One of the difficulties was that the number of arrivals was much higher than expected. However, only asylum seekers were admitted, and many of them could remain in an illegal situation for several months. There is a gap between these measures and the reality on the ground, which combines a weak and sporadic political will on the part of the public authorities with a rather fragmented network of associations and support organisations.

Due to its limited capacity, the Chapelle Center quickly reached its saturation point, and the ad hoc camps, which were promptly reestablished, were repeatedly evacuated - often by force - only to be immediately reestablished. Moreover, both scholars and activists criticized the operational modalities of the shelter, which were modeled on state practices of sorting and controlling displaced populations (Gardesse et al., 2022).

This conclusion may seem uncharitable, given Paris efforts, however inadequate: the city offered shelter to 47,000 people, with 21,400 spaces available year-round for homeless individuals between 2015 and 2020. In addition, 4000 beds have been set aside for migrants and refugees, more than 1600 of which have been made possible by the budget of the City of Paris. This is a recurring conclusion for local governments, whose actions must adhere to the framework of national policy, even though they may pursue different goals. The argument could be reformulated to indicate which specific mechanisms, cognitive resources, coalitions of actors, and policy instruments produce a particular outcome at a particular time.

## 3.5 The Repressive Policing of Space

The policing of public space is an important and often contentious aspect of urban governance. The policing of public space in urban environments is a multifaceted and complex issue with significant implications for responsible reception policies, public perception, and individual rights.

In accordance with government directives, local prefects often ordered the use of police forces to dismantle squatting camps and unauthorized settlements. In one specific case, the prefect of Paris also ordered the erection of physical barriers between two neighborhoods in the city. These camps were repeatedly subjected to repressive measures.

Paris has seen the rise of several informal settlements, known as ‘camps’, mainly in the northern districts of the neighbourhoods north of the capital. These settlements bring together thousands of people from Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The health conditions led to an increase in scabies epidemics, and the physical impact on the urban landscape of Paris motivated the decision to systematically demolish the shantytowns: a politics of eviction (Vitale, 2009).

Here is how independent media<fnref n="6" /> described one of these makeshift camps:

<footnote n="6">⁶*InfoMigrants* is a collaborative project involving three major European media organizations: France Médias Monde, Deutsche Welle, and ANSA. The project operates across various platforms and is co-financed by the European Union.</footnote>
Between 300 and 400 migrants, mostly Afghans, are living in a camp under an overhead metro ... Waiting to lodge their asylum applications, they have no choice but to sleep there, in temperatures that are sometimes below freezing. They brave the cold around campfires made from objects found in the street (Oberti, 2022).

Policing is often brutal, and the increase in the use of the police forces deployment sometimes surprises the responsible reception policies. The demolition of squatter camps, often made up of temporary tents, is a regular feature of Paris Region policy. As recently as October 2023, the Paris prefecture announced the evacuation of a large migrant camp in the north of the capital that housed 400 people, mostly single men from Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sudan; some had travelled via the Italian island of Lampedusa. Once identified, three-quarters were sent to temporary reception facilities in the Paris region and one-quarter outside (see also Chap. 5 in this book). A few days later, 200 unaccompanied minors were taken to an abandoned school but continued to spend the night in the open air in the north of Paris (Dumont, 2023).

In France, the police operate under the command of prefects, who are responsible for maintaining public order and security. The relationship between the government and law enforcement agencies is crucial in shaping the nature of policing in public spaces. Prefects play a central role in determining police strategies and tactics, which vary widely from region to region and situation to situation.

These operations are planned directly by the prefects in contact with the Ministry of the Interior but they also result in the daily patrolling of police officers, who can stop for checks or urge the occupants of public spaces to move (Aguilera et al., 2018). The incremental nature of these policies became evident through a few events that marked the political debate. One noteworthy event was the occupation of riverbanks by the ‘Les Enfants de Don Quichotte association and homeless individuals following the enactment of the DALO law in 2007, which mandated prefects to provide housing or shelter to those without it (Aguilera, 2020). Quietly, activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been organising local protests and demonstrations for Eastern European migrants and homeless families and against shantytowns for about two decades (Vacca et al., 2022).

## 3.6 Exclusionary Urban Design

Space is also regulated through temporary urban design—via the positioning of objects, street furniture, or physical barriers—which can subtly shape behaviours and patterns of use. These spatial arrangements often produce regulatory effects, influencing how people move, gather, or rest in the city. The management of public space therefore plays a crucial role not only in everyday urban life (see also Chap. 7 in this book), but also in shaping access, visibility, and rights—particularly for those who are marginalised or vulnerable (see Chap. 9 in this book). In this sense, the design and policing of public space can be seen as a form of city-making, where institutions, residents, and users alike participate—intentionally or not—in producing the lived urban environment (see also Chap. 1 and the conclusions in this book).
The strategies adopted reflect broader visions of urban order and inclusion, and contribute to defining who belongs, and under what conditions.

The management of space can be emancipatory or violent. The city often selects repressive models of urban furniture or spatial arrangements, such as benches designed to prevent people experiencing homelessness from lying down. All in all, this may seem like a negligible example. It is all the more significant when one considers the importance given to the furnishing of public spaces in the city and the experimentation supported by the city. For example, in the same period, large wooden benches suitable for relaxing and lying down were placed in the central square of the Pantheon, as part of a project on gender equality. According to the city, the cozy benches make women more comfortable in public spaces.

The furnishing of metro stations or public spaces has highlighted countless examples of “defensible space,” the analytical approach that underlines the normative aspect of physical design and its potential to regulate social behaviour (Newman, 1972). A blatant case are the seats and benches designed by the city’s metro company to prevent anyone from lying down and sleeping.

Indirect effects are not unintentional (Vitale, 2015). The control of public space takes place through active interventions (see also Chap. 9 in this book), above all through the direct control and patrolling of the police. In France, the police depend on the government through the prefects who command and regulate public order. Recently, the police built a wall between two neighborhoods in order to drive out drug traffickers: the prefect of Paris ordered the construction of a wall to close an underpass between Paris and the neighboring town of Pantin to prevent the transit of drug users and traffickers.

Local governments implemented a range of spatial interventions to protect open spaces from occupation by migrants using makeshift tents. The municipality undertook the installation of approximately 4 km of fencing and boulder fields during the construction of the shelter. Despite the shortcomings of the shelter, these measures were stigmatized in the public debate as inhospitable (Couvelaire, 2016).

The episode examined is a stark reminder of the often-brutal methods used in policing public spaces and the need for a more balanced and humane approach to urban management. It also highlights the importance of local government institutions, multilevel governance contention, and the regulating role of governance modes in the use of force and maintaining public order. Further research and policy development is needed to strike a more equitable balance between public safety and individual rights within public spaces.

## 3.7 The Governance of Local Reception Policies

The governance of local reception policies is increasingly ensured by enabling processes that take place in ‘the shadow of the state’ but with consistent input from non-state actors. We suggest that a process of regulation-in-progress is occurring, in which rule-making and decision-making are slowly allocating resources and
adopting operating criteria thanks mainly to the activity of the government *Délégation interministérielle à l'hébergement et à l'accès au logement* (DIHAL).<fnref n="7" /> However, like many other areas of public policy, refugee reception is a sector under strain and evolution, especially due to austerity policies and the state's recurrent repressive inclinations. At the same time, it serves as a field of experimentation, where agenda-setting and implementation are ongoing processes.

These processes are open to non-governmental and grassroots associative actors, who are sometimes capable to anticipate, correct, and influence public policy. In the best cases, some local and national agencies have taken up and expanded these experiments. In other cases, a framework of compliance and, often, repression has prevailed. This *chiaroscuro* clearly allows for different conclusions but should not hinder an empirical analysis of the common formulation of solutions.

A first minimal conclusion is that reception policy in the Paris region lacks a coherent framework (Cremaschi, 2021; see also Artioli & Le Galès, 2025). Both the more established integration policy and the relatively recent reception of refugees are resonating and producing adaptations and innovations, but without achieving satisfactory results. The overall picture is rather contradictory, though not surprising given that it is the result of the crises of the last two decades and depends on actors with different legitimacies, purposes and functions. Critical assessments of the actions of the City of Paris overlook the fact that the 2015 shelter responded in part to political rhetoric and in part to innovative spontaneity without aspiring to change national rules and power dynamics. Advocating for a more systematic approach and a solid rationale in these cases is neither original nor sufficient. In addition, they face the typical challenges of newly established policy areas and difficulties in implementing policies at different scales.

A second conclusion concerns the possibility of a local response that contradicts national policies. The dispersal policy contradicts the commitments of the city of Paris, which has claimed the sanctuary since October 2015. The challenging question of the freedom of a local administration to act differently from the national government deserves an answer. Much academic research concludes with the scandalous statement that the results of local action are inadequate. While this is undoubtedly a politically and morally relevant response, the question itself may be misguided. The limitations of local action, and by extension of public policy in general, should not be ignored, but acknowledged considering its structural limitations. It may not be necessary to reaffirm them; instead, it is more useful to ask what mechanisms and tools can make public action more useful what mechanisms and tools can make public action more effective and sustainable.

