Entering-In, Tuning-In: Linking Urban Public Space and Migrant Integration From a Place and Design Perspective

Abstract

This paper identifies migration integration as an important theme in migration studies that has been multiple-dimensionally conceptualised, especially from a social, economic, cultural, and political aspect, but pre-existing studies lack explorations of the role of urban public or urban design in the integration, though such space is critical to democratic life and cultural diversity. I review leisure, spatial studies and geographies literature on urban public space and urban experience and present how such space can relate to migrant integration as a socialising stage or entertaining hub, as well as the potential of adopting the human-environment nexus embodied in urban experience to understand social (non-)inclusion and migrant integration. In view of these linkages, integration is arguably redefined from a people–place interactive, spatial and design perspective, with the everyday experience of migrants and influence of urban public space’s (in)visible features on human bodies and minds, behaviours and emotions noted. Place integration as a new dimension indicated by sense of place such as place attachment/belonging is proposed that can contribute to place-based politics of belonging.