VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

This paper draws on my ethnographic and participatory research with adults who have migrated to, or come to seek sanctuary in, London and who are accessing different language learning opportunities to support them in their struggles to make their lives in the city. Language proficiency is commonly seen as a key factor that accounts for migrants’ disparities regarding their social positionings and trajectories within urban settings and linguistic competence often acts as a crucial gatekeeping mechanism to participation and making the city more liveable on a day-to-day basis. My research highlights the lived experience of my participants who find themselves caught up in entrenched forms of intersecting inequalities, unequal power relations, an ever-growing competition for resources, as well as hostile and exclusionary dynamics that have come to the fore in the context of a ‘brutal migration milieu’ (Hall, 2017), increased migration-driven diversity and the distinct postcolonial multicultural situation of the global migrant city London. I shed light on how my participants deal with and navigate these complex processes whilst questing for the ‘right’ linguistic competence to somehow propel their lives forward despite being often painfully aware that this might not necessarily come to fruition. My work traces and examines in particular how in this context migrant language educational spaces become pivotal sites for counteracting hostility and exclusion and the enactment of a supportive sociality where togetherness and mutual support are fostered. I therefore argue for the leveraging of these spaces as a catalyst for innovative forms of solidarity within the place-based struggles of the migrant metropolis – thus making the city more liveable and building more equitable and inclusive urban futures from the bottom up.