Third, the cyclical dismantling of refugee camps after 2015, justified by national and local authorities as exceptional measures, deliberately confuses the “crisis” of migration with the crisis of the reception system. Scholars argue that this crisis has

<footnote n="7">⁷Created in 2010, it is responsible for implementing public policy on accommodation, access to housing and the maintenance of housing for people who are homeless or poorly housed, inspired by the principle of “housing first” with the aim of significantly reducing the number of homeless people.</footnote>
become a routinized argument, with dispersal becoming the main instrument for the "governance of exiled populations", undermining the claimed innovative character of the city's welcoming policies (Gardesse et al., 2022: 22). The concept of integration is under review, in the light of current crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic challenges, and climate change. Access to the labor market remains a significant problem (limited opportunities for migrants and restrictions for refugees), and cultural integration is a subject of ongoing debate. National social policies on housing, urban renewal and education have been repeatedly revised and need to be improved with limited resources. In this evolving context, local integrated strategies respond to the trend towards decentralization in the French system and the need to address the integration of migrants.

In the intricate fabric of metropolitan life in Paris, the nexus of diversity, integration, and security plays a structuring role, as local governance is not merely the outcome of administrative procedure, but the product of constant negotiation—through compromises, tensions, and political mediation—between political parties, NGOs, associations, interest groups, utilities, and institutions at national, regional, and municipal levels. City-making, in this sense, is a collective and contested process, shaped by formal policies, everyday actions, citizen practices, acts of solidarity, and personalised care, as well as by contentious interactions between public actors and grassroots organisations. These interactions allow urban reception policies to evolve and adapt, but they also generate fragmentation, organisational instability, and incomplete or discontinuous forms of governance (Le Galès & Vitale, 2015).

Welcoming refugees, asylum seekers, and other marginalised groups is not only a question of policy design or resource allocation—it is made concrete and visible in the public space. Streets, squares, and parks are not passive backdrops, but active arenas where the tensions and contradictions of reception take shape. City-making, therefore, cannot be reduced to technical competence or rule enforcement alone; it relies on the ability to act swiftly, contextually, and responsively, especially when faced with conflicting claims to space and belonging.

In this chapter, we show that the governance of local reception policies is more than the allocation of resources and the coordination of actors. The governance of refugee reception in Paris illustrates both the challenges and the potentials of city-making through conflict and compromise. While institutional arrangements often lack stability and consistency, efforts to maintain focus, coordination, and resource mobilisation have emerged—albeit unevenly. The boundaries between local, regional, and national responsibilities remain porous, requiring continuous effort to ensure coherence. In public space, design logics and normative injunctions frequently clash with emergent social needs, leading to conflictual yet productive encounters between actors who alternately whisper welcome or shout rejection.
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<figure><img src="image_12.png" /></figure>
# Chapter 4
## Cosmopolitan Diversity, Tech Migrants and Everyday Racisms in Singapore

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /></figure>

Check for
updates

Daniel P. S. Goh and Shai-Ann Koh

### 4.1 Introduction

In May 2017, a massive fire broke out at the construction site of the Global Indian International School in Punggol town. The school was planned as a Smart Campus to fit into the growing digital corridor in the northeast of Singapore. Punggol was a sleepy corner of rural farms flanked by two rivers. Today, Punggol is a model public housing town of the Twenty-First Century popular with tech migrants and their families from India. The town will soon house a digital district complete with a technological university, innovation enterprises and sustainable town services to showcase integrated master planning for Singapore's Smart Nation initiative. The Punggol Digital District will also boast civic facilities to bring diverse communities together and promote cosmopolitan multiculturalism for a global tech economy. Public reaction to the Global Indian International School fire was anything but multicultural. Comments tinged with racism and xenophobia on a video post of the fire on the Facebook page of the popular news media outlet, Mothership, stood out: "Now the school also black black", "School Not for Sinkaporeans [sic]. Nothing to see here", "Slum".<fnref n="1" />

We would like to claim equal authorship. Daniel conceptualized the research project and theoretical questions, while Shai-Ann contributed to the theorizing and conducted the bulk of the empirical data collection. Both Daniel and Shai-Ann wrote equal parts of the paper, iteratively building up the argumentation through analysis and discussion.

D. P. S. Goh (✉) · S.-A. Koh
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore,
Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: socgohd@nus.edu.sg

<footnote n="1">¹https://www.facebook.com/MothershipSG/videos/1513625122010468/, accessed 17 May 2022.</footnote>
This chapter seeks to understand how the post-industrial developmental state is layering a new cosmopolitan diversity unto the old postcolonial multiracialism in Singapore and why it is believed this is necessary for urban transformation to an innovative high-tech smart city. As the above vignette on the school fire suggests, it is important to discuss public reactions to the state project and the experiences of migrants, and how these could undermine cosmopolitan diversity. Based on findings of our research into the experiences of professional migrant families living in Punggol and the neighbouring Seng Kang town, we argue that the urban planning for cosmopolitan diversity is inadequate. It is not “smart” enough to tackle the deep-seated social relationships between the high-tech migrants and locals emergent in the everyday life of ethnic relations and multiculturalism in the public housing milieu.

In the next section, we discuss the scholarship on the value of diversity to migrant professionals and the making of tech districts to situate our work in a comparative approach to studying the politics of urban diversity of tech cities across East Asia and the West. We posit that there is a need to question the conceptual valorization of diversity in academic studies and policy analyses of the decisions of professionals to move to work and stay to live in tech districts. Crucial to this questioning is, we argue, the actual experience of everyday interactions, neighborliness, provision of daily life and the grounded imaginations of urban futures by migrant families. In the second section, we discuss the evolution of the state’s urban planning for Punggol, from its construction as a model estate in the New Town planning tradition to the up-class waterfront living iteration and now to its cosmopolitan digital district future. We observe the state’s aspirational imagination of urban futures to shape multiracial and multicultural social life and argue that the spatial logic of state planning neglects the complex texture of everyday life and grounded imaginations.

We conducted interviews with the mothers of migrant families living in the area. We chose to speak to the mothers because, whether they are working or not, they are the ones who closely manage the everyday interactions of their households in the town and narrate and express their families’ grounded imaginations of urban futures in Punggol and Singapore. The mothers are the ones making daily schooling, marketing, transport, leisure, religious and socializing decisions and organizing and doing these activities. All the spouses of the mothers we interviewed were employees in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, most of them working as computer engineers in the northeast region where the sector is clustered in business parks in Changi and Tampines. The common figure in studies of tech migrants is the young male professional. Our focus on mothers acknowledges instead that the migrant professional *families* should be the unit of analysis and that *familial* migrant experience should be the matter for research. Instead of privileging the work and play experience of young male professionals, we place the everyday life experience of the migrant families in the town they live in as central.

There is a caveat to our methodology, though. At face value, our study appears to be reproducing the modern patriarchal stereotype of the male breadwinner and the female homemaker. Importantly, the women we interviewed for this study were as highly educated as their spouses and a good number were also employed as
professionals in the ICT sector, but they made decisions with their spouses to be primarily homemakers so as to adapt familial needs to the migration and work circumstances they found in Singapore.<fnref n="2" /> There were two key factors. First, the ICT sector is heavily male dominated, and the male spouse was favoured for the coveted employment pass in the sector. Second, the lack of extended family networks and thus social support for childcare meant that some of the women had to fall back on their traditional role as homemaker. However, as we indicate here, and stress in our analysis, the women were at the forefront of making critical life-course and everyday life decisions, including employment decisions, affecting the family. Our study, against the grain of studies of tech professional migration, is emphasizing the agency of the women in this migration to Singapore, which takes place primarily through the family unit and not merely as individual professionals.

In the third section of everyday multiculturalisms and racisms, we discuss the aspirational realities that migrant professional families face in their everyday interactions with neighbors and fellow denizens in the town, as they try to acculturate and integrate in a local society that is itself engaging complexly with state urban planning and social policies. It is important to note that the migrant professional spouses of the mothers we interviewed were not yet working in Punggol Digital District, as the District was just starting to be built. They chose Punggol and Seng Kang towns to live in because of their high livability value and only discovered that the District was planned after they moved in. However, the families have hopes regarding the District, including the spouses finding work and children studying there in the future. In the penultimate section before the conclusion, we discuss how the aspirational realities shape different grounded imaginations of the migrant families' future lives in the Punggol Digital District and their agency as smart city-makers.

## 4.2 Tech Districts, Migrant Professionals and the Question of Diversity

Studies on the planning and development of high-tech districts have suggested that skilled migrants of ethnic minority backgrounds play a large part in their success, and cultural diversity is therefore a key attribute to be valued (English-Lueck, 2017). Scholars have emphasized migrant placemaking processes, observed the preference for immigrants to co-locate to form ethnic neighbourhoods, questioned the need for their assimilation into white majority society, and highlighted the value of urban cultural diversity in Silicon Valley (Baxter, 2010; Lung-Amam, 2015), as well as high-tech districts in the UK (Nathan, 2015). Others have pointed to enduring prejudices and discriminations, cutting across race and gender, which minority migrants

<footnote n="2">²We spoke to a total of 10 women aged 35 to 40 years old between January to November 2022, and conducted full interviews lasting up to 2 h with seven of the women. Of the 10 women, four were working in the ICT sector as analysts or engineers, three were full-time homemakers, and the rest worked in part-time jobs to supplement family income.</footnote>
could navigate and mitigate using their ethnic networks in Silicon Valley (Shih, 2006), but not black women (Twine, 2018).

