Paper short abstract:

Irregular migrants’ urban protests show us how urban margins can play a significant role in shaping and contesting the city, but particularly also point out the need for studying the ways boundaries and meaning between the urban centre and periphery are constantly shifting and being contested.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, focuses on the urban practices of irregular migrants in Brussels, and particularly pays attention to those spatial practices used to counter and contest exclusion. Considered "illegal" and "non-citizens", and severely excluded from the city in economic, political and social ways, irregular migrants notably find themselves living at the urban margins. Yet, oftentimes, they actively engage in mobilizations and urban protests, to claim a legal residence (through regularization), but also to express demands for urban belonging and citizenship, advocating instead a citizenship regime based on their residence and presence within the city (a politics of the urban inhabitant, Purcell). In Brussels, these urban protests (marches, demonstrations, the occupation of buildings) often take place in the inner city (mostly tolerated by the authorities, yet at times prohibited); the House of Migrants e.g., a former government building occupied by irregular migrants, is situated next to the Avenue Louise, the city's most prestigious and expensive shopping street. As such, these spatial practices show us how urban margins are significant in shaping the city at large, but above all force us to rethink what makes up the urban centre and periphery. Rather than looking at urban margins as consisting mostly of geographically secluded localities, such as poor neighborhoods, attention also needs to be paid to those spaces (often invisible) of urban margins within the centre of the city, as well as the ways boundaries, power relations, and meaning between urban centre and periphery are constantly shifting and being contested.