Post-migration studies and the city: The case of London

ABSTRACT The city has always played a pivotal role in human history because, as Henry Lefebvre reminds us, the physical structure of the urban place is not just a neutral container of social and historical events, but it acts as a sort of dialogic dimension based on symbols, sets of values, and customs, in which people can give order to their reality, anchoring their identity in a sort of collective memory, and in a network of reciprocal human bonds: a community. Despite the vast theoretical background and narrative tradition, the enormous changes that the urban dimension underwent over the last century have brought new challenges and the necessity for new theorizations to the fore. This dissertation aims to offer a glimpse of such a complex contemporary challenge, particularly narrowing the focus on the relationship between the city and the post-multicultural society, taking into consideration the particular case of London. The choice to focus the research on London is based on the fact that the English capital provides a unique example of a post-multicultural city. The study specifically looks into how the concrete local dimension of the city interacts with the complexity of a transcultural and transnational society, whose heterogeneity exponentially increased in the last century, imposing a pervasive condition of superdiversity, as Steven Vertovec defined it. Given this peculiar condition, the study endeavours to investigate, on one hand, how the idea of citizenship and community changes together with the question of "who is the alien?", and, on the other hand, how urban narrations influence the way people live and perceive such changes. The research method employed is based on an interdisciplinary approach, which aims to combine a historical overview with the philosophical and scientific perspective of urban studies, and the sociological points of view of post-multicultural studies. Theoretical evidence provided by the different disciplines is integrated into the literary analysis of three contemporary narrative works. The first chapter outlines the concept of city from an etymological, historical, philosophical and literary point of view. This overview explores several aspects: why belonging to the same city gave people a particular identity, with particular symbols and customs; and finally, how the idea of city has changed together with its conformation, function, and rhythm as a unique organic system, following the evolution of historical and human changes. The second chapter deals with contemporary post-migration societies, specifically that of London, looking into the most important processes and theoretical reconfigurations at stake such as the idea of citizenship, integration, Britishness and identity. The third chapter will open the literary analysis of this dissertation by presenting Kamal Ahmed’s work The Life and Times of a Very British Man. The Anglo-Sudanese British journalist Kamal Ahmed sheds light not only on the present condition of contemporary post-multicultural London, but also investigates the facts and narrations that modern London is rooted in. In the fourth chapter the focus will shift to post-multicultural London seen as a gigantic economic machine, through the analysis of John Lanchester’s novel Capital. The aim is to describe how the increasing commodification of the city has influenced the idea of community and citizenship, profoundly characterised by obliviousness and disconnectedness. The fifth chapter will discuss these questions by narrowing the focus on how the commodified society influence people's perception of the self and the city, leading to a progressive alienation of its inhabitants. Tibor Fischer's Voyage to the End of the Room particularly problematises the idea of the ‘alien,’ by dealing with the problem of self-alienation, which seems increasingly to affect a large part of urban inhabitants.