mpimmg
Spring 2016
O pen L ectures
Library Hall, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11
Thursday, 14 April 2016, 14:00-16:00
Magda Nowicka / Agata Lisiak
(HU Berlin)
“Unravelling urban rhythms in the migrant experience:
Polish migrants in Munich and Berlin”
The study of migration and the study of urban life have been closely linked since the emergence of
the social sciences as organized disciplines. Ethnicity remains at the center of the wide body of work
on cities and migration, regardless of the research foci: it persists, among others, in studies on urban
multiculturalism and diversity, segregation and social inequality in cities, and opportunity structures for
migrants in cities. Consequently, migrants’ understandings and usages of urban space, as well as their
interactions therein, are often explained in terms of ethnic and cultural categories. Whereas we recognize
that ethnicity is relevant for people in how they relate to each other in various situations, we think that
analyses that present migrants’ urban experiences as being solely mediated by ethnic belonging, obscure
other important factors at play. Inspired by Doreen Massey (1994), we consider urban places as being open,
porous and interlinked and, culturally complex. Drawing from the rich tradition of feminist geography,
we examine the different ways in which women experience and make sense of work relations in urban
contexts (Johnson 1994; 2008; McDowell 1993; Yeoh and Ramdas 2014; Wright 2010). We address these
by analyzing Polish female migrants’ narratives of everyday practices related to professional work and
childrearing in Berlin and Munich. In our talk, we will discuss gendered performances in various types of
places in the city – the workplace, home and in public space broadly understood. We will pay attention
hereby to the workings of neoliberalism, and neoliberal time regimes in particular.
Dr. Magdalena Nowicka is professor of migration and transnationalism at the
Institute of Social Sciences and member in the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration
Research (BIM), both at the Humboldt University. Her current project is “Transforming
Migration. Transnational Transfer of Multicultural Habitus” (www.transformig.hu-berlin.de).
Her publications include The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism (edited
with Maria Rovisco, Ashgate 2011) and numerous articles and book chapters on conviviality,
cosmopolitanism and migrant transnationalism.
Dr. Agata Lisiak is postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University’s Institute of
Social Sciences and lecturer at Bard College Berlin. She is the author of Urban Cultures in
(Post)Colonial Central Europe (Purdue University Press 2010), as well as articles and book
chapters on media representations of the city, cultural memory, gender and migration,
and everyday life in the city. Her current research project is entitled “Immigrant Mothers
as Agents of Change”.
Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversit y
Hermann-Föge-Weg 11 • 37073 Göttingen • Tel: 0551/4956-0
info@mmg.mpg.de • www.mmg.mpg.de