The rise of smart urbanism approaches and smart city discourses has seen the increasing informatization of urban development. Burrows and Ellison (2004) were among the first to warn that data-driven virtual decision making about neighbourhood choice could produce new forms of social exclusion. Recent scholarship highlights the inability of digital infrastructures to account for marginalised groups in the city (Kitchin, 2014) or create socially sustainable cities (Aurigi & Odendaal, 2021). Smart city technologies have the potential to not only reproduce and entrench existing inequalities, but—perhaps more insidiously—also mask them under the guise of individual preferences that remain highly stratified along race, ethnic and class lines. This splintering urbanism (Graham & Marvin, 2001) is both a function and result of smart citizenship participation. Using data to compress the city into urban derivatives risks reflecting existing splintered urbanisms and inequalities and then projecting them forward in time within the anticipatory logic of surveillance and location-based applications (Leszczynski, 2016). Apart from what data is being collected, it also matters who produces the data, and thus whose interests they ultimately protect. Data unevenness remains a concern for smart citizenship engagement. Instead, large private companies tend to dominate the discourse as key players, which skews the data being collected (Lee et al., 2020).

Outside of the developed West, the Silicon Valley model and the informatization of urban planning and development of high-tech districts in rapidly developing cities, for example in Bangalore (Stallmeyer, 2010), should raise similar concerns, albeit with different migratory and diversity features. Singapore has its own smart city aspirations and the Punggol Digital District is part of the grand experiment for smart urbanism that would transform the city-state into a high-tech powerhouse in Asia. The District is a natural draw for migrant professionals from India, many of whom have settled in the Punggol area and are heavily represented in the ICT sector. This comes on the heels of rising anti-foreigner sentiment, a persistent social and political issue that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Job anxiety has fuelled resentment towards Indian migrants and outrage over the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), a free-trade deal Singapore signed with India in 2005 (Kok & Sim, 2020). Amidst this social and political backdrop, the District's goals of cosmopolitan diversity, harmony and inclusion could be undermined by xenophobia and racism. Punggol is thus an interesting case study for understanding how the urban planning for diversity, belonging and inclusion interacts with local class politics and racial superstructures, which might influence migrant professionals' decisions to stay or leave and the success of high-tech district development.

Scholarship on liveability has shown that the strongest predictors of migrants' likelihood to stay are community-level characteristics such as beauty or physical setting, the ability to meet and make friends, and the ease of travel in the city (Mellander & Florida, 2011). Integration into a community, as measured through informal and formal social ties and interactions between residents in a neighbourhood, is also found to have a positive effect on residential satisfaction (Özkan &
Yilmaz, 2019). These ties may even extend to their dependents and become inter-
generational, as observed in talent worker housing apartments in Shen Zhen
(MacLachlan & Yue, 2022). Residents who are satisfied with public spaces are also
more likely to spend time in parks and spaces of leisure and recreation, thus increas-
ing the frequency of and opportunities for contact with other residents (Cho &
Lee, 2011).

However, as much as recreational spaces can facilitate integration, migrants
may remain outsiders to locals even as they live, work and play amongst them.
Migrant professionals may be welcomed in the labour market, but face barriers in
attaining residency status, which then affects their ability to secure subsidies in
key areas like housing and healthcare, or fully participate politically or culturally.
Exclusionary policies may even extend to the types of schools migrants can send
their children to, which impacts their children's experiences of everyday cosmo-
politanisms, leaving the onus on migrants themselves to engineer opportunities
for exposure to these values and practices (Horst, 2015). This specific logic of
inclusions and exclusions further marginalise migrants and results in a precarity
that was previously attributed to low-skilled workers but is now also emerging
within skilled migrant workers who face varying degrees of employment insecu-
rity and settlement uncertainty driven by neoliberal economic pressures and their
legal statuses (Zhan & Zhou, 2020).

Migrants to Singapore no longer fit neatly into the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others racial grid of the old nation-building multiracialism instituted from the 1960's. Migrants now come from a variety of origin countries, holding various legal statuses and whose ethnicities combine with a range of other variables, a phenomenon that could be described as super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007). A key feature of super-diversity is that differences may vary even within co-ethnics, a finding that Ho & Kathiravelu (2022) specifies as migrants' polysemic identities. These variations lead to hierarchies within Indian migrants who come to Singapore. Their social positions within Singapore and their own communities are shaped by notions of personhood intersecting with one's skills, class, legal statuses, civilisational/development discourses, performances of cultural 'authenticity' and even length of stay in Singapore.

Apart from a culture that organises life around work, a belief in meritocracy,
discourses of self-agency and hard work have been found to enable the suspension
of judgement and promotion of diversity as a virtue itself, particularly in workplaces
in high-tech districts (English-Lueck, 2011). Yet, while workplaces may encourage
diversity, scholarship on diversity suggests that outside of the boardroom, latent rac-
ism and xenophobia still characterise neighbourhoods undergoing intense demo-
graphic and social change (Jimenez, 2007). This "reverse xenophobia", where
Singaporeans fear being left out and feeling like a foreigner in their own country, is
evident too in a study of high-skilled Indian migrants in Singapore conducted by
Chacko (2017). Many perceive that the increasing number of Indian migrants are
crowding the job market, threatening social cohesion and increasing competition.
This forms a backdrop for the everyday racisms Indian migrant professionals
encounter which create and reinforce racist structures through everyday practices
(Essed, 1991) that escape institutional perception and oversight. In response to everyday racisms, we utilise the term everyday anti-racism—which describes how individuals respond to racism in their daily lives—to describe respondents’ strategies in navigating racialised inequality. We find that Indian migrant professionals focus on acquiring resources that enable social mobility in an attempt to confer upon themselves respectability, status and a type of ‘equality’ with the dominant group (Aquino, 2016).

Furthermore, there is an implicit hierarchy to migrants which complicates discourse around xenophobia. White, high-skilled migrants are welcomed as transferring valuable skills and knowledge while similarly-skilled Indian migrants are demonised as opportunistic job-hoppers, a kind of Pinkerton syndrome writ large (Yeoh, 2004). Race and ethnicity are not the only identity markers that separate locals from foreigners, as socioeconomic class is also central to understanding these dynamics. Scholars have pointed to a middling class of migrants, known as the “mobile middle”. These migrants are neither low-skilled work permit holders nor the highly mobile expatriates associated with high-end condominiums and generous salary packages. Instead, they make up a spectrum that comprise of “E” Pass holders to “S” Pass holders who live in the heartlands among locals, blending in successfully while simultaneously being more visible as targets of xenophobic rhetoric (Baas, 2017; Yang, 2022). In a study of xenophobia online, Gomes (2013) notes that online criticism of foreigners could in fact be a proxy of other government policies affecting the existence and lifestyle of Singaporeans, leaving them feeling economically abandoned. In short, xenophobia in Singapore is multifaceted and complex. This strongly suggests a need to understand the granularity of interaction between locals and migrants, especially with regards to the everyday multiculturalisms and racisms of public housing living.

## 4.3 Appreciating Liveability and Diversity in Punggol

In 1996, just as the Singapore developmental state’s embrace of globalization was at the peak, the urban authorities announced the Punggol 21 initiative to turn the rural north-eastern corner of the island into a model new town for the 21st Century. The compact suburban town was to be served by new Mass Rapid Transit and Light Rail Transit train networks and would house a quarter million residents when completed. Construction began in 1998. The highest quality building materials, innovative construction methods, advanced architectural designs and the latest urban planning methodologies were used to realize a residential utopia of the future. Beyond the physical civilization that Punggol 21 offered, it was also to be a place of social belonging and harmony. The government had implemented ethnic quotas for public housing blocks and estates just a decade before, determined to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves in the city and foster multiracial harmony from the urban grassroots up. Punggol 21 gave the state *carte blanche* to plan, engineer and adapt this residential multiracialism to the new era of globalization.
The Asian Financial Crisis and the tech bubble recession slowed down the devel-
opment of Punggol 21, as the take-up rate for the suburban town evaporated.
Thousands of empty flats stalled construction and kept the town as a rustic peri-
urban space; the model new town was a veritable kampung of quiet harmony and
neighbourliness. In 2007, the government launched Punggol 21-plus to revitalize
the development. The two rivers flanking the town was dammed up to form fresh-
water lakes, while a large canal was dug through the town linking the two rivers.
Punggol 21-plus was resold as prestigious waterfront living for public housing, the
first of its kind for affordable housing in a global city. Waterfront and waterborne
recreational activities offered a unique, resort-like lifestyle for young families. Park
and open spaces promised cultural activities for the worlding residents of the global
city. More than multiracialism, Punggol 21-plus was to provide for the multicultur-
alism of the globalizing classes, which included newly arrived migrant profession-
als from Asian countries seeking to settle into Singapore. Worried about the
integration of these migrant families, as the state sought to layer a worlding multi-
culturalism unto the old multiracialism, the government introduced permanent resi-
dent ownership quotas in 2010 and non-citizen subletting quotas in 2014.

In 2020, work began on the Punggol Digital District, sited at the northern part of the town. Developed by Jurong Town Corporation, designed by the world-acclaimed architectural firm WOHA, it is to be a digitally integrated and car-lite smart business park complete with a university, the Singapore Institute of Technology, a market village and a heritage trail. The district is to be the technological showcase for Singapore's ambition to become a smart city. A district-wide sensor network collects anonymized technical and social data for the test-bedding of innovations. Beyond the district, Punggol 21-plus is being transformed into a smart town test-bedding many new urban technologies from waste recycling to smart energy grids. Beyond the town, Punggol 21-plus now lies centrally in the new north-eastern post-industrial corridor stretching from Seletar Airport to Changi Airport.

