Place, Culture and Vulnerability in the Metropolis: Conflicts and Implications for migrants

1. Themed session: Demography and the vulnerability of populations THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION GEOGRAPHIES 10-13 July 2007, Hong Kong Theme:Vulnerability at stages in the migration process: departure, arrival, settlement and integration Place, Culture and Vulnerability in the Metropolis: Conflicts and Implications for migrants Eduardo Marandola Jr. Institute of Geosciences, State University of Campinas, Brazil.eduardom@ige.unicamp.br Daniel Joseph Hogan Population Studies Center, State University of Campinas, Brazil. hogan@nepo.unicamp.br

2. Population Vulnerability and Vulnerability of Place • The conjunctive perspective (holistic approach) includes space-society relationships: there is no population vulnerability without vulnerability of place • Because population vulnerability is configured from situations (population conditions) and position (relative localization), it is impossible to separate vulnerability from its spatiality • Place is key to a comprehensive perspective on vulnerability, because it is in place that the materialization of multi-dimensional phenomena occurs

3. Mobility, Culture and Place • Mobility is an ambiguous phenomenon because it can produce or diminish vulnerability, involving both short and longer movements • Movements may be of short distances from home and immediate life spaces • Movements may also be to destinations farther from home (protection place par excellence) • Mobility-generated risks are ambivalent • Risks related to mobility (traffic, pollution, stress) may increase • Risks of isolation from the fragmented social fabric may be diminished, allowing maintenance of relations and strengthening social capital

4. An example for discussion:migrants in Sumaré, São Paulo, Brazil

5. Sumaré, Campinas Metropolitan Region (CMR), São Paulo State, Brazil CMR SPMR BSMR Source: IBGE, 2000.

6. Campinas Metropolitan Region – Urban Plan, Roads and Railways

7. Spatial mobility of population and migration • Spatial mobility can both increase and diminish vulnerability • The same is true of immobility; it may represent organic relations (cultural and identity links) as well as the impossibility of mobility to search for better conditions • Metropolitan spaces, as in Sumaré/Campinas, allow people to use these possibilities in varied forms: the number of options for daily mobility is continually greater. • Choices of migrants and non-migrants are based on different elements, affecting vulnerabilitydirectly

8. Population dinamic – 1970-2000 Source: IBGE. Source: IBGE. * Estimativa.

9. Migrants per year of residence in relation to the population Source: IBGE. Source: IBGE.

10. Time of the residence ininterrupted in the curretily city - Sumaré, São Paulo, Brazil - 2000

11. Migration origin (in July 1st 1995)

12. Urban plan of Sumaré - fragmentation and areas

13. Commuting

14. Commuting

15. Places and risks: differences between migrants and non-migrants • This intense spatial mobility of the population, both migration and commuting, makes integration with the local systems of security difficult, and mobility (work, study, entertainment, family interactions) becomes part of a lifestyle, producing vulnerabilities beyond those of the city • Both migrants and the city itself are always evolving, since there are many interruptions and discontinuities • The relation with places is different from the relations established and maintained outside of the city (greater or lesser mobility)

16. Especific vulnerabilities the migrants in fragmentation space • For upper and upper middle income migrants, the most significant vulnerability is existential: lifestyle choices, mobility, violence, culture and leisure • For lower and lower middle migrants, besides existential vulnerability, social vulnerability is very important: where to work, cost of living, conditions of life, violence, poverty • High mobility is put into motion in order to maintain relations with the place of origin or with other migrants from the same origin, as well as to satisfy the necessities of existential security

17. Commuting and vulnerability of the city • Commuting is an ambivalent element in the promotion of the existential security/insecurity: it adds and it disaggregates in the same movement • However, it increases the vulnerability of places, promoting new cultural and political ties which weaken involvement with places, and reduces their scope (housing is limited to the house itself, neighborhood and city diminishing in importance) • Hyper-mobility makes cities and populations more vulnerable

18. Perspectives and conclusions – theoretical and conceptual ways • It is necessary to comprehend and investigate mobility-vulnerability relationships, in their multiple aspects • Differences between migrants and non-migrants influence individual and collective vulnerability as vulnerability of place, since they interact with social and cultural dimensions in the production of space • It is necessary to incorporate commuting in vulnerability studies, including other movements besides work and study, since in the contemporary metropolis all dimensions of the life of families are involved