This book takes a close look at the interrelated phenomena of international business migrants and rural migrant workers in Shanghai. Through separate case studies, it observes them in parallel and sheds light on the spatial implications of both groups' migrant status. The authors' exposure of harsh and inadequate living and working conditions affecting rural migrant workers in the construction industry in Shanghai leads them to develop the concept of "Fair Building," a socially conscious architecture that calls for accountability in ensuring that stakeholders involved in the construction...

Unemployment, social deprivation, poverty, political instability, severe cuts in welfare state budgets, and a widespread feeling of despair have eroded much of the social foundations of Southern European cities. In this book, contributors from Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy provide insight into the complex interface among different aspects of this crisis. They show these troubles are not entirely due to budgetary problems but are the result of the conditions of a changing nation-state, cultural diversity, the challenges of urban planning, and a globalized economy

How has ethnic entrepreneurship emerged and developed since the late eighties in Berlin? In his study, Baris Ulker answers this question by relying on the experiences of immigrants from Turkey. Most academic studies on ethnic entrepreneurship have focused either on the most unitary structure available in the natural flow of history or on the pre-given cultural characteristics of immigrants. This book instead sets historical ruptures, conditions of possibility and individual practices in context. It analyzes how human beings have been turned into ethnic entrepreneurs and explains the ways of...

How did American cities change during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? This timely publication integrates research from American literary and cultural studies, urban studies, and history. The essays range from negotiations of the "ethnic city" in US literature and media to studies of recent urban phenomena and their representations: gentrification, re-appropriation, and conversion of urban space. These interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives on American cities provide valuable points of entry for studying the complex narratives of urban transformation in the U.S. and...

The Brazilian Constitution provides a remarkable set of social rights, including the right to housing. Despite this fact, struggles for decent living conditions have become key issues in the daily lives of many people in Brazil. Contesting the differentiated access to housing, social movements occupy empty buildings in the cities to challenge historically-rooted and exclusionary urban politics. Exploring the occupants' agency, Bea Wittger draws attention to the important role of female actors within the buildings. Through oral histories of participants of two squats in Rio de Janeiro, the...

Urbanization in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, poses challenges to urban living conditions. Construction and settling processes have largely remained incremental, although in the year 2005 a new national urban policy was introduced. Nadine Appelhans focuses on the relation of statutory planning standards to practices of everyday urbanization. The findings from Bahir Dar suggest that socio-economic segregation has continued. There is therefore a need for policy changes. This study argues that urban development needs to be locally grounded, differentiated, and inclusive, based in a typology of...

A Cultural Politics of Place and Exclusion.