Dealing with diversity in the city: Exploring the arrival and transition infrastructure in the migrant neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord

This paper analyses what makes cities resilient for external migration flows. We argue that the logic of socio-spatial differentiation and specialization in cities, as first described by urban sociologists of the Chicago School (but wrongly attributed to ecological forces), can provide cities with resilience in the face of migration. More specifically, we focus on the operation of urban transition zones as areas specialized in the arrival and transition of newcomers, and mobilize a Polanyian framework to analyse the localized resources that are nurtured in these areas and potentially contribute to the integration of migrants in society. Based on a case study of the migrant neighbourhood Antwerpen-Noord, we analyse to what extent these neighbourhoods provide the resources that newcomers need in their arrival and transition process through the mechanisms of market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity, and which impact the policy interventions have on these resources. We show how urban policies focusing on ‘upgrading’ the area undermine the resilience of this neighbourhood as a transition zone and conclude that policy interventions need both to draw extra-local resources to the transition zone and to mobilize the embodied knowledge of the local community to make the city more resilient for all its inhabitants.status: accepte