Migrants’ everyday life and migration regimes: A study of migrants’ leisurely use of urban parks

Abstract

The article’s aim is to demonstrate how migration regimes tacitly operate at the level of everyday practices. We propose to see migrants’ leisure, recreational use of parks in particular, as a venue for the internalization and embodiment of migration regimes. We seek to explore if migrants negotiate and resist these regimes through their everyday practices. Our study is based on 70 interviews with Ukrainian and Vietnamese migrants in Poland, Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands, Turkish migrants in Germany, and Latino and Chinese migrants in the U.S. We present migrants’ perceptions of urban parks’ rules and their interactions with other park users. Particular attention is paid to migrants’ ability to negotiate the existing regulations and to adjust these environments to their needs. We discuss the mechanisms that limit migrants’ ability to negotiate the frameworks of migration regimes through their leisurely use of urban parks.