Migrant agency and embodiment in space – commentary to van Liempt


URN:NBN:fi:tsv-oa129714
DOI: 10.11143/fennia.129714

Reflections

Migrant agency and embodiment in space  – commentary to  
van Liempt

KATHARYNE MITCHELL

Mitchell, K. (2023) Migrant agency and embodiment in space – commentary 
to van Liempt. Fennia 201(1) 118–123. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.129714

In this reflection, I use van Liempt's analysis of emplacement as a helpful 
instigation to challenge and nuance three current theoretical debates in 
migration studies and geography. Focusing on the spaces of embodied 
migrant agency I counter the legacy of static concepts such as ‘immigrant 
integration’, refine ideas about the city and public space, and explore the 
contemporary politics of refusal. In each of these conversations, bringing in 
ideas of the spatial agency of migrants helps us to contest received ideas 
and categories and open up new ways of thinking about scale, society, 
public space, and refusal.

Keywords: agency, embodiment, migration, space, refusal

Katharyne Mitchell (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9238-7318), Department of 
Sociology, University of California, the United States. E-mail: kmitch@ucsc.edu

Introduction
Ilse van Liempt's (2023) excellent paper on local emplacement in Amsterdam focuses on how forced 
migrants forge their own sense of belonging in a city through placing themselves in certain locations 
and spaces. Rather than relying purely on state provided forms of accommodation and aid in the 
local infrastructure of reception centers, the migrants also form alternate social and spatial 
relationships as they negotiate their surroundings. In addition to the empirical data brought out  
in the study, the idea of active emplacement and migrants' agency and embodiment in space 

© 2023 by the author. This open access article is licensed under 
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.129714
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9238-7318
mailto:kmitch@ucsc.edu


FENNIA 201(1) (2023) 119Katharyne Mitchell

contributes to several key theoretical debates and ongoing conversations. Here I briefly explore 
three of these and consider how they are emerging as important sites of discussion and contention 
in the broader migration literature.

Immigrant integration
Over the last decade, the concept of immigrant integration has been vigorously critiqued by a number 
of scholars in diverse disciplines (Wieviorka 2014; Korteweg 2017; Schinkel 2017, 2018; Favell 2019; 
Penninx 2019; Abdelhady & Norocel 2023). In many respects, however, immigrant integration still 
remains a dominant way of framing the manner in which migrants are perceived to become part of a 
national society. Eminent migration scholars continue to write evaluative studies comparing immigrant 
integration around the globe (e.g. Alba & Foner 2015), and governments continue to fund research 
programs geared toward finding successful ways to integrate newcomers into the supposedly 
bounded and static territory of nation-states. Given the staying power of the concept, it is worth 
repeating some of the main points of critique, and showing how an emphasis on migrant agency and 
embodiment in space can help to counter its stubborn legacy.

The focus of immigrant integration is almost always on the society or social system as seen from 
above, rather than on the actions, everyday practices, experiences, and subjectivity formation of 
migrants themselves (Wieviorka 2014). While primarily a demographic project at core, it is nevertheless 
also an exercise in neocolonial power, using tools of measurement that quickly become problematic 
in how they define and establish categories, especially those involving racialized communities (Schinkel 
2017; Abdelhady & Norocel 2023). These definitions and categorizations are important to consider 
because they often have negative material effects for immigrants, through the formation of discourses, 
flow of resources, establishment of systems of governance, and subjection to violence. The concept of 
immigrant integration also tends to reify the idea of a bounded entity (the nation-state or the society) 
that is breached and threatened by immigrants who are projected as bringing difference with them, 
jeopardizing the existing society and in need of management. The core idea of ‘society’ itself is based 
on an unexamined and vague meaning, with implicit assumptions about boundaries and stasis and 
lacking a deep engagement with colonial history or power. It assumes an identity that is always already 
complete, setting up a perpetual tension between insiders and outsiders (Schinkel 2018).

The concept of immigrant integration also rests on assumptions about scales as fixed in time and 
space, rather than as actively produced and reproduced socially (Marston 2000). It is a good example 
of the operation of methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002), reflecting essential 
assumptions about a national society that is bounded and contained, with a reliance on the nation-
state as the key unit of analysis and theoretical back-stop. In addition to the now large literature on 
transnationalism, which highlights the importance of transnational ties and ongoing movements 
across social spaces and scales, the idea of emplacement similarly challenges the fixity and stasis of 
immigrant integration through its emphasis on the interdependencies between scales. The concept of 
the ‘geosocial’ is a helpful way to further conceptualize these global-local interdependencies, the 
“dynamic relations by which, on one hand, the borders and territories of the world order are 
maintained, challenged, and (re)defined; and on the other hand, people constitute themselves as 
subjects and communities capable of transformative agency across and within such border-laden 
realities” (Mitchell & Kallio 2017, 1; Mitchell & Sparke 2020).