With and beyond the new Punggol Digital District, the state seeks to layer a new cosmopolitan diversity unto the old multiracialism in Punggol. This cosmopolitan diversity is seen as productive of cross-cultural innovativeness and creativity and undergirding harmonious relationships between migrant professionals and citizens. For this reason, the Global Indian International School set up a sprawling next-generation smart campus in Punggol to serve the migrant professionals concentrating in the area. In our interviews with the mothers of migrant professional families residing in Punggol and Seng Kang, we found that although migrants may initially be attracted to Singapore by hard factors such as job opportunities, standards of living and the quality of education in Singapore, what ultimately makes them stay are softer factors associated with quality of life and subjective well-being, broadly categorised as liveability (Lee, 2021). Belonging, community, the physical beauty of their living environment and their aspirations for their children play decisive roles in framing their desire to remain in their neighbourhood.

Every participant in our study chronicled the beginning of their life in Singapore
as starting from a work-motivated shift. Having accompanied their spouse to
Singapore, they either found work here or took on the fulltime role of raising and
caring for their children. They remarked on the accessibility of public transport, the pleasantness of the urban environment and the abundance of shops, malls and recreational activities all a stone's throw away from their houses. In short, participants revealed Punggol and Seng Kang to be neighbourhoods with high levels of liveability in that they met most, if not all, of their needs and interests. For example, Rani explained that she liked the area, "because it's quite happening and near to the airport. This area actually I found the amenities are also very good. We have a stadium nearby our house. It's a hockey stadium even though, not for us (laughs) but at least have some badminton courts and some other facilities here. And for us, we can easily go to Mustafa Centre because we like to do shopping there. Indian stuff we can find there." Meera also said, "Best is the playground and then... lot of things is near. Like you have 24 hours supermarket, so when you have baby... it's much needed right? Sometimes you need something emergency. So we quickly go and buy. Nearby we have some clinics also for anything. You can quickly go and check. ... Now we got a new gym also nearby."

Participants who lived in Punggol tended to bring up the lack of facilities like a swimming pool and public library within Punggol, necessitating their travel to neighbouring Seng Kang. They placed emphasis on qualities like the greenness of Punggol and the centrality of playgrounds to their children's lives compared to residents from Seng Kang. These refer to measures of pleasantness, which we take to mean satisfaction with the natural environment (Lee, 2021). As we spoke, it became obvious why this was their focus, as their weekly routines greatly involve engaging with their outdoor environment. The various playgrounds peppered around their housing estate were their children's daily haunts, where they meet their friends and spend much of their time after school. As both parents typically worked, playgrounds served a form of 'informal daycare' for their children while they were away at work. One of the participants, Daksha, specifically mentioned a spacious walking path opposite her block where she goes on her daily walks. On the weekends, they used easily accessed cycling paths to parks like Coney Island to spend quality time with the family. They remarked on the peacefulness of open spaces and how easy it was to get from one place to another via bicycles. They formed their own communities with other Indian migrant professionals in the area and held gatherings in public places like multipurpose halls and the various rooftop gardens to be found in Punggol's housing estates. Through their descriptions of their routines, they revealed Punggol and Seng Kang to be highly liveable neighbourhoods.

In fact, for Deepika, satisfaction with the urban environment was of such paramount importance that it almost became a dealbreaker for her, as she was even willing to give up living in Singapore when they looked for apartments prior to settling on one in Punggol. She explained that when she first saw the flats in older districts east of Punggol, she was very disappointed that they were dark and dingy, but was happy to have found the flats in Punggol to be well-ventilated and the district had more open areas despite being more densely populated.

Undergirding professional migrants' satisfaction with Punggol and Seng Kang were neighbourhood relations, which involved the ability to form and maintain social ties with others. These relations can be further specified into two forms: with
the Indian migrant professional community in Punggol/Seng Kang and with the locals via their immediate neighbours. Existing migrant networks, professional or otherwise, created a virtuous cycle that encouraged other Indian migrants professionals to move to that area; such as in the case of Meera, who initially stayed in Punggol with her brother's family before moving her own family permanently to the same neighbourhood a few blocks away. Even though her brother had since moved back to India, she stayed on. These social networks further embedded migrants in the neighbourhood and strengthened their desire to stay. The impact of social ties on migrants' decisions to remain are illustrated by Sneha, who shared that even as increasing rental prices had led them to consider moving, they were determined to remain in Punggol until they could not afford to do so anymore, because they "became friends with lots of people".

This community they built and became part of not only applied to them, but also their children, who had fostered ties with other children in the neighbourhood and their schools. In various anecdotes, participants shared how their children frequently served as a bridge for neighbourly encounters. They often recounted their initial interactions with fellow neighbours and co-ethnics as being an outcome of minding their children. For instance, Priya became friends with another Telugu-speaking migrant who turned out to be her block neighbour while she was fetching her son from school. She said, "Yeah we were just walking casually, and at that time she asked me 'do you speak Telugu' since I was speaking [the] Telugu language. And coincidentally her husband used to be my sister's classmate. So that's how we came to know [each other]."

Neighbourhood relations with the locals via their immediate neighbours were often also mediated by their children. Many participants recalled how interactions with their neighbours began when neighbours ask about or greet their children in common areas like the lifts and corridors. Meera and Daksha's children were good friends with their next-door neighbour's children, even celebrating birthday parties altogether and visiting each other's houses daily. These small interactions, fleeting as they were, were essential in generating feelings of neighbourly goodwill. At the very least, they contributed to a sense of belonging as neighbours made an effort to look out for each other. Apart from the physical environment of Punggol and Seng Kang, the ability to integrate into a community and to feel a sense of belonging and inclusion were essential qualities that contributed to migrants' overall satisfaction and happiness with the neighbourhoods.

## 4.4 Everyday Multiculturalisms and Racisms

Having previously established Singapore's multicultural model as a postcolonial 'old' multiculturalism, what can be observed is a form of everyday multiculturalism: unproblematic and positive daily encounters between residents of different ethnic backgrounds. Yet, the coexistence of this everyday multiculturalism with everyday racism (as will be demonstrated) is an apparent paradox that has been
observed in another study in Sydney (Bloch & Dreher, 2009) where Arab and Muslim residents in a small local community are seen as a threat to harmonious community relations despite enjoying high levels of cross-cultural mixing and appreciation of diversity.

The multiracial model of public housing enables and encourages getting along and ‘rubbing shoulders’ with neighbours through simple gestures, greetings and light-hearted banter, thus building an awareness of cultural differences and codes of various groups. In contrast to the top-down multiculturalism policies of the state, ‘everyday multiculturalism’ can be found in these various mundane interactions and more, such as the practice of cooking for or trading foodstuff from residents’ own traditions, and especially during cultural festivities. Some participants recalled their local neighbours gifting them food during Chinese New Year and in return, they shared their home-cooked recipes during Diwali. Beyond once-a-year events, Meera and Deepika recalled frequently cooking Indian food for their neighbours who eagerly accepted their tasty dishes. These spontaneous acts of care and goodwill, especially when tied to culturally significant rituals such as food sharing, fostered a deeper appreciation of cultural differences.

This appeared to smooth over any differences they might have, culturally, religiously or nationally. However, differences were acutely felt and exaggerated when conflict arose, or in some cases, were (mis)attributed to be the cause of conflict. For instance, Rani related a time when her youngest son mistakenly parked his bicycle outside of their neighbour’s flat, provoking their neighbour to confront them saying “Oh we are Chinese, we don’t like people put[ting] anything in front of our house.” She remarked that the neighbour could have simply asked them to remove their bicycle without pointing out their ethnic difference. Xenophobic or racist sentiments can bleed into simple interactions, highlighting the tensions of cosmopolitan diversity as it attempts to be layered onto the existing multiracial model public housing has been designed around.

Hence, although participants generally reported positive or at least cordial relationships with their neighbours, every person we spoke to related at least one incident that suggested an underlying ambivalence or outright hostility towards them. Yet, they were quick to brush off these incidents of racism or xenophobia as unimportant or tended to attribute them to the fleeting bad moods people experience. Many of them were reluctant to elaborate on these encounters with microaggressions or racist behaviour. However minor, they have larger effects than mere discomfort. These racial realities that Indian migrant professionals face not only highlight the complications with the layering of cosmopolitan diversity unto multiracialism, but also shape their interactions with and paths through the neighbourhood. Although this section seeks to highlight the xenophobia that characterises Indian migrant professionals’ experiences in Punggol, we use the concept of everyday racism to illustrate the specific and situated nature of these individual interactions. Specifically, by highlighting the ‘everyday’, we draw attention to the microstructures that, when taken together, make up the macro fabric of diversity governance and implementation in Singapore. In doing so, the tension between the state’s cosmopolitan aspirations and the quotidian aspirations of Indian migrant
professionals under a public housing model that was designed for an older—potentially outdated—form of multiracialism is revealed.

Everyday racisms often do not take extreme forms but are found instead in mun-
dane and routine practices (Essed, 1991). These may take the form of offhand com-
ments or remarks suggesting inferiority, undesirability, racial stereotyping and
prejudices against minorities in Singapore. Due to strict laws that protect and
enshrine multiculturalism as a national value, racism is thus covert and difficult to
pinpoint but is felt and experienced persistently (Velayutham, 2017).

Priya, Rani and Sheela recounted how children at the playground would make racist remarks to their children. Priya and Rani each recalled how their sons were told to ‘go back to India’ or had children refuse to play with them and Sheela’s daughter was made to feel self-conscious about her skin tone being darker than her peers. Participants recognised that these were problematic interactions but were limited in their ability to stop or manage them. Sheela shared that she was at a loss as to how to counsel her daughter after and Priya said she felt uneasy when it happened. There is a profound sense of disempowerment that accompanies such encounters and lingers long after. Daksha recounted an incident that took place during a night walk on her favourite walking path opposite her block.

That day no one was there, I don't know what I was thinking, I was walking on the cycling path. This person maybe he was cycling and maybe—I don't know he said before anything—he mentioned anything or anything like that. Maybe he called me? Because I didn't listen, so he came like this [cycled in front of her] and then he turned back and he looked at me in a very angry way... I mean, it's a little scary. So he said, "It's not your country, you can't walk in the middle of the road. Go back to your country," he said. And then he left. I was like... "I didn't see, sorry"... I cried actually, that day. I came back home and I told my husband this person so rude to me and I never felt so rude before in my life.

In this case, a xenophobic remark made was thinly veiled by an admonishment to adhere to road rules. It tied undesirable behaviour to undesirable bodies through the implication that migrants were only to remain within certain permitted boundaries but not stray beyond. This exclusion took on a literal form in the insistence that the cycling path (Singapore) was meant for cyclists (him, locals) but not pedestrians (Daksha, migrants). The remark demonstrates how space is productive of differences and not merely reflective of them (Clayton, 2009). In a way, this also mirrors how various state policies grant migrants certain inclusions only under clearly delineated circumstances and spheres. The cyclist attempted to assert authority over migrants, in the same way the state retains the ultimate authority over migrants' mobility and residency.

Notably, this incident occurred during the extended Circuit Breaker, a country-
wide lockdown that was instated between 23 July 2021 to 9 August 2021. Apart
from the increased tension and frustration to be expected in high-density living
arrangements, emotions were running high due to anxieties about COVID-19 and
unemployment, which fuelled debates over immigration controls and policies.
There was increased anti-foreigner sentiment and hostility towards migrant profes-
sionals who were perceived to be enjoying cushier lives and high levels of renu-
meration compared to the local populace. While immigration policy in Singapore
has been a hot-button topic, the increasing visibility of migrants in public spaces has forced Singaporeans to reckon with diversity in a way that the older state model of multiracialism did not account for. This is similar to Bloch and Dreher's study which found that concerns about the Muslim and Arab immigrants in their community were linked to wider demographic changes in their neighbourhood composition and that scapegoating the Other is a convenient means of expressing discontentment. This fear of being left behind and alienated is also connected to the increasing social and physical isolation which accompanies old age for elderly residents (Wise, 2002).

The hostile and mistrustful attitudes of some elderly residents in Punggol is a prime example of how everyday racism manifests in ways both routine and continuous. These often manifest in glares or unfriendly expressions directed at migrant professionals as they go about in public. Deepika shared that some store owners at the wet markets 'don't receive us properly' and related an incident where an elderly seller shouted at her not to touch the onions that were on display. When Deepika explained that she needed to be able to check the produce to purchase it, the seller replied, "Go away if you buy or not, I don't care." Deepika mentioned that she has never gone back to that stall and that her friends, who were her co-ethnics, had similar experiences with that particular seller, indicating that this discriminatory behaviour was consistent and not a one-off event.

Sheela recounted an incident where a group of people who were drinking shouted at them to remove their water bottles from the bench they had placed it at, not knowing that it was where the group had been sitting previously. She related that "One guy came back and he started shouting at us, 'Why did you keep your water bottles here' and 'You came from that place [speaker clarified he meant India]' and 'You are occupying me.'" The same group also harassed her young daughter, "Sometimes they're drunk and they come behind and they [say] 'Hey girl, girl, give me $2.'" Although Sheela herself brushed this incident off, she revealed that her children were offended. Her daughter was especially fearful of the man in the group who heckled her and avoided that area when she sees them there. These encounters shaped the way migrants like Deepika and Sheela go about their everyday routines and determine their paths through the neighbourhood in which they are welcome or deemed unwelcome.

Apart from marketing itself as a modern, cosmopolitan city, Singapore also discursively reproduces itself as a meritocratic society, where individuals can improve themselves and experience social mobility through hard work, ability and talent. Some participants also reiterate this narrative in their praise of Singapore's abundance of opportunities. In this context, diversity in the workplace is seen as both necessary for and an outcome of economic progress and skills transfer and is a hallmark of a globalised economy. A diverse workplace is thus consistent with expectations, which may explain why, with the exception of Rani, none of the participants claimed to have experienced discriminatory behaviour in the workplace. However, Rani's account suggests that racial-class dynamics are at play. Rani said at length,
But he used to hate me so sometimes he will teach me, other times he will be angry with me and he say ‘You guys, you Indian, you’re coming from foreign and you’re taking over everything’. So even though I found the two other guys there, they never talk like this, but this senior he used to talk like this, he used to hate Indians. [...] Yeah he say ‘You don’t know anything.’ Whatever I do, like if I do any changes—because we have some request to do the changes in the configuration in the device—if I do any changes every time he will check back. All my work he will check back. That was like... he don’t trust me. So most of the time he say ‘You don’t know how to work, so I don’t know these guys why they hire you’. And sometimes he say ‘You Indians, you’re trying to capture everywhere, you’re coming from India and you’re getting job here’.

By labelling Rani incompetent for needing guidance, her colleague thus produced a justification for his anger and impatience towards and mistrust of her. Yet, his other remarks that ostensibly criticised her work reveal that this was actually an indirect means of expressing his criticism of and resentment towards immigration policies that he perceived to be overly liberal and favouring Indian professional migrants. Her “incompetence” further intensified his ire as he believed her—and by extension, Indian migrant professionals—to be undeserving of the position. Relevant to this account was the heightened xenophobic climate present during Rani’s stint at this company. At the time of this job, the COVID-19 pandemic had recently emerged and social media debates about CECA were stoking anti-foreigner sentiment. Within this interaction, we thus see how the narrative of meritocracy, when combined with intense xenophobia, can have the opposite effect in affecting attitudes towards diversity, as any perceived shortcomings in colleagues can fuel existing prejudices instead of normalising diverse workplaces.

Daksha’s story about her interaction with her neighbour shows another racial-class dynamic in play,

> When we bought this house, we were shifting everything so he came to us and he said ‘You bought this house?’ We said yes. ‘How much it cost?’ We said 455 [thousand]. ‘Wah you have so much money,’ he said (laughs). That’s how it all started. [...] Yeah even if we buy something they deliver us, if he is outside, because you need to sign the slip, the payment right, one day we bought fridge and he saw the slip, ‘You bought this fridge, it’s so much money,’ he said. ... I’m not saying about him, but outside also I think financial things making a lot more disturbance than what it used to be. In terms of racial harmony. Especially after lockdown. Because in the lockdown, one day my husband was picking up my kids from the school. So he was coming from his work. So he asked my husband—I opened the door—and he was coming, and my husband was coming with the kids. He asked my husband ‘Are you working today?’ then he [her husband] said ‘I’m working from home’. ‘Oh you can work from home? Even so many [COVID-19] cases are outside, I need to go and work every day. Yeah, your life is good,’ he said.

By bringing up the costliness of their houses and the items they purchased, their neighbour continuously underscored the socio-economic differences between him and Daksha. While Daksha considered them to be friendly and his tone and demeanour also reflected that, these interactions not only represent the tensions between locals and foreigners in a competitive job market but also demonstrate that these tensions become highly visible under a housing model that is engineered to produce intercultural encounters. It is no longer simply a matter of cultural differences, but socio-economic inequality also contributes to feelings of racial division. The
‘everyday’ here is not simply referring to the quality of this interaction; it behoves
us to grasp that everyday forms of racism becomes constitutive of the conditions for
a belief in ‘race’ (Smith, 2016) and thus any advantages or disadvantages accrued
by different racial groups become complicit with existing structures of inequality.

4.5 Urban Futures and Migrant Agency

When asked about the Punggol Digital District, the overall response was ambiva-
lent. For many, the District is an anticipated gateway to more job opportunities,
especially in the ICT field, where most of them are employed. One participant men-
tioned that her husband was enthusiastic about the university being built as he felt it
would be an ideal one for their son to attend when he is older. Others expressed
reservations about the increased crowds it would draw and the resultant density of
urban development to be expected in Punggol. They were sceptical and saw it as
economically advantageous for the government but not actually beneficial for the
people, suggesting that smart city initiatives are simply fancy re-brandings but ulti-
mately an empty signifier (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019). From the range of responses,
we observe several grounded imaginations for their future in Singapore.

Migrant professionals are concerned with liveability. Their imagination of Punggol as clean, green and spacious is part of their continued satisfaction with the area. Almost all participants in our study demonstrated a deep concern about ‘ecosqualities’ in Punggol. To raise an example, Daksha lamented the excessive use of plastic in packaging fruits in the supermarkets, comparing it to fruits she picked up in the wet market at her former location in Tampines. They were also worried that increasing population density within Punggol put pressure not just on rental prices, but also the quality of urban spaces. Some participants recounted conflict with their neighbours, usually over noise complaints, during the lockdown when many were cooped up in their homes. These fraught encounters heightened awareness and experience of the density of public housing arrangements.

