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Strangers in the City

Immigrants as Attraction, Immigrants as Menace

The issues concerning immigration and multiethnicity are extremely broad. In addition to these is the problem of ‘other Others’ in the City. The different groups in the City, though they have a great joint role, also have a lot of overlap. ‘Strangers’ in the city are not necessarily immigrants – for instance, strangers in the city of a conservative society can be homosexuals, who after all come from within that same society, while immigrants under certain conditions (for example, in the cities where immigrants make up the majority) are not necessarily ‘strangers’. For an even better rendering of the complexity of this problem, there should be a distinction between the several types of immigrant presence in the world. Probably the simplest classification is a division into those who, with their own will or against it, stay in a ‘foreign’ city permanently, and those who are in such a city ‘temporarily’, where that period of time, though it may last for several years, is in fact – at least in the declarations of immigrants – a minor interruption in their ‘proper’ life. This ‘temporary’ migration has one primary goal – economic. Its purpose is to allow the immigrant to earn enough money to start a ‘real’ life upon returning to their country.

These kinds of immigrants are very strongly associated with the country of their origin and very weakly with the country in which they are temporarily staying. Most do not know (or know very little of) the language of their host country, do not want or do not have too much capacity to integrate with a culturally alien environment, and perform the simplest and worst paid work (although, of course, we have here a unique group of highly specialised workers who are often a cosmopolitan community, familiar with the language of their host country and who feel just as ‘at home’ or just as ‘foreign’ as anywhere else in the world). Their importance to the host country is basically economic; because these people are doing work which the ‘locals’ do not wish to pursue, there is a kind of symbiosis. To their apparent mutual satisfaction, the immigrants work and the ‘locals’ use them. Poles were such immigrants for many years (and still some of my countrymen remain so), as were Turks in Germany, Hispanics in the U.S. or Vietnamese in Poland.

This category of immigrants rather smoothly intertwines with another: the category of immigrants who were forced to leave their homes without being in any way prepared. I am talking about all kinds of political and economic refugees who, like those of the first category, are usually poorly educated, do the worst work, but do not have the possibility of returning to their home country. These two categories of people are, either actually or mentally, very strongly connected with their home countries and very poorly with their current country of residence. It is obvious that the image of the country held by its guest is different on the ‘outside’ – when dealing with family and friends – than on the ‘inside’. For family and friends that remained in the homeland, the country in which an immigrant is staying is almost a paradise, whereas the reality of the ‘inside’ is the complete opposite – it is mostly hell. On the other hand there are immigrants who confidently choose their ‘second homeland’ and often find relationships (marriage, partnerships or friendships) with the ‘locals’, who then in turn smoothly merge with a group of refugees who for various reasons do not want to have anything to do with their country of origin at all.

Since all these categories of immigrants and ‘foreigners’ are mixed together, I would like to distinguish my area of interest in this chapter very clearly. A key problem here is – as throughout the whole book – the roots: the relationship between the human being, the society and space. Therefore, I will treat all other distinctions as secondary, focusing primarily on the relationship between the person with their place of residence and the place (or places) that is ‘external’. With this perspective, City residents appear to us as beings with no race, no gender or other such parameters, situated instead on the excluded – included axis. But before we can answer the question: “Why are some city residents more excluded than others?” – and we can be sure that we would have to give a specific answer in any case – we must notice that such an action takes place at all. At this point, however, some doubt must appear – if I have mentioned immigrants who are in fact ‘rooted’ in their places of origin, must this exclusion be in any case destructive and tragic? Maybe instead of thinking about the exclusion of one particular space we should actually generalise it even more in this case? And simply ask about the exclusion proliferating in the world? But let us leave that question for now – though it is fundamental to this book.

Meanwhile, back to those excluded from the (physical and social) City space. The fact is that those born in the town are usually in a better position, are more ‘rooted’ in this space. They know the area; they are familiar with the paths, roads, squares and shops. They know the people. They have the enemy-friend system adjusted accordingly. However, the family into which they were born and the area in which they grew up is even more important. Perhaps a native to London’s Kensington area will not feel too confident in the East End and Southwark, but because they come from a particular part of the city, have certain parents and friends, they will be firmly and permanently rooted in the city (as a whole, or in its ‘better’ and ‘major’ part). Today, it is social position, wealth, influence and power that are the true causes of being rooted in the world. Roots in the City are no longer afforded as much significance in the eyes of the local community. They are lost because the City is not a community anymore. The idea that the City is a political community was European – in China, a city resident was still primarily a member of the clan. Their roots in the world were not geographical but social. Perhaps for this reason, Chinese ethnic neighbourhoods are still incredibly strong and unique. The legend of the ‘Chinese districts’ as dangerous places – a bit mysterious, but fascinating and important for the American cities, especially for their ‘mythology’ – can become the point at which we move from an analysis of how the Root is viewed from the inside in consideration of their lack of rootedness, and how they are seen from the outside, to a reflection on being uprooted as a tourist. However brutal it may sound, otherness is fascinating. Provided, of course, that this ‘otherness’ is under some control.

Districts – Chinese, Italian, Jewish and red light districts – are the spaces inhabited by people whose roots in the City are weaker than most of the inhabitants of other, perhaps better districts. In most of these places such ethnically specific people find their roots outside the City, in their families and religion. Their presence, however, is necessary for the City. The strength of the City lies in its diversity: in potential tensions between people, groups and neighbourhoods. The City is an Exchange Machine, and the separate ‘districts of the uprooted’ (in the City) have a threefold purpose. First, to provide for the City employees who are able to accept the unacceptable conditions necessary for an embedded population. This is because the uprooted districts operate with a certain autonomy in relation to the rest of the urban organism. The rules that prevail in them are not exactly the rules of the City, and are connected primarily with lower housing prices and generally lower maintenance prices.

In the history of Polish cities, there is the phenomenon of autonomous areas; areas separated from the city administration – ‘spheres of free trade’, as we would say today. The idea behind jurisdictions, special economic spheres and uprooted districts is economically the same; it is a kind of parasitic or symbiotic relationship with the City that functions independently, a separate socio-spatial structure within the city. Secondly, districts of the uprooted, due to their links with communities outside the City, become a specific transfer channel of information, people and goods to the City, from the world and back (sometimes on the border of legality, occasionally beyond it). Third, districts of the uprooted become a tourist attraction, which in modern cities is extremely important. This even applies to notorious neighbourhoods such as New York’s Harlem.17 Minorities who live in ethnic neighbourhoods may be anywhere between the City elites and the margins of society. The so-called ‘middleman minority’ economic niches are filled, ensuring a fairly rapid generation and retention of revenue in the social and economic structure of cities.18 For example, Korean communities who addressed this issue in 1992, to the great rancour of the African-American population during the famous riots in Los Angeles, illustrate this process perfectly and display immigrants who threaten the city.

Denis Judd writes: “In the poststructuralist literature dealing with the city, enclaves (districts) are understood as local hubs of international capital and cultural structures, hiding behind a mask of locality: gated communities, through the magic of marketing, are becoming the neighbouring units, shopping malls are the new marketplaces, and neighbourhoods offer a simulacrum of authentic tourist cities, which they are replacing.”19 If on such a structure of cities – with strong vertical links to the outside world – we superimpose these districts of the uprooted, particularly ethnic neighbourhoods, we get a picture of the City which is – de facto – only a local representation of the forces and structures existing outside it. The City has lost almost entirely its local nature and situates its meaning almost entirely outside itself. The residents are rooted against ‘their’ city in a transcendent way. The European model of City as an autonomous entity is replaced by a kind of quasi-colonial city. Analogies with colonial cities are of course only partial, but such an image is firmly in favour with the imagination. The city becomes the space colonised by various entities, groups and forces external to its residents, whose interests and roots lie out of town. Suddenly it is occupied by both big corporations and illegal immigrants. The only ‘true’ residents of the city to remain are the poor, pushed to the margins and forced to feed off the dumping ground of globalisation. However, even these groups are trying to escape the city. Inside the city, the local poor are trying to become global paupers (the flight from the cities that I have already discussed).

Then what is the role of immigrants in the City? Everything depends on their area of rooting. Immigrants who are able to fit the slots of the City, and fill the existing social and economic niches without losing the ties to their place of origin, can achieve relative success and stability. Frequently, they occupy better positions in the City than some of its native inhabitants. If, however, for various reasons the bond with their home country is poor, and the city in which they live has a socially and economically compact, tight structure, the immigrants fall to the bare bottom of the social hierarchy. They become modern slaves, exploited without mercy. They also become ‘invisible’ to the rest of the urban society, and so the city does not make use of the valuable culture they bring, but uses only their bodies as an extremely cheap and efficient workforce. Sooner or later this huge injustice results in outbursts of hatred (as in France during 2005), but primarily it works as a demoralising force on the city itself.