Panhandling and the Contestation of Public Space in Guangzhou

Urban public space is a product of contestations by various actors. This paper focuses on the conflict between local level government and beggars to address the questions: How and why do government actors refuse or allow beggars access to public space? How and why do beggars appropriate public space to receive alms and adapt their strategies? How does this contestation contribute to the trends of urban public space in today’s China? Taking the Southern metropolis of Guangzhou as a case study, I argue that beggars contest expulsion from public space through begging performances. Rising barriers of public space require higher investment in these performances, taking even more resources from the panhandling poor. The trends of public order are not unidirectional, however. Beggars navigate between several contextual borders composed by China’s religious renaissance; the discourse on deserving, undeserving, and dangerous beggars; and the moral legitimacy of the government versus the imagination of a successful, “modern,” and “civilised” city. This conflict shows the everyday production of “spaces of representation” by government actors on the micro level where economic incentives merge with aspirations for political prestige

Mendicité et lutte pour l’espace public à Canton

L’espace public urbain est le produit de rivalités entre différents acteurs. Cet article s’intéresse au conflit qui oppose le gouvernement local aux mendiants et tente de répondre aux questions suivantes : comment et pourquoi les acteurs gouvernementaux refusent-ils ou permettent-ils l’accès des mendiants à l’espace public ? Comment et pourquoi les mendiants s’approprient-ils l’espace public pour faire l’aumône et adaptent-ils leurs stratégies ? Comment et pourquoi cette rivalité renforce-t-elle les tendances caractérisant l’espace public urbain dans la Chine contemporaine ? Cette étude du cas de la métropole méridionale de Canton montre que les mendiants luttent contre leur expulsion de l’espace public grâce à une mise en scène de leur mendicité. Plus on érige de barrières empêchant leur accès à l’espace public, plus les mendiants doivent s’investir dans ces spectacles, appauvrissant encore davantage ceux qui se contentent de faire la manche. Cependant, les tendances caractérisant l’ordre public ne vont pas dans une direction unique. Les mendiants naviguent entre plusieurs frontières contextuelles constituées par le renouveau religieux chinois, un discours sur les mendiants méritants, non-méritants et dangereux, et la légitimité morale du gouvernement qui se heurte à l’imagination d’une ville « moderne » et « civilisée » incarnant la réussite. Ce conflit illustre la production quotidienne d’« espaces de représentation » par les acteurs gouvernementaux à l’échelle locale, où les motivations économiques rejoignent les aspirations au prestige politique

Panhandling and the Contestation of Public Space in Guangzhou

Urban public space is a product of contestations by various actors. This paper focuses on the conflict between local level government and beggars to address the questions: How and why do government actors refuse or allow beggars access to public space? How and why do beggars appropriate public space to receive alms and adapt their strategies? How does this contestation contribute to the trends of urban public space in today’s China? Taking the Southern metropolis of Guangzhou as a case study, I argue that beggars contest expulsion from public space through begging performances. Rising barriers of public space require higher investment in these performances, taking even more resources from the panhandling poor. The trends of public order are not unidirectional, however. Beggars navigate between several contextual borders composed by China’s religious renaissance; the discourse on deserving, undeserving, and dangerous beggars; and the moral legitimacy of the government versus the imagination of a successful, “modern,” and “civilised” city. This conflict shows the everyday production of “spaces of representation” by government actors on the micro level where economic incentives merge with aspirations for political prestige

Le logement de marché et la structure socio-spatiale à Canton

Le logement de marché (commodity housing) est devenu un moteur important de la restructuration urbaine et du changement social en Chine. Il semble favoriser la ségrégation résidentielle et la fragmentation urbaine. Dans ce contexte, le prix du logement peut être considéré comme un mécanisme de sélection. Cet article examine cette hypothèse en considérant le marché du logement à Canton et en analysant les tendances des prix de l’immobilier de 797 lotissements résidentiels privés. Il analyse le développement du logement de marché et la tendance des prix en ville ; il cartographie également la localisation des biens immobiliers dans ce secteur suivant qu’ils sont hautement, moyennement ou faiblement accessibles en termes financiers

Agency and the Making of Transient Urban Spaces: Examples of Migrants in the City in the Pearl River Delta, China, and Dhaka, Bangladesh

Internal migration within Asian countries and international migration to, within, and out of Asia have been on the rise throughout the past decades. As types and pathways of migration, migrants' sociocultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, and their transnational and translocal trajectories become increasingly diverse, a majority of them move to cities. Diverging power geometries and relations are constantly negotiated and (re)produced in the socio-spatial dialectic of the city. Through their individual and collective agency, assets, and knowledge, mobile subjects have become important agents in the (re)production of spaces in cities, whereas the socio-political and physical conditions of spaces frame their livelihoods, opportunities, and agency. Research on migrants' agency has intensified recently, but the specific modes through which agency operates in the socio-spatial dialectic still need to be conceptualised. We develop a framework that outlines different modes through which agents and space interact. The framework is exemplified through papers on case studies from Dhaka and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) that are part of this special issue. Dhaka and the PRD have been characterised by accelerated growth throughout the past decades, particularly due to the influx of rural-to-urban migrants, but they also receive an increasing number of international migrants. We conclude that through their diverse, multi-sited, and translocal relations and activities stretching beyond the receiving cities in a context of constant transformation, migrants' practices contribute to the emergence of a specific type of urban spaces that we delineate as transient urban spaces. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Agency and the Making of Transient Urban Spaces: Examples of Migrants in the City in the Pearl River Delta, China, and Dhaka, Bangladesh

Internal migration within Asian countries and international migration to, within, and out of Asia have been on the rise throughout the past decades. As types and pathways of migration, migrants’ sociocultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, and their transnational and translocal trajectories become increasingly diverse, a majority of them move to cities. Diverging power geometries and relations are constantly negotiated and (re)produced in the sociospatial dialectic of the city. Through their individual and collective agency, assets, and knowledge, mobile subjects have become important agents in the (re)production of spaces in cities, whereas the socio-political and physical conditions of spaces frame their livelihoods, opportunities, and agency. Research on migrants’ agency has intensified recently, but the specific modes through which agency operates in the socio-spatial dialectic still need to be conceptualised. We develop a framework that outlines different modes through which agents and space interact. The framework is exemplified through papers on case studies from Dhaka and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) that are part of this special issue. Dhaka and the PRD have been characterised by accelerated growth throughout the past decades, particularly due to the influx of rural-to-urban migrants, but they also receive an increasing number of international migrants. We conclude that through their diverse, multi-sited, and translocal relations and activities stretching beyond the receiving cities in a context of constant transformation, migrants’ practices contribute to the emergence of a specific type of urban spaces that we delineate as transient urban spaces. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 04 September 201