Job opportunities and education were also at the forefront of participants’ minds when imagining their futures. For these professionals, their ability to remain in Singapore was entirely contingent upon their ability to secure employment. This was in part due to their visa requirements but also the financial cost of living here without the privileges citizens receive. At least two participants mentioned the high cost of living in Singapore in conjunction with their plans for retirement. They expected their children to remain in Singapore but did not foresee themselves living here when they no longer work. This was due to several financial disadvantages they face as migrants—their rented apartments were susceptible to price hikes, health-care was not subsidised and school fees for their children to attend Global Indian International School were much higher than it would be if their children attended local schools.

Apart from financial considerations, they also brought up the social ties that
bound them to the neighbourhood: their children formed bonds with other children
in their neighbourhood and schools, and participants themselves established routines around family and friend gatherings. The existence and preservation of these bonds were crucial to their ability to envision a future for themselves here. When speaking about retirement, a core reason for their desire to return to India was the presence of family ties and a greater sense of community. However, according to participants, some of their friends changed their mind about retiring in India and stayed after attaining citizenship because of infrastructural considerations like a good healthcare system, convenience of commute (includes walkability) and a high standard of living here. Naturally, this was predicated on the ability to comfortably finance their retirement. From these responses and our earlier observations about the reasons for migrants selecting Punggol and Seng Kang, we see the potential for a cosmopolitan diversity that is not comprised merely of superficial multicultural ties but one that is tightly knit and intricately linked to the everyday lives of its residents.

What stands out in every interview is the centrality of their children to their lives and aspirations. When asked what they hope to see changes in, participants inevitably talked about issues that directly impact their children's lives and futures. They were worried about their children facing disadvantages in language acquisition, attaining citizenship and the stressful educational and workplace environment. Like Singaporeans, they were highly involved in their children's education, debating the pros and cons of tuition, worrying about school rankings and placements and even going so far as to pursue English proficiency certifications in order to help their children with the language. Unfamiliarity with English was a common cause for their anxiety. Although their struggles with navigating a changing educational and employment landscape were not unique to them, they had specific obstacles that Singaporean families faced to a lesser degree, namely, their unfamiliarity with the main medium of instruction and lack of resources or support for niche Mother Tongue languages like Hindi. However, generally, as a result of socialisation with their English-speaking peers in the parks and at school, participants said that their children were better than they were at English, once again demonstrating the importance of public spaces like playgrounds to liveability and highlighting its role in supporting language acquisition.

Participants also tended to mention their preferences for flexible work arrangements and better work-life balance, especially if they worked for local companies. Unpaid overtime, crushing workloads and a high level of stress were recurring pain points in our conversations. Hence, the idea of the Punggol Digital District as an all-in-one, work-study-play concept was very appealing to participants, especially those who enjoyed the autonomy that work from home arrangements during the pandemic provided. Less time spent on commuting to work and leisure attractions on the weekends was the biggest draw for them, rather than the smart features touted. We can thus see that residents were not particularly responsive to the ICT features of smart cities—despite themselves being in the ICT sector—and tended to react favourably towards features like walkability, accessibility by cycling and multi-use spaces.
Despite the xenophobic incidents the migrant professionals experienced in their everyday life and the wider racisms that emerged at the national level during the pandemic, our respondents tended to dismiss these as factors that may affect their aspirations to settle in Singapore. Those who experienced xenophobia downplayed the severity by attributing them to the perpetrator's unhappiness, dissatisfaction, or frustration about something else in their lives. Their responses tended to redirect focus onto their main reasons for wishing to remain in Singapore. These primarily involved retaining or acquiring the means to social mobility such as education, financial security, and Permanent Resident (PR) status. These anti-racist responses allowed migrant professionals to manage xenophobia and racism and reflected the agency that migrant professionals retain even in the face of hostility. They pointed to a conscious aspiration to integrate into local society and their neighbourhood communities, with a view towards bettering their children's futures.

In this way, migrant professionals themselves become everyday agents of cosmopolitan diversity. An illustrative example comes from Rani's eldest son; she said, "Actually I didn't have many bad experience [sic] because, as I told you, my Harish was quite stubborn so he—if he wants something, he wants something. He will make other people. He will convince other kids it's good to play with him [...] He keep going to the same kids again and again and slowly they start playing with him." In this example, her son actively grappled with and overcame barriers to diversity through sheer force of will, by inserting himself into interactions with other children. In highlighting this seemingly insignificant event, we call attention to the pivotal role our subjects play in cultivating everyday cosmopolitan diversity, which may provide a potential model for the rest of the city. The future realisation of the cosmopolitan diversity of the Punggol Digital District depends on whether the aspirations of the migrant professional families are not undermined by the deterioration of urban livability, escalating differential costs of living for migrants, and bad xenophobic experiences. Apart from efforts by the state to spearhead diversity, our paper presents how Indian migrant professionals navigate the everyday racisms to contribute to cosmopolitan diversity in Singapore. In doing so, we bring attention to their integral, yet taken-for-granted, role in making the cosmopolitan city and outline how their day-to-day experiences could be instructive for the planning of diverse neighbourhoods and the city.

## 4.6 Conclusion

The planning for diversity in Punggol from model new town to smart digital district has shifted from the nation-building framework of multiracialism to a new model of cosmopolitan multiculturalism. Harmonious inter-cultural interactions between residents and migrant professionals in public and neighborhood spaces are envisioned as underpinning creative and innovative relationships embedded in everyday life. The township becomes an integrated mixed-use high-tech park nestled in the public housing milieu, where boundaries of work, rest, and play are blurred and combined for a convivial urbanism of the future. In line with the literature on the
urbanism of high-tech parks, the Singapore case is at the cutting edge of contemporary urban planning. Instead of exclusive middle-class precincts housing gated migrant communities as scholars have found in high-tech parks around the world, the Singapore model integrates the migrant professionals in the public housing estates to create greater diversities across generations, ethnicities, nationalities, occupations, and socio-economic classes.

However, we have indicated that a pernicious thread of xenophobia and racism against the largely Indian migrant professionals in the ICT sector exists today in the transition to the cosmopolitan multiculturalism of the Punggol Digital District. This xenophobia interacts with the envisioned urbanism, in which shared concerns with escalating costs of living and persistent socio-economic inequality squeezing the middle-classes are inflected differently in the responses of the migrant professionals and local residents toward the District. The migrant professionals aspire for their children to settle in Singapore and thus try to integrate into society and their local communities but worry about being accepted as fellow denizens of the city. On the other hand, locals frustrated with labor market competition and socio-economic inequality find a convenient figure in the migrant professionals living amongst them to blame for their predicament. This is a familiar story all over the world, where migrants are scapegoated for socio-economic problems, except that in the Singapore case, even the tightly knitted and planned spaces for encouraging harmony can barely keep the lid on xenophobia.

The efforts to build the smart city have not been matched by the investment of similar attention and energy into developing information and communications feedback loops to enable deeper relationships of diversity. The attention of urban planning to promote cosmopolitan multiculturalism has been on the physical quality and openness of public and neighborhood spaces, where everyone can be united in a high quality of life and consumption lifestyles provided by the state. The burden of integration is placed on migrants, but little attention is given to actual relationships and interactions between locals and migrants, and the complexities of xenophobia, that pervade everyday life. So, while the smart city tracks energy and even carbon flows that could account for individual streetlights and their relationship to lighting conditions and needs, there is no equivalent attention to the granular relationships between locals and migrants that would make for a successful enabling of deep diversity and authentic intercultural interactions. In this regard, as our findings show, we believe we need to focus on the mothers in migrant professional families as critical smart city-makers, as they have been instrumental in navigating the social and cultural alleyways of the urban milieu.

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<figure><img src="image_14.png" /></figure>
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**5.1 Introduction**

Throughout the twentieth century, France emerged as a key destination for the Chinese diaspora in Europe. Today, Paris—closely followed by London—is widely regarded as the home to the largest Chinese population in Europe<fnref n="1" /> (Chuang & Trémon, 2020: 9). This migration has been primarily driven by economic motivations. A significant proportion of Chinese migrants are categorized as ‘migrant entrepreneurs’ (Liu, 2021) and are associated with various economic clusters across the Paris region.

This study takes as its starting point the opening of the “Silk Road Paris” wholesale market in 2018. Located near the Charles de Gaulle international airport in Tremblay-en-France, this market is touted as the largest business-to-business commercial center in Europe, with a planned surface area of 200,000 m² and 400 counters (expected to increase to 1000). Currently, 90% of the entrepreneurs working in the market are Chinese. Unlike earlier Chinese wholesale markets in Paris, which were essentially scattered ethnic enclaves (Li et al., 2025), Silk Road Paris is the result of a project-based urban development initiative funded by an international public-private partnership. The local government views Silk Road Paris as a

<footnote n="1">¹As Chuang and Trémon (2020: 9) point out, it is not easy to determine the exact size of the Chinese population in France. Many people who came to France as of the late 1980s were of Chinese origin but had been living in Southeast Asia. Additionally, official statistics fail to account for many undocumented immigrants. The 2018 INSEE census identified 107,000 individuals from the People's Republic of China (PRC) living in France, but this figure is considered conservative. Other sources offer estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 (Lucchini, 2012).</footnote>

<footnote>M. Gibert-Flutre (✉)</footnote>

<footnote>Department of East Asia Studies, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
e-mail: marie.gibert@u-paris.fr</footnote>
strategic asset for fostering local economic growth and enhancing integration into global markets. In this chapter, I conduct a place-based case study of this market with a view to understanding the recent changes in Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in Paris. This approach highlights the role of Chinese entrepreneurs as city-makers embedded within a broader institutional, regulatory, and sociocultural context (Kloosterman & Rath, 2018) involving urban players such as policymakers and developers.

