Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between immigrants and cities by means of a praxeological approach. It focuses on religious groups and ethnic entrepreneurship to show how immigrants shape the (established) urban space through practices as well as the dynamics initiated by these processes.

Paper long abstract:

Immigrants are residents of cities. Thus they contribute actively to the cultural, social and economic shaping of urban spaces. Taking practice theory, as developed by Theodore Schatzki, into account, these contributions are understood as social change insofar as they transform (established) "bundles of practices and material arrangements" that describe social reality.

Neighbourhoods and city districts are one possible locus to examine this process of transformation. In order to maintain their identity immigrants transform these specific urban settings by means of following routinized practices, including practical understanding how to handle certain things, e.g. the materiality of cities. (While at the same time this materiality influences which kinds of social practices are possible.) On the one hand this fosters the (global) circulation of practices and practical understanding and affects a diversification of the local. On the other hand it initiates a process where established and new bundles of practices and material arrangements become a matter of negotiation and eventually of identity as well as community.

Moreover these dynamics influence the perception of the districts as a whole, oscillating between perceptions as places of deprivation and multicultural hot spots that are marketed for city branding reasons.

The paper is based on my ongoing dissertation project, wherein I examine the question how migration related transformation of urban space is perceived and negotiated. To answer this question I focus by means of a comparison between Glasgow (United Kingdom) and Stuttgart (Germany) on the development of ethnic entrepreneurship and religious groups in two distinct neighbourhoods.