Broadening the Urban Planning Repertoire with an ‘Arrival Infrastructures’ Perspective

Abstract

In this article we propose an arrival infrastructure’s perspective in order to move beyond imaginaries of neighbourhoods as a ‘port of first entry’ that are deeply ingrained in urban planning discussions on migrants’ arrival situations. A focus on the socio-material infrastructures that shape an arrival situation highlights how such situations are located within, but equally transcend, the territories of neighbourhoods and other localities. Unpacking the infrastructuring work of a diversity of actors involved in the arrival process helps to understand how they emerge through time and how migrants construct their future pathways with the futuring possibilities at hand. These constructions occur along three dimensions: (1) Directionality refers to the engagements with the multiple places migrants have developed over time, (2) temporality questions imaginaries of permanent belonging, and (3) subjectivity directs attention to the diverse current and future subjectivities migrants carve out for themselves in situations of arrival. This perspective requires urban planners to trace, grasp and acknowledge the diverse geographies and socio-material infrastructures that shape arrival and the diverse forms of non-expert agency in the use, appropriation and fabrication of the built environment in which the arrival takes place.