Contested bodies in a regenerating city: post-migrant men’s contingent citizenship, parkour and diaspora spaces

Abstract

The following paper contributes to interdisciplinary debates at the intersection of informal sport/leisure, migration and urban studies. It does so by drawing on an ethnographic research with young men of migrant origins in Turin, Italy, and by addressing the relevance of parkour in the participants’ experiences and negotiations of ‘what it means to (not) belong’ in urban spaces. The focus on parkour provides a unique entry point to address the politics of belonging that unfold in urban spaces as contested sites where competing images of the city, the nation and of who belongs to them converge, clash and overlap. This is particularly relevant, though not limited to the Italian context, where political narratives and realities still legally and socially define the children of migration as alien bodies in the nation, while Turin’s urban leaderships portray youth cultures and multicultural diversity as assets for the city’s symbolic, cultural and financial regeneration. As the intersection of such discourses shapes the manifold ways through which post-migrant urban subjects become essentialised, valorised and pathologised in Turin, the paper’s findings foreground the relevance of informal sports as entry points to (re)consider discussions on citizenship, conviviality and rights (to the city) in contemporary urban contexts.