Spectrums of in/formality and il/legality: negotiating business and migration-related statuses in arrival spaces

Across global cities of the world, urban spaces of arrival tend to be characterized by a multiplicity of informal practices, and therefore also marginality, being most preva- lent in relation to local economic practices, and increasingly more the legal status of foreigner migrants residing in such spaces. This article aims to understand these dy- namics in arrival spaces at the margins by exploring both domains in a unique man- ner. Over recent decades, urban and migration studies have separately given rise to new research that is critical of the pervasive binary views around formal versus infor- mal economies and legal versus illegal migrations. Drawing on this literature, and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in an Istanbul locality that has served as a zone of arrival for varying migration flows over several decades, this article examines how both business proprietors and migrants working and/or residing in the locality ac- tively and continuously re-negotiate their positions within spectrums of in/formality and il/legality. It shows that arrival spaces at the margins are places of intense calcu- lation and that the chosen direction along these spectrums depends on an evalu- ation of all kinds of social, political, spatial, and temporal factors transpiring at a particular moment and place. In focusing on this processual nature of in/formalities and il/legalities, the article also suggests reconsidering various other dualities, including margins versus center, exclusion versus inclusion, and arrival versus settle- ment, and argues that the intensity of having to manage one’s experiences of these dualities is what really distinguishes inhabiting arrival spaces at the margins in today’s global cities