Book review: Mobile commons, migrant digitalities and the right to the city

Abstract

This book examines the relationship between urban migrant movements, struggles and digitality which transforms public space and generates mobile commons. Empirically conducted during the time of crisis-and-austerity, the research draws on struggles in Athens, Nicosia and Istanbul, but also extends to the eastern Mediterranean borders. The authors explore heterogeneous digital forms in the context migration, border-crossing and transnational activism, displaying commonality patterns and inter-dependence. The interaction between actors generates powerful transformation effects at different levels: struggles for daily survival and more visible or subtle struggles for recognition, representation and/or settlement. Albeit legally inchoate, such vibrant struggles contribute to the establishment of informal socially embedded 'rights' and new 'acts of citizenship'. Mobile commons are socially practiced rights to be mobile which subvert technological and sovereign control to allow for the subject invisibility, multiplicity and freedom from surveillance.