I propose that, through the formation of new “growth coalitions” promoting the Chinese way of doing business, Silk Road Paris plays a pivotal role in transforming the Chinese commercial marketplace into a valuable metropolitan asset. This process of entrepreneurialization, reflected in both urban discourse and the physical transformation of the city, is driven by the combined entrepreneurial efforts of local governments, private developers, and Chinese entrepreneurs themselves. It exemplifies what Nina Glick-Schiller (2011:212) describes as “multiculturalism (...) endorsed by political and economic city leaders in their initial efforts to reinvent their city within an agenda of neoliberal restructuring.” At Silk Road Paris, the migrants’ commercial space is produced and managed through an unprecedented top-down approach, aligning with the entrepreneurial urbanism described by Harvey (1989). This approach relies on project-based urban development funded through public-private partnerships, where strategic communication and marketing promote a positive vision of urban diversity and Chinese business in France.

The case study combines a spatial analysis of the historical implementation of Chinese entrepreneurship in Paris with an ethnographic study of Silk Road Paris. The methodological approach was qualitative in nature and encompassed a critical analysis of official narratives around the Silk Road Paris project, plus repeated site visits over a number of months in 2021/22 to understand the site as both a real and branded space. Finally, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 local Chinese entrepreneurs and official stakeholders to examine their interactions within a multi-level governance framework and their role in shaping urban diversity governance in contemporary France.

## 5.2 Chinese Migration, Entrepreneurship and City-Making

### 5.2.1 Migrants as Entrepreneurs in Global Cities

Entrepreneurship can be understood in various ways. In this chapter, I define an entrepreneur in line with Wennekers and Thurik (1999: 46) as a social actor who “perceives and creates new economic opportunities” and “introduces their ideas into the market, despite uncertainty and other obstacles.” This definition encompasses both individuals who are self-employed and business creators who employ others. It emphasizes ambition and risk-taking rather than a specific education level or skillset. The authors also highlight the competitive aspect of entrepreneurship (Wennekers & Thurik, 1999: 31).
*Transnational entrepreneurs* are a growing sub-category in the entrepreneurship literature (Zhou, 2004; Miera, 2008; Drori et al., 2009; Portes & Yiu, 2013; Liu, 2021). The term refers to entrepreneurs who engage in business activities “in a cross-national context” and are “connected to at least two different social and economic areas” (Drori et al., 2009: 1001). While the connection between the global phenomenon of transnational migration and its local socio-spatial impact on cities seems obvious, the relationship between migrant entrepreneurs and cities has long been under-researched. Early empirical work primarily focused on “ethnic enclaves” (Portes & Manning, 1986; Zhou, 1992; Ma Mung, 1994) in which migrants mobilize networks of capital, suppliers, or customers within their own communities. In recent decades, the liberalization of trade and the increased circulation of goods and capital have created new opportunities for migrant entrepreneurs, who—by traveling back and forth between their country of origin and their host city—have become significant contributors to transnational trade (Dahinden, 2010). While discussions on global city-makers have mainly concentrated on global economic actors, recent research has turned the spotlight on those who play a role in shaping cities locally, including migrant entrepreneurs and their motivations, strategies, and challenges (Dheer, 2018; Liu, 2021; Yamamura, 2022). In particular, interest is growing in the neighborhood-level dynamics of migrant entrepreneurs, especially when they contribute directly to the economic development of disadvantaged neighborhoods (Liu et al., 2010; Rath & Aytar, 2011; Parzer & Huber, 2015). In France, however, migrant entrepreneurship has long been neglected in favor of the historical focus on foreign workers in large-scale industries (Rainhorn & Zalc, 2000).

Drawing on pioneering works in migration studies, we identify several characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs. First, migrants in most global cities engage in entrepreneurship at higher rates than native-born residents (Baycan-Levent & Nijkamp, 2009; Desiderio, 2014; Dheer, 2018). This trend suggests that self-employment often serves as an alternative pathway for migrants to enhance their social mobility, particularly in view of their limited qualifications and linguistic barriers. Second, migrant entrepreneurs are often deeply embedded in transnational business networks (Maas, 2005; Ojo, 2012; Portes & Yiu, 2013; Wang & Liu, 2015). Diasporic entrepreneurs, in particular, play a pivotal role in fostering global connections. Third, while first-generation migrant entrepreneurs frequently cluster in co-ethnic enclave communities upon arrival in host cities, subsequent generations tend to branch out into higher-skilled sectors and more profitable businesses (Liu, 2021). Lastly, the experiences and socioeconomic characteristics of migrant entrepreneurs are highly diverse, influenced by factors such as the size and formal or informal nature of their activities, as well as the qualifications required. Despite this diversity, migrant entrepreneurs commonly face structural and cultural barriers when starting and growing their businesses.

The interactive theoretical model developed by Waldinger et al. (1990) provides insight into how migrants engage in self-employment. It posits that the interaction between the host society's opportunity structure and the social characteristics of migrant groups shapes their involvement in entrepreneurship. Contextual factors such as market conditions, public policy support, and access to property and
markets influence entrepreneurial outcomes. Additionally, migrants can leverage
the unique characteristics of their community as assets in the labor market. The his-
tory of Chinese entrepreneurs in the Paris region effectively exemplifies these
dynamics.

5.2.2 First Steps of Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurs
in the Paris Region

Chinese entrepreneurs began establishing themselves in Paris in the early twentieth
century, driven by immigration predominantly from Qingtian and Wenzhou in
Zhejiang province. Initially, they set up businesses in the underutilized interstices of
the city, particularly in the Gare de Lyon neighborhood, where they sold products
that showcased their ethnicity (Ma Mung, 2015). As new waves of migrants arrived,
the locations of Chinese entrepreneurial activity shifted. In the 1940s, the Arts et
Métiers area in the third arrondissement emerged as a hub for leather goods produc-
tion and trade (Archaimbault, 1952; Live, 1992: 61). The district became home to
workshops and wholesale shops, forming an integrated production and retail net-
work. By the 1980s, Ma Mung (2020) noted the presence of approximately 100
Chinese leather-goods wholesalers in the area, supplied by hundreds of local work-
shops. This cluster became Paris's first example of a Chinese business "ethnic
enclave" (Portes & Manning, 1986) or "ethnic niche" (Logan et al., 2003). Portes
and Manning (1986) define an ethnic enclave as a spatial concentration of immi-
grant groups who establish a network of similar ethnic enterprises, often employing
a significant immigrant workforce.

During the 1980s, the activities of Chinese migrants in Paris became closely
linked to China's economic reforms and development. During this period, migration
from mainland China increased substantially, primarily from Zhejiang province,
followed by Fujian, with additional migrants arriving from northeastern provinces
(Chuang & Trémon, 2020: 10). These migrants developed transnational careers as
"mobile entrepreneurs" with ties to both China and France (Trémon, 2019). The
focus of their entrepreneurial activities shifted from production to trade, with many
businesses importing "made in China" goods into Paris. As a result, wholesale
Chinese businesses formed distinct clusters in and around Paris, including in Le
Sentier, Sedaine-Popincourt, and later Aubervilliers. By the early 2000s, many for-
mer workshop owners had transitioned to textile import-export businesses. In Le
Sentier alone, Chinese wholesale companies accounted for 82.2% of all enterprises
in the district (Ma Mung, 2020). At the same time, however, urban changes began to
disrupt this local development. Rising property prices have since transformed Le
Sentier into a hub for high-tech and electronic media startups, displacing the
wholesalers.

Chinese entrepreneurs turned to another central district of Paris—the Sedaine-
Popincourt neighborhood in the 11th arrondissement—to replicate the business
model previously established in Le Sentier. This district spans approximately 34
hectares and is bordered by five streets: rue de la Roquette, avenue Parmentier, rue Lacharrière, boulevard Richard Lenoir, and rue St. Sabin. Over a decade, the number of Chinese wholesale shops in this area doubled (Chuang, 2020: 106). In 2001, there were 332 such outlets, accounting for 52% of all local shops. By 2010, this number had grown to 621 (Li, 2017: 164). The primary attraction of this new economic cluster was its competitive pricing. However, as the ethnic business community flourished, it faced mounting opposition from local residents. Between 2004 and 2007, a series of protests against wholesale shops was organized by the 11th arrondissement town hall and a local residents' association, *Agir solidairement pour le quartier Popincourt*. Following years of tensions, demonstrations, and public meetings, George Sarre, the mayor of the 11th arrondissement, implemented measures to curb the expansion of wholesale trade in the neighborhood. Using legal tools such as pre-emptive rights, wholesale shops were replaced with small retail establishments. In response, Chinese wholesalers began a large-scale relocation to Aubervilliers.

