Contribution short abstract:

This study examines how highly skilled migrants in Sendai, Japan, create and contest urban commons through their practices of integration. Using ethnographic methods, it shows how migrants transform public spaces and challenge traditional social structures while building significant local ties.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines how international migrants in Sendai, Japan, representative of a more peripheral mid-sized urban setting, are actively engaged in creating, negotiating and contesting urban commons as they integrate into their host community. By mapping their everyday practices, interactions and placemaking strategies, I show that these professionals and students are challenging the notion of urban commons in a city characterised by hierarchical social structures.

Using qualitative ethnographic and participatory sensory methods with both migrants and the host community, the study provides a nuanced understanding of how localised ties are formed and maintained in an environment traditionally resistant to foreign integration. These migrants navigate institutional barriers and use shared urban resources and social infrastructures to create a sense of place and belonging. In the process, they transform public spaces, community centres and cultural venues into dynamic commons, challenging perceptions of the city as a purely administrative or economic entity.

The research highlights the role of these migrants in reimagining and contesting urban commons, contributing to the discourse on urban life, migration and the right to the city in Japan's urban milieu. Their engagement with urban commons reveals the dynamic nature of social infrastructure in mediating integration processes. This study advances urban anthropological theory by reconceptualising urban commons as sites of negotiation between established social orders and emerging transnational practices, and offers insights into how mid-sized Japanese cities are affected by migration.