Who Owns the City? Migration, Ownership and Urban Ethnic Parties

• In Event: Advances in Identity Politics in South Asia

Abstract

What explains across-group variation in ethnic political mobilization? Existing theories of ethnic politics emphasize either motivating conditions (such as poor living conditions or discrimination) or mobilization technologies (such as minimum-winning coalitions or dense co-ethnic networks) to explain why certain ethnic groups become politically mobilized versus others. In this paper, I argue that mobilization technologies are insufficient to account for across-group variation in the successful mobilization of ethnicity. In addition, I argue that motivating conditions are evaluated against how things are expected to be, and these expectations can differ systematically between ethnic groups. In urban contexts, I argue that these expectations are borne out of a sense of collective psychological ownership (or lack thereof) over the city, which in turn is shaped by the self-selection process into migration. In comparison to political migrants or natives, economic migrants and their descendants hold lower ownership over, and lower expectations from, city life. Ethnic parties therefore face a tougher challenge in creating a sustainable ethnic constituency from economic migrants. I illustrate this theoretical framework through an in-depth qualitative comparison – based on over 200 original interviews – between the two largest ethnic groups in Pakistan’s megacity Karachi: the Muhajirs and the Pashtuns.

Author

• Mashail Aman Malik, Harvard University