Research project
Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe (NITE)
How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe? This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam. Authorities have historically wrestled with the issue of night-time control, and the hours after dark are often still perceived as harbouring threats to public order. However, current policy attention to night-time urban cultures and economies – e.g. the creation of the office of Night Mayor (Amsterdam, 2014) and Night Czar (London, 2016) - illustrates the increasing interest in the urban night. NITE’s transdisciplinary, humanities-led research will contribute otherwise overlooked evidence on the production, experience and narration of migrant urban night spaces, in their material, symbolic and virtual dimensions. The researchers investigate traditional public spaces (streets, squares), also in relation to private spaces, alongside semi-public commercial and cultural venues (cultural centres; bars and nightclubs; hotels) and new virtual spaces (digital apps).
- Duration
- 2019 - 2022
- Contact
- Sara Brandellero
- Funding
-
HERA: Humanities in the European Research Area
-
EU Commission
- Partners
Leiden University, University College London, Leuphana University, Aarhus University, University of Limerick.
Night Spaces: migration, culture and integration in Europe (NITE)
How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe?
This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam.
Led by the University of Leiden, the research is a collaboration with teams at University College London, Leuphana University, Aarhus University and the University of Limerick.
Why research night spaces now?
Authorities have historically wrestled with the issue of night-time control, and the hours after dark are often still perceived as harbouring threats to public order and potential criminality. However, current policy attention to night-time urban cultures and economies, exemplified by the creation of the office of Night Mayor (Amsterdam, 2014) and Night Czar (London, 2016), illustrates the increasing interest in the urban night. NITE’s transdisciplinary, humanities-led research will contribute otherwise overlooked evidence on the production, experience and narration of migrant urban night spaces, in their material, symbolic and virtual dimensions. The researchers investigate traditional public spaces (streets, squares), also in relation to private spaces, alongside semi-public commercial and cultural venues (cultural centres; bars and nightclubs; hotels) and new virtual spaces (digital apps).
In the NITE project we understand night spaces as important sites of crisis and regeneration, memory and heritage, community solidarity and growth; and night-time culture (expressed, amongst other forms, through music, film, digital platforms, performance) as opening up spaces of belonging and intercultural understanding.
NITE takes eight cities of different scales and histories of intra- and extra-European migration as case studies. The University of Leiden team, led by Dr Sara Brandellero, will study Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, through its large Cape-Verdean community, in comparative analysis with migrant groups in Amsterdam. This connects with the study of recent African immigration and cultural practices in public spaces in Cork and Galway, studied by the team at the University of Limerick, led by Dr Ailbhe Kenny. To strengthen the comparative, transdisciplinary focus, we consider the differing use of culture in public spaces and policing practices between the substantial Angolan and Cape Verdean communities in Lisbon and Aarhus’s Syrian refugee groups, studied by the team at the University of Aarhus, led by Dr Derek Pardue. The University of College London team, led by Prof Ben Campkin, will focus on public spaces oriented towards LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer) migrants – e.g. intra-European, Latino, Afro-Caribbean –, contextualised against London’s history as a place of sexual and gender diversity, and recent policy innovations recognising the value of night-spaces to social integration and supporting LGBTQ+nightlife. This focus on leisure and workspaces will be paralleled in Berlin, where research led by Prof Manuela Bojadzijev at the University of Leuphana examines the connection between night-time spaces and socio-cultural practices, studying migrant labour (South/Eastern European couriers) within the city’s growing digital economy.
Methods and approaches
We study night spaces in particular places and times and with attention to how different group experiences are shaped by conceptions of race, gender, sexuality, class and age.
With migration a defining characteristic of contemporary urban life, mobility is key to our understanding of night spaces. Drawing from geographers such as Doreen Massey and Tim Creswell we understand these spaces as mobile junctions of historical, socio-political and cultural layers, in constant transformation; and we conceive mobility as political, considering how people navigate night-time cityscapes according to and defying preconceptions of who is ‘out of place’.
Our research is transdisciplinary and humanities-led in its use of methods of socio-cultural and spatial analysis.
More information
For further details see our external website: nightspace.net.
| Name | Contact |
|---|---|
| Night narratives of migration in the Netherlands (Rotterdam/Amsterdam) |
Name: Dr. Sara Brandellero
Function: Project Leader/Principal Investigator, Leiden Name: Dr. Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues
Function: Co-investigator Name: Seger Kersbergen MA
Function: PhD Candidate Name: Prof. Frans-Willem Korsten
Function: Promotor Francianne Dos Santos Velho
Function: PhD candidate
Malìn van Weerdenburg Function: student assistant
Maxime Schut and
Florbella Rodrigues Baptista
Function: Research assistants
|
| Migrant Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ+) communities’ nightspaces in London, 1980s to the present |
Name: Professor Ben Campkin Name: Professor Matthew Beaumont Name: Lo Marshall MA |
| Berlin: migrant bike couriers in the »Smart City« at night |
Name: Professor Manuela Bojadzijev Name: Laura-Solmaz Litschel MA |
| Migrant youth out of place? Cross-cultural understandings of Night and Belonging in Lisbon and Aarhus |
Name: Dr. Derek Pardue |
| Cork and Galway: strangers in the night - African migrant music-making in Irish cities |
Name: Dr. Ailbhe Kenny Name: Dr. Katherine Young |
| Name | Contact |
|---|---|
|
Mr Mário Alves |
Lisbon, Portugal |
|
Mr Ivan Barbosa |
Amsterdam, Netherlands barbosaone@gmail.com |
|
Dr Tim Crocker-Buqué |
London, UK drtimcb@fastmail.com |
| Ms Hannah Kiely Chief Executive Galway 2020 (European City of Culture) |
Galway, Ireland hannah@galway2020.ie |
|
Ms Amy Lamé |
Mayor of London Office: London, UK |
|
Mr Mirik Milan |
VibeLab: Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
|
Mr Ben Walters |
11 Cole House Bayliss Road |
|
Mr Anders Winther |
Aarhus, Denmark |
|
Dr Susanne Fuchs |
Lehmkuhlenbusch 4D-27753 |