Migrants and City-Making Dispossession, Displacement, and Urban Regeneration

Abstract

Multiscalar City-Making and EmplacementProcesses, Concepts, and MethodsThe world is very different from the year 2000, when we began our long-term research into relationships between migrants and three seemingly disparate cities. 1 Mardin, Turkey, lies on the Turkish-Syrian Border; Manchester, New Hampshire, is in the northeastern United States; and Halle/Saale, Saxony-Anhalt, is part of formerly socialist eastern Germany.Today, the significance of war and crises of capital accumulation and political power are more evident around the world, including in these three cities, although crisis and social and economic transformations have gained visibility in each of the cities in different ways.As the world changed and our research project developed in response to these changes, we came to better understand the multiscalar relationships and the multiple actors, including each city's migrants, that were reconstituting each locality.By the time we had finished this book, the province of Mardin had become a war zone, with several districts and villages bombed and blockaded by the Turkish army. 2 The devastation of the city-region is a violent reminder of how changing conjectural conditions in a particular place can-within less than a year-transform a center of global urban regeneration into a space of wreckage and devaluation.In the spring of 2015, posh hotels, tourist destinations, and "quaint" Syriac Christian village and religious sites, which were showcased as historic places of multireligious dialogue and openness, were attracting a seemingly ceaseless flow of tourists and international delegations.A short time later, these places stood empty.They not only mocked recent hopes of regional renewal but also embodied future possibilities for new cycles of urban regeneration and capital accumulation.However, at present, the dreams of Mardin's leaders to regenerate their city by globally marketing its vibrant, multireligious past lie in ruins as people flee for their lives.By 2016 in Manchester, New Hampshire, city leaders had curbed their en-

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