Neoliberal Spatial Production of Immigrants' Rights to the City

• In Event: 3504 - Urban and Spatial Inequality

Abstract

This paper questions the relationship between construction of space, political capital, and stakeholdership in the context of immigrant communities comprised of citizens and non-citizens. Through concepts of “social nonmovements” (Bayat 2010) and “countervisuality” (Mirzoeff 2011), the article examines the ways in which communities with heavily immigrant populations formulate methods of political participation through accumulation of political capital built on neoliberal participation in the construction of spaces as a community of citizens and non-citizens. This ethnographic study, based on participation observation, semi-structured interviews, archival research, photography, and visual and textual analyses, found that in order to have “a seat at the table” and claim their rights to the city, immigrant communities, with members both citizens and non-citizens, must find ways to matter the power dynamics between the powerful city elected officials and less powerful stakeholders of Koreatown in Los Angeles. The study shows that to achieve this, the Koreatown communities are building politically claimable spaces through constructing a consumable transnational urban space, harnessing the “power of presence” in order to assert their stakeholdership in the neighborhood, the city, and beyond.

Author

• Soo Mee Kim, California State University, Los Angeles