Race, Rescaling and Restructuring in the Migrant Gateway

Niall A. Cunningham, Newcastle University
Laurence Brown, Australian National University

This article is a response to the recent call to approach the recent migrant experience in urban space through the adoption of multiple scales of analysis, with a view to drawing out the nuances and spatial subjectivities of that process. It uses the city of Manchester, England as a lens through which to analyse and comprehend some of the complexities of ethnically-diverse neighbourhoods. This chapter It explores how such dynamics the were impacted by forms of radical urban renewal in the post-war period on two inner-city districts of Manchester, England: Cheetham Hill, immediately to the north of the city centre, and Moss Side to the south. In the city’s imagination both areas places have historically acted as migrant ‘gateways’, the initial residential areas for overseas settlers to Manchester, and as such have throughout the post-war period in the second half of the twentieth century been characterised by high levels of ethnic diversity and intergenerational population change. However, while Cheetham Hill and Moss Side shared much in common with regard to these socio-economic functions as places of reception for arriving immigrants within the city, they each contained very different migrant communities, with highly distinctive dynamics, demographics and histories. This chapter paper will explore how these diverse and divergent populations experienced the projects for comprehensive redevelopment of inner city Manchester during the 1960s and 1970s . At a point in western urban development at which racially-diverse neighbourhoods were in the front line in the neoliberal battle between the competing demands of ‘use’ and ‘exchange’ value, it also behoves us to reflect critically on the ways in which even seemingly benign social housing and amenity developments also had detrimental and dispersive impacts on particular communities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 154. Migrants and Immigration Experiences