Migrant Citizenship and Political Agency in Urban Contexts
Summary
The study of migrant citizenship and political agency in urban contexts explores how newcomers navigate legal frameworks, social belonging and collective action within cities. Urban environments serve as sites of both opportunity and constraint, where migrants negotiate their rights, identities and capacities to influence public life. Research has highlighted the layered nature of citizenship, extending beyond formal legal status to include everyday practices of belonging and participation. Migrant communities employ a range of strategies—from informal solidarity networks to organised protest—to claim space, reshape urban governance and assert political subjectivity. This field examines how legal ambiguity and restrictive policies create conditions of liminality, while grassroots activism, solidarity infrastructures and human-rights discourse foster new forms of agency. Comparative studies in cities across Europe, Africa and Asia reveal that migrants engage with local authorities, transnational networks and civil society to advance claims for housing, labour rights and representation. The interplay between institutional structures and migrant-led initiatives underscores the potential for cities to become arenas of inclusive cosmopolitan citizenship, as well as sites where exclusionary bordering practices are reproduced and challenged.
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Migrant Citizenship and Political Agency in Urban Contexts publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in migrant citizenship and political agency in urban contexts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Liminal legality: A state of partial legal recognition in which migrants occupy an enduring grey zone between legality and illegality.
Political agency: The capacity of individuals or groups to act intentionally and collectively to influence political processes and outcomes.
Political reproduction: Processes by which activist communities generate and sustain shared identities, solidarities and practices of care that underpin political engagement.
Human-rights mobilisation: The strategic use and reinterpretation of rights language by grassroots actors to frame demands and challenge exclusionary policies.
Right to the city: A concept asserting that all urban inhabitants should have equitable access to space, resources and decision-making in city life.
References
- Liminal legality and the construction of belonging: aspirations of Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants in Khartoum. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2024).
- Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition. Sociology (2023).
- Racial Capitalism, Political Reproduction, and the Commons: Insights from Migrant Solidarity Politics in Glasgow. Antipode (2023).
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