Autonomy, Erasure, and Persistence in the Urban Gardening Commons

Collective gardening spaces have existed across Lisbon, Portugal for decades. This article attends to the makeshift natures made by black migrants from Portugal’s former colonies, and the racial urban geography thrown into relief by the differing fortunes of white Portuguese community gardening spaces. Conceptualising urban gardens as commons-in-the-making, we explore subaltern urbanism and the emergence of autonomous gardening commons on the one hand, and the state erasure, overwriting or construction of top-down commons on the other. While showing that urban gardening forges commons of varying persistence, we also demonstrate the ways through which the commons are always closely entwined with processes of enclosure. We further argue that urban gardening commons are divergent and cannot be judged against any abstract ideal of the commons. In conclusion, we suggest that urban gardening commons do not have a “common” in common.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lisboa e seu termo : estudos e documentos.

En antep. consta: Obra comemorativa subsidiada pela Câmara Municipal de Lisboa en el VIII Centenário da tomada de Lisboa aos MourosT. I (320 p., [33[ h. de lám.

New forms of migration into the European South: challenges for citizenship and governance: the Portuguese Case

Since the mid‐1980s, Portugal has altered its position in the international migration context. It is no longer exclusively an emigration country but has also become a receiving nation, hosting people from its former African colonies, and more recently from Brazil and Eastern Europe. This has caused significant changes in Portuguese society, which is nowadays socially more diverse and ethnically richer. This paper identifies the most important challenges to citizenship and governance in Portugal, focusing on: (a) the changes in the national laws regulating immigration; (b) the measures adopted by central government to fight discrimination; and (c) the growing social exclusion faced by many immigrants. Among the adopted measures, the new law regulating the entry and permanence of foreigners in Portugal, the establishment of a High Commissioner for Immigration and Ethnic Minorities (ACIME), the growing role of immigrants' associations, and the responsibilities transferred to local authorities are closely analysed. Drawing on analysis of interviews and questionnaires addressed to civil servants working in departments related to immigration as well as on reports published by municipalities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), the article also investigates the strategies adopted by local authorities to promote the successful integration of immigrants. The evidence indicates that there is a growing feeling among local authorities that their resources should be oriented to work with the citizens and not just for the citizens. To guarantee future sustainable development, citizens, regardless of their geographical origin, should have a say in the decision‐making processes at a local level.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The slum multiple: a cyborg micro-history of an informal settlement in Lisbon

This article proposes a cyborg reading of the process of informal settlement by internal and postcolonial immigrants in Lisbon’s periphery from the 1970s to the present. Cyborg does not stand for a neo-organicist or cybernetic understanding of the informal city but rather for the conjunction of the multiple enactments of city life under conditions of urban informality––in this case the fourfold combination of history/migration; architecture/low-fi technologies; inhabitation/body/memory; and governmentality/ urban capital. The 40-year event of settlement and inhabitation is presented through an ethnographic micro-history of one neighbourhood in particular, with a strong focus on slum dwellers’ life stories, on the details of the artefact-machines they have built, their informal dwellings, and on their social and mental experience of place. Responding to recent calls for multidisciplinary ethnographies of informality, the article brings the specificity of Lisbon’s informal settlements––their growth based in postcolonial rather than rural migrations––into current debates on informal urbanisms and geographies of sociotechnical urban assemblages.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio