Seminar: Michael Keith, "Global migration and the future of le droit à la ville"

Past Event

Date
16 November 2010, 5:30pm - 7:00pm

Location
Said Business School
Park End Street, Oxford OX1 1HP

Speaker: Michael Keith, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford
Commentator: Jimin Zhao, Director, China Environment and Energy Programme, Environment Change Institute, University of Oxford
Presentation title: "Global migration and the future of le droit à la ville"

Abstract:
The modern city has conventionally received and integrated new arrivals, but the scale of international migration in the 21st century challenges the ethical and social settlement of the metropolis. As cities increasingly mediate global networks and flows of information, capital and culture, the relationship between the national, the urban and the local is reconfigured. How do cities regulate the rights to the city of flows when old boundaries between citizens and denizens lose their clarity? How do transnational and diasporic structures of sensibility alter the languages of belonging in the city? This seminar will interrogate how we think about the interplay of urban change and normative theory in the cities that accommodate demographic change across the world in the 21st century.

About the speaker:
Michael Keith has a personal chair, University of Oxford and is the Director of COMPAS. His research interests focus on the interface between culture, urbanism and migration. His current work develops past projects on the dynamics of urbanism, the study of cultural difference and the impact of migration on structures and processes of governance. One strand of this considers the politics of migration, integration, cohesion and everyday life in the United Kingdom. A second strand considers the dynamics of migration, city transformation and emergent markets in contemporary China.