The right to the discourse: Grassroots artistic production as a space for reconstructing aesthetic structures on migration in the city of Marseille

Abstract

The contribution investigates the role of grassroots urban artistic practices in countering the narrative distortions characterising migration discourses. It integrates recent scholarship in migration studies with insights from two influential feminist and decolonial intellectuals: bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa. Drawing upon this theoretical frame, the article presents some key findings that emerged from a three-year fieldwork in Marseille on arts as a space of resistance to counter current regimes of visibility. The first concerns a critical reflection on the process of essentialisation surrounding the category of “migrant artist”. The second reflects on how mobility practices shape artists’ cultural production. The third focuses on arts as discursive political spaces inspiring the transformation of migration imaginaries. The contribution concludes with the elaboration of the concept of the “right to the discourse”, which, inspired by the notion of the “right to the city”, refers to the right to reappropriate discourses on migration, exile, and memory to create counter-hegemonic imaginative and aesthetic structures. • Art can create spaces of encounter and narrative negotiation in urban contexts. • Grassroots artistic production intersects discursive and political dimensions. • Cultural practices can dismantle stereotypes and amplify marginal voices. • The “right to the discourse” synthesises the right “to speak” and “to be heard”. • Grassroots artistic practices contribute to support the “right to the discourse”.

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