It’s not that I don’t like it here, it’s just that I eventually want to live somewhere else”

Young refugees’ contested arrival experiences, local racialized discourses and emergent future selves in Amsterdam

Bibliographic Data

ID11670519
AuthorsRik P Huizinga (0000-0001-6443-5108, Utrecht University, corresponding author), Ilse Van Liempt (0000-0002-4978-3101, Utrecht University)
Year2024
Volume45
Issue8
Pages1431-1453
Publication date2024-03-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0272-3638 • E-ISSN: 1938-2847
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02723638.2024.2325194
OpenAlexW4392927095
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited39

Although the urban fabric is often associated with relevant infrastructures that foster young refugees’ experiences of settlement and future imagining, a critical notion of place remains largely absent from the literature. This paper investigates refugee youths’ urban arrival and settlement processes by examining the role of public space, place and identity in their imagination of possible future selves. We use place identity as a dynamic, translocal and contested concept to explore how future selves are emplaced in multiple and contradictory ways. The paper reports on an eight-month ethnographic study in an underprivileged neighborhood in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, that is characterized by functionalism, social housing and a high concentration of refugee arrivals. We find that personal referents of public neighborhood places are important for nurturing young refugees’ specific hardships and traumas that threaten future self-imagination. We further demonstrate how momentary belongings due to diverse yet intertwined neighborhood identities foster the emergence of multiple possible future selves. Lastly, we show how local racialized discourses of place endanger and “trap” possible future self-concepts. We conclude that urban refugee youths’ future self-imaginations develop alongside multiple contested places and temporalities, and contribute to a relational understanding of urban processes and experiences of forced mobility and displacement

Aesthetics · Ethnography · Identity (music · Political science · Refugee · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Temporalities · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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