The wholesale markets of Aubervilliers, located in the northern suburbs of Paris beyond the ring road, have seen rapid growth, far surpassing that of the Sedaine-Popincourt neighborhood. This expansion is largely due to the availability of space in former warehouses, which have been transformed into showrooms. Initially, the area comprised warehouses owned by a public company alongside several old metallurgical plants. However, deindustrialization led to the repurposing of urban land, creating an abundance of vacant spaces that facilitated the development of wholesale markets.

From the mid-1990s, Chinese wholesalers began investing in the zone in three stages. First, entrepreneurs were primarily engaged in import-export activities that required frequent trips to the Yiwu market in China (Chuang, 2020: 113). Second, Chinese real-estate developers began systematically renting out the old warehouses. These developers, many of whom were second-generation Chinese-French citizens, acted as intermediaries between non-Chinese property owners and Chinese tenants. An innovative economic strategy emerged: subdividing large warehouses into smaller sales spaces. A notable example is Eurasia, a company that holds subleases for 188,772 m² of business premises in Aubervilliers (Chuang, 2020: 114). Third, the transformation of Chinese wholesale trade in Aubervilliers culminated in the establishment of purpose-built trade centers. The opening of the France-Asia International Wholesale Center (CIFA) in 2006 was a key milestone, followed by the creation of the Fashion Center in 2015. Both centers are owned by a combination of Chinese and non-Chinese companies and provide rental spaces exclusively for entrepreneurs, primarily from Wenzhou.

These vast trade centers represent an unprecedented collaboration with the municipal authorities of Aubervilliers, who actively supported their establishment as part of an urban redevelopment strategy. Although these trade centers stem from the gradual transformation initiated by the Wenzhou community, they mark a significant shift in the creation of ethnic marketplaces, involving new, non-Chinese actors and the construction of purpose-built facilities. For the local authorities, the ethnic economic activity offers an opportunity to enhance the image of the suburb,
integrate more fully into the global economy, and generate substantial revenue. In contrast to Paris, which imposed restrictions on wholesale trade in the Sedaine-Popincourt neighborhood, Aubervilliers adopted a more pragmatic approach, positioning itself as a prime entry point for Chinese capital by creating rental spaces tailored to the needs of entrepreneurial migrants. By forming partnerships with prominent Chinese entrepreneurs, the Aubervilliers authorities took a pivotal step in establishing a marketplace for entrepreneurial migrants in their pursuit of an “urban growth machine” (Harvey, 1989).

### 5.2.3 Envisioning Chinese Migrants as City-Makers in the Entrepreneurial City

David Harvey’s (1989) article on the transition from “managerialism” to “entrepreneurialism” in urban governance is widely regarded as a groundbreaking analysis of how cities were transformed by the rise of neoliberalism in Western societies starting in the 1970s (Peck, 2014; Rossi & Vanolo, 2015; Rossi, 2017). Entrepreneurialism represented a new approach to fostering local development and economic growth. Unlike managerialism, which framed the government as a provider of welfare for its citizens, the “entrepreneurial city” involves active government participation in promoting urban growth (Chan & Li, 2017). Urban authorities now incentivize the development of new projects, often characterized by large-scale initiatives in the real estate and commercial sectors. This includes taking unprecedented risks and reshaping the “production” (Lefebvre, 1974) and management of urban spaces through project-based urbanism and public-private partnerships.

The “entrepreneurial city,” as defined by Harvey (1989), leads to the commodification of assets, with four key implications. First, entrepreneurial project-based urbanism results in fragmented management of urban issues. Second, the public-private investments involved often stem from unequal negotiations between international financial capital and local government authorities. Coalitions vie to promote the city, often for speculative purposes, significantly transforming urban governance and establishing market rationality as the dominant framework for urban action (Harvey, 1989: 7; Jokela, 2020). Third, this process leads to the production of the city by consensus, where urban issues are depoliticized, and political confrontation is viewed as detrimental to the city’s image and efficiency. Finally, as urban projects aim to enhance the city’s symbolic capital, marketing and communication assume a central role. Entrepreneurial governance inherently involves the “imaging” of the city, in terms of both its material space and its marketing rhetoric (Vale & Warner, 2001; Prytherch, 2002; Jokela, 2020).

With new stakeholders involved and a subtle reshuffling of public-private partnerships, I propose that the flourishing of new Chinese commercial centers in large European cities expands the theoretical framework of urban entrepreneurialism—envisioned by Brenner et al. (2010) as a perpetual, “variegated,” and self-reinventing process—into new spheres. Municipal governments are now adopting unprecedented policies to create and foster a “welcoming” economic environment aimed at
attracting migrant entrepreneurs to regenerate post-industrial neighborhoods or develop new global commercial hubs (Desiderio, 2014; Marchand & Siegel, 2015). As Peck (2014) points out, the strategies employed by entrepreneurial cities invari- ably involve the commodification of social artifacts, including tolerance itself, be it directed toward impoverished others (Burnett, 2014) or, as in our case study, ethni- cally others. These interactions are often framed as valuable symbols of cosmopoli- tanism and global openness. Like any other commodity, the inclusion of migrant communities becomes a product to be “themed” (Sorkin, 1992) within designated, branded, and—crucially—delimited spaces, as in the case of Silk Road Paris.

By integrating migration studies with the literature on the entrepreneurial city, my research seeks to address the following questions: What specific drivers have led to the entrepreneurialization of Chinese migrants' commercial spaces in Tremblay-en-France? And, consequently, how have Chinese migrant entrepreneurs become central to local city-making processes?

## 5.3 Evidence from Silk Road Paris

The Silk Road Paris wholesale market, which opened in November 2018 in Tremblay-en-France, is located a few kilometers from Charles de Gaulle International Airport and about 20 km northeast of Aubervilliers. To explore the complexity of this new type of ethnic wholesale market, I adopted a two-pronged approach, combining discourse and urban marketing analysis with site visits, obser- vations, and qualitative interviews. Specifically, I conducted 18 in-depth interviews with wholesalers in 2021 and 2022 to examine their negotiation practices within a multilevel governance framework. Together with a master's student, I also engaged with key informants involved in developing and managing the new Silk Road Paris trade center to gather first-hand insights.

Silk Road Paris functions both as an idealized space shaped by urban imaginaries and as a practical site of everyday activity. My goal was to better understand how these two functions overlap and where they come into conflict. To achieve this, I draw on Henri Lefebvre's conceptualization of the “spatial triad” and analyze Silk Road Paris through three distinct lenses.

First, I interpret this new wholesale market as a “conceived space” where politi- cal power dynamics are enacted (Lefebvre, 1974: 222). This analysis focuses on the unprecedented growth coalition involved in the creation of the market and the evolv- ing relationships between migrant entrepreneurs, private developers, and local gov- ernment authorities. According to Lefebvre (1974), capitalism is characterized by a tension between the abstract organization of conceived space and the lived spaces of everyday life. Therefore, second, I examine Silk Road Paris as a “perceived” and branded space that represents a new perception of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in France. Finally, I analyze Silk Road Paris as a more ambivalent “lived space,” focus- ing on the daily experiences of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs within the market. This approach underscores the dialectical relationship between the conceived, per- ceived, and lived spaces within this triad.
### 5.3.1 Silk Road Paris as a “conceived space” (Lefebvre, 1974)

Unlike the earlier Chinese wholesale clusters in Paris and Aubervilliers, Silk Road Paris was created from the ground up rather than emerging from the incremental efforts of migrant communities. Formerly known as the Paris Asia Business Center, it is now part of the Aerolians development project zone. The development of Silk Road Paris is particularly notable for its reliance on a public-private partnership that involves multiple ethnic groups and three key actors: the Chinese business community in the Paris area, Portuguese private developers and project managers, and the French public sector, represented by municipal authorities and various public bodies. Each of these parties brings its own interests and ambitions to the project.

Aerolians Paris is the commercial name for the ZAC (Zone d'Aménagement Concerté, meaning joint development zone) “South Charles de Gaulle,” established in 2008. It has three main objectives: constructing the new Aerolians Paris business park (which includes Silk Road Paris), expanding the Villepinte exhibition center, and creating the Colisée, an entertainment and sports venue with a capacity of 7000 people. This public project is designed to support the economic development of the areas south of Charles de Gaulle airport. Aerolians Paris is a major planning initiative aimed at creating thousands of jobs. Among the various municipalities involved, Tremblay-en-France plays a leading role. Its mayor since 1991, François Asensi— who also served as a member of Parliament for Seine-Saint-Denis from 1988 to 2017—has spoken at each key event for the Silk Road project, including the ground-breaking ceremony of the Paris Asia Business Center in 2014, the project’s relaunch in 2015, and the opening of the Chinese wholesale complex in 2018. In the latter speech, he quoted Chinese proverbs and praised China’s industrial achievements, expressing goodwill and respect toward Chinese partners. At the same time, he referred to the wholesale market as a “new manifestation of Chinese dynamism” and emphasized its role in “opening his territory to the world,” not only for its economic development but also for its broader urban impact (Veillon, 2014).

In this fast-paced land development project, two public bodies played key roles: Grand Paris Aménagement and Paris Terres d'Envol. Grand Paris Aménagement is the land operator and urban developer for the Île-de-France region, assisting municipalities in carrying out their urban projects from conception to completion. It initiated the ZAC Aerolians Paris and aims to transform 198 hectares of land between Charles de Gaulle airport and the