome Culture and a New Dispositif of Helping," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 17-27.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rivka Saltiel, 2020. "Urban Arrival Infrastructures between Political and Humanitarian Support: The ‘Refugee Welcome’ Mo(ve)ment Revisited," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 67-77.
    2. Sophia Schmid, 2019. "Taking Care of the Other: Visions of a Caring Integration in Female Refugee Support Work," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 118-127.
    3. Colin Lorne, 2024. "Repoliticising national policy mobilities: Resisting the Americanization of universal healthcare," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(2), pages 231-249, March.
    4. Veikko Eranti & Taina Meriluoto, 2023. "PLURALITY IN URBAN POLITICS: Conflict and Commonality in Mouffe and Thévenot," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(5), pages 693-709, September.
    5. Merlijn Van Hulst & Catherine Durose & Annika Agger, 2024. "HOW LOCAL PRACTICES OF SOCIOPOLITICAL INNOVATION DEVELOP: And Why This Matters for Urban Transformations," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 585-602, July.
    6. Cesare Di Feliciantonio & Cian O’Callaghan, 2020. "Struggles over property in the ‘post-political’ era: Notes on the political from Rome and Dublin," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 195-213, March.
    7. Jakub Galuszka, 2024. "BOATS AS HOUSING IN OXFORD, UK: Trajectories of Informality in a High‐Income Context," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 126-144, January.
    8. Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ & Jonathan S Davies & Sybille Münch, 2017. "Interrogating urban crisis: Cities in the governance and contestation of austerity," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2023-2038, July.
    9. Inka Stock, 2019. "Buddy Schemes between Refugees and Volunteers in Germany: Transformative Potential in an Unequal Relationship?," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 128-138.
    10. Inka Stock, 2019. "Buddy Schemes between Refugees and Volunteers in Germany: Transformative Potential in an Unequal Relationship?," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 128-138.
    11. Julien Puech & François Yondre & Jane Freedman, 2023. "Typology of European Sports Programmes for Welcoming Migrants: Contrasting Political Philosophies," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 1381-1411, September.
    12. Martina Blank, 2019. "“Wir Schaffen Das!”? Spatial Pitfalls of Neighborhood-Based Refugee Reception in Germany—A Case Study of Frankfurt-Rödelheim," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-15, May.
    13. Burcu Toğral Koca, 2022. "Bordering, Differential Inclusion/Exclusion And Civil Society In The Uk," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 65-81, January.
    14. Lazaros Karaliotas, 2024. "Infrastructures of dissensus: repartitioning the sensible and articulating the political through the occupation of Greece’s public broadcasting service," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(2), pages 268-286, March.
    15. David Etherington & Martin Jones, 2018. "Re-stating the post-political: Depoliticization, social inequalities, and city-region growth," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(1), pages 51-72, February.
    16. Myfanwy Taylor, 2020. "The Role of Traders and Small Businesses in Urban Social Movements: The Case of London's Workspace Struggles," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 1041-1056, November.
    17. Prathiwi Widyatmi Putri, 2020. "Insurgent planner: Transgressing the technocratic state of postcolonial Jakarta," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(9), pages 1845-1865, July.
    18. Robert Larruina & Kees Boersma & Elena Ponzoni, 2019. "Responding to the Dutch Asylum Crisis: Implications for Collaborative Work between Civil Society and Governmental Organizations," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 53-63.
    19. Verena Schmid & Adalbert Evers & Georg Mildenberger, 2019. "More or Less Political: Findings on a Central Feature of Local Engagement for Refugees in Germany," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 165-175.
    20. Anja Nygren & Florencia Quesada, 2020. "Imagining Cities of Inclusion—Formulating Spaces of Justice," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 200-205.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v5:y:2020:i:3:p:67-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.