IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v61y2024i9p1756-1772.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Navigating spatial inequalities: The micro-politics of migrant dwelling practices during COVID-19 in Antwerp

Author

Listed:
  • Hannah Robinson

    (University of Antwerp, Belgium)

  • Jil Molenaar

    (Institute of Tropical Medicine and University of Antwerp, Belgium)

  • Lore Van Praag

    (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and its multiple lockdowns disrupted city life, while restrictions on physical distancing and urban activities highlighted the importance of our living environment and its links to our well-being. As part of the COVINFORM research project, this case study uses a micro-political lens to explore the specific spatial challenges which migrants faced in two of the more socially deprived neighbourhoods in Antwerp, Antwerpen-Noord and Borgerhout. This study aims to understand the specific spatial challenges migrants encountered during the pandemic and examine how they navigated and asserted agency within the confines of their living situation during this period. We combine participant observation with 25 semi-structured interviews with migrants living in two neighbourhoods in Antwerp (Flanders, Belgium), namely Borgerhout and Antwerpen-Noord. Findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced urban spatial disparities, where people’s strategies of adaptation were suddenly disrupted. Lower-income migrants were particularly affected, living in crowded housing without access to private open space. Access to public and green spaces, as well as facilities and public transport links, became more important during the pandemic, especially for those in poorer housing conditions. Within this context of spatial inequalities, migrants deployed their agency through claiming access to the city, shifting dwelling practices, and leveraging neighbourhood and community networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannah Robinson & Jil Molenaar & Lore Van Praag, 2024. "Navigating spatial inequalities: The micro-politics of migrant dwelling practices during COVID-19 in Antwerp," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(9), pages 1756-1772, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:9:p:1756-1772
    DOI: 10.1177/00420980231217389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980231217389
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00420980231217389?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. Jenny Preece & Kim McKee & David Robinson & John Flint, 2023. "Urban rhythms in a small home: COVID-19 as a mechanism of exception," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(9), pages 1650-1667, July.
    2. Ghekiere, Abel & Verhaeghe, Pieter-Paul, 2022. "How does ethnic discrimination on the housing market differ across neighborhoods and real estate agencies?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    3. Tamara Premrov & Matthias Schnetzer, 2023. "Social mix and the city: Council housing and neighbourhood income inequality in Vienna," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(4), pages 752-769, March.
    4. Jonathan Rokem & Laura Vaughan, 2019. "Geographies of ethnic segregation in Stockholm: The role of mobility and co-presence in shaping the ‘diverse’ city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(12), pages 2426-2446, September.
    5. Hazel Easthope & Emma Power & Dallas Rogers & Rae Dufty-Jones, 2020. "Thinking relationally about housing and home," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(9), pages 1493-1500, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kohl, Sebastian & Steinhardt, Max Friedrich & Stella, Luca & Voss, Simon, 2024. "Crowding (at) the margins: Investigating the unequal distribution of housing space in Germany," Discussion Papers 2024/6, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.

    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. Jorge Quijada-Alarcón & Roberto Rodríguez-Rodríguez & Nicoletta González-Cancelas & Gabriel Bethancourt-Lasso, 2023. "Spatial Analysis of Territorial Connectivity and Accessibility in the Province of Coclé in Panama," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-21, July.
    2. Robert Musil & Jiannis Kaucic, 2024. "Housing Market Segmentation as a Driver of Urban Micro-Segregation? An In-Depth Analysis of Two Viennese Districts," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-25, September.
    3. Ann Legeby & Daniel Koch & Fábio Duarte & Cate Heine & Tom Benson & Umberto Fugiglando & Carlo Ratti, 2023. "New urban habits in Stockholm following COVID-19," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(8), pages 1448-1464, June.
    4. Selim Banabak, 2024. "Closing the Rent Index Gap – A Quantitative Approach to Rental‐Sector Gentrification," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 115(1), pages 64-80, February.
    5. Élisabeth Tovar & Mathieu Bunel, 2023. "Fairness of the First-Come, First-Served rule on the rental housing market: answers from a hypothetical survey experiment," EconomiX Working Papers 2023-31, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    6. Bradley Rink, 2023. "Public space on the move: Mediating mobility, stillness and encounter on a Cape Town bus," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(15), pages 3027-3044, November.
    7. Solange Muñoz & Jordin Clark & Jeremy Auerbach & Lily Hardwig, 2023. "Under lockdown: Remaking “home†through infrastructures of care during COVID-19," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 41(8), pages 1555-1574, December.
    8. Mourelatos, Evangelos & Oikarinen, Elias, 2023. "Ethnic discrimination during wartime: Evidence from a field experiment in the Finnish housing market," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    9. Faiza Moatasim, 2024. "Walls and openings: The politics of containment of informal communities in Islamabad," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(13), pages 2565-2584, October.
    10. Jenny Preece & Kim McKee & David Robinson & John Flint, 2023. "Urban rhythms in a small home: COVID-19 as a mechanism of exception," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(9), pages 1650-1667, July.
    11. Yingling Fan & Scott Orford & Philip Hubbard, 2023. "Urban public health emergencies and the COVID-19 pandemic. Part 2: Infrastructures, urban governance and civil society," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(9), pages 1535-1547, July.

    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:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:9:p:1756-1772. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    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.