lectures

Infrastructures of Kindness in the Context of Migrant Arrival

Oxford University

November 20

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Susanne Wessendorf, Coventry University

Much social scientific research on migrant arrival and settlement has examined these processes through the lens of ‘integration’, investigating how migrants access societal realms such as the labour market, education, civil society and social networks. A complementary body of work has looked at how socio-economic contexts shape integration and social mobility. This paper expands on this work by highlighting the importance of place in the context of migrant arrival. It builds on an emerging body of literature on ‘arrival infrastructures’ that has emphasised that where migrants arrive, and the related place-based opportunity structures they encounter, play a crucial role in their ability to access resources. Arrival infrastructures consist of a range of places, including civil society organisations, religious sites, informal sites like barbers or cafés, and publicly funded places like libraries and support services.

Drawing on ethnographic research in East London, the paper analyses the opportunities and barriers that migrants encounter in accessing support through arrival infrastructures. It demonstrates how individual factors, such as cultural and social capital, combined with systemic barriers, including migration status and limited welfare entitlements, shape access to support differentially. It also highlights the crucial role of intermediaries or ‘brokers’, ranging from civil society actors to local pastors, shopkeepers and street-level bureaucrats, many of whom go beyond the remit of their everyday jobs. By drawing on the notion of ‘infrastructures of kindness’, the paper highlights how, in light of unprecedented cuts to welfare provision and their exacerbated effect in arrival areas (which are often amongst the most disadvantaged areas of the country), it is often thanks to these local acts of informal care that newcomers manage to forge a living.