Transnational migrations and city-making: from Missão Paz to Jardim Piratininga

Abstract

The article addresses the phenomenon of contemporary transnational migration and its relationship with urban dynamics in São Paulo. Based on research carried out between 2017 and 2022, the study examines the experience of migrants at Missão Paz, an important care facility, and in the Jardim Piratininga neighborhood, on the periphery of the city. It argues that, despite the adversities faced by these people, migrants construct senses of belonging and produce the urban. The article also highlights the importance of the relational networks situated in the territory, based on the trajectory of two interlocutors, and proposes the notions of “city-making” and emplacement (by M. Agier and Çaglar and Schiller) as a way of understanding how migrants transform the urban spaces they live in.

City-making; Transnational migration; Displacement; Urban lens