Emplacement, as van Liempt's (2023) paper shows, is composed of everyday, local actions by 
migrants who use and produce space in new, fundamentally geosocial ways. The migrants create new 
scales through giving meaning to events and places that are important to them – not necessarily at the 
level of the local infrastructure that is provided by the state, nor the broader neighborhood, nor even 
necessarily the city. It is a kind of insurgent spatial and social integration from below that cannot be 
identified or categorized or managed in advance. These small, often private actions are constrained 
within larger structures of power, yet nevertheless challenge the idea of static scales wholly produced 
from above, such as the nation or even more vaguely ‘society’, that are joined by immigrants coming 
from ‘the outside’. Rather, migrants are constantly producing new spatial scales and new societal forms 
through their movements and actions across space and between scales, and through taking space  



120 FENNIA 201(1) (2023)Reflections

and reworking it in ways that give their lives meaning (Sparke 2018; Vuolteenaho & Lyytinen 2018). It  
is through this intimate process of meaning-making and creating personal belonging that migrants aid 
in the (re)formation and transformation of an already integrated and interdependent society.

Stadtluft macht frei (City air makes you free)
According to historians, there was a period in German history when serfs who escaped to the city and 
took up residence for ‘a year and a day,’ id est, a long time, could become independent and continue 
living as free inhabitants. This potential urban freedom was possible because of the avoidance of 
recognition by the serf's owner – presumably because of the numbers of people cohabiting in one 
place and the invisibility it brought. Equally important, it was possible to survive economically outside 
of the social world of the manor house; an escaped individual could make an independent living – 
either through providing labor to others for some form of exchange, or through the possibility of 
taking common or 'public' land and using it for a livelihood.

I start with this medieval German phrase to underscore a long-standing assumption about urban 
space: that it can provide the path to some form of individual freedom from social servitude or 
constraint; further, that this opportunity is derived, to a large degree, from the potential to be invisible 
and/or to access public space. I would add a third, more modern urban freedom, that of the flaneur. 
Baudelaire described the flaneur as a person who could wander unrecognized in a crowd, encounter 
others in fleeting ways and enjoy being part of something, yet without any feelings of social attachment. 
This figure and idea of the wanderer became a metonym for the experience of modernity (Berman 
1983). Van Liempt's (2023) article brought out some of these practices and assumptions about the 
value of the anonymous city experience for ‘outsiders’ and complicated them in interesting ways.

Unlike reception centers that were often isolated or located on the urban periphery, the larger city 
of Amsterdam appeared to be a space of freedom for many migrants interviewed in the article. It 
offered a number of free or inexpensive places to do things that were impossible or difficult to achieve 
in private or more managed places. These included eating, drinking coffee and socializing in a park, 
going to a library, visiting a community center, and just sitting and people-watching. In these uses, it 
was the physical spaces of the city that felt liberating to migrants. The ability to access commonly held 
land and property enabled a kind of temporary escape and refuge from surveillance and management, 
enabling people to let down their guard, at least for a time. Many felt liberated by being invisible in the 
sense of not being seen or recognized vis-à-vis their identities as refugees. Additionally, ‘semi’ public 
spaces, such as balconies, were especially enjoyable for some, as they enabled a degree of public 
access and sociality, while simultaneously maintaining a boundary of privacy and protection. In many 
respects, these experiences typify those of the archetypal flaneur.

These embodied practices of space-making are important to validate, and help to counter top-
down narratives and evaluations of ‘immigrant integration’ as noted above. At the same time, it is 
also useful to reflect on assumptions about public space, visibility, and the figure of the unrecognized 
outsider in a more fine-grained way. While the city was reported as a site of freedom for some 
migrants because of the ability to enter common space and to passively and ephemerally encounter 
different types of people without necessarily being recognized as a refugee or outsider, this was not 
a universally positive experience. Some migrants in the study desired greater social contact and 
more of a personal encounter, attempted to converse with locals, and were largely rebuffed. The 
figure of the flaneur, as described by Baudelaire and others, is known for ‘his’ (see Wolff 1985 for one 
of many feminist critiques on the essentially masculinist quality of the figure) ability and willingness 
to pass unnoticed through the urban crowd. Yet this passage through a place presupposes a point of 
return to somewhere, presumably a ‘home’ with social ties and a familial sense of belonging. For 
those migrants seeking to create their own sense of belonging in a new environment, wandering 
without the possibility of a deeper engagement or more personal encounter was not merely 
unsatisfying, in some cases it was humiliating and depressing. When invisibility is desired and brings 
security and freedom, as it does for some, it can be a wonderful experience. But when it is not a 
choice, because of racial prejudice, linguistic or cultural challenges, or other reasons ascribed to 
one's personal identity, it can produce great emotional distress and harm.



FENNIA 201(1) (2023) 121Katharyne Mitchell

Further, as feminist critiques have pointed out, the capacity to wander unnoticed depends on who 
the outsider is and, I would add in the situation for many migrants, where the city is located. Because 
of visible characteristics of difference such as skin color, what may be possible for migrants in large, 
diverse cities such as Amsterdam, may not be possible in smaller and/or more ethnically homogeneous 
cities. In these types of situations, as Kallio and Häkli (2023) document, the fear of standing out, as 
well as the constant effort to blend in, hide, or become ‘invisible’ can have extremely negative physical 
and psychological effects.

Thus, the promise and lure of the city – the idea that stadtluft macht frei – is a highly contextual one. 
Public space and the anonymity of the crowd can be alienating as well as liberating, especially if a 
more intimate encounter is desired, yet seemingly impossible to achieve. If visibility and invisibility is 
not a choice, but rather a condition, it can have the opposite effect of the flaneur's encounters of 
pleasurable urban anonymity.

The politics of refusal
Through my recent work on church asylum (Mitchell & MacFarlane 2022; Mitchell 2023), I have become 
interested in the form of refusal that is expressed when migrants grow tired of waiting for the decisions 
of both state and pastoral actors and decide to ‘take’ sanctuary by squatting churches. In a sense they 
are refusing their positioning as docile subjects; they are also challenging and resisting the time 
horizon and spatial norms of hegemonic institutions such as the church and the state. Taking spaces 
and times back that would normally be ‘given’ through humanitarian processes, such as a legalization 
of refugee status or sanctuary in a church, refuses the normal order of things. It resists temporal and 
spatial logics that seek to manage and contain migrant bodies, even when ostensibly beneficent in 
intent. What does it mean to opt out of humanitarian programs and forms of care, to refuse aid or the 
promise of aid? To not ‘stay’ where one is put?

The concept of refusal as a form of resistance has re-emerged in the last few years in the domains 
of both humanitarian assistance and academic research. It is a complex idea with a complicated 
history. The idea of ‘ethnographic refusal’ was first employed in anthropology by Ortner (1995), who 
used the term critically, challenging ethnographers' refusal to deploy thick, or nuanced analysis in the 
study of subaltern forms of resistance, for fear that their research would undermine their subjects of 
study and advance dominant narratives. More recently it has been taken up in Indigenous studies, 
where it is employed differently by different scholars. For some, refusal emphasizes an unwillingness 
to engage with researchers, journalists, humanitarians, and others outside the community to promote 
narratives that have become harmful to those inside the community (Tuck & Yang 2014). These 
include, first and foremost, individual ‘pain narratives’ that have set up minoritized and Indigenous 
populations as passive victims of slow violence, instead of directing readers towards the institutions 
causing the structural damage in the first place (Dorries & Harjo 2022; Mitchell-Eaton & Coddington 
2022). For others (Simpson 2017), refusal is an important epistemological stance, one that runs 
counter to recognition politics in systems of settler colonial governance.

Contemporary cases of research refusal are starting to attract scholarly attention in migration sites 
as well. These include refugee camps, border spaces, and migrant squats (Spathopoulou & Meier 
2020; Giudici 2023). Additionally, refusal is becoming more evident in the growing resistance of some 
migrants to various forms of delayed or insufficient state-based and pastoral care, as noted above. 
Resistance in these cases takes many forms, including squatting, public demonstrations, the refusal 
of traditional forms of allyship, and the constitution of new alliances and solidarities (Pfeifer 2018; 
Dadusc & Mudu 2022; Meier forthcoming).

Humanitarian assistance of all kinds, whether it comes from the government, NGOs, non-profits, or 
individuals is often desperately needed, yet it is also inevitably imbricated in larger structures of 
violence and power that can produce harm for recipients (see the essays in Mitchell & Pallister-Wilkins 
2023). Assistance is often accompanied by various forms of surveillance, management and control, 
much of which can make recipients feel listless and passive. The state-based provision of housing for 
forced migrants in the Netherlands described in van Liempt's (2023) paper is just one example of this 
type of migrant assistance and management. As she shows, there is little to no choice of location or 



122 FENNIA 201(1) (2023)Reflections

type of housing accommodation, and the expectation is that the migrants will need to relocate quickly 
and often. Among the ramifications of this kind of constant movement and constraint on agency are 
not just the loss of choice, but importantly, also a loss of a sense of belonging and capacity to create 
a home. The constant (dis)locations caused by being ‘placed’ by others in temporary arrangements, as 
well as the sense of time passing fruitlessly by, can lead to feelings of alienation and passivity, 
especially when paired with the inability to work.

In this context of waiting, anxiety, displacement, and (re)placement, refusal is made through the act 
of emplacement. Emplacement in locations and situations chosen by migrants themselves is an 
example of political agency through a resistance to spatial determination from above, and the use of 
space in ways that have not been granted or managed by others. In this context, forging spaces of 
belonging in public and semi-public spaces exemplifies a contemporary politics of refusal, an act of 
being against humanitarian care and its properties of management and control, and for a fuller and 
more embodied agency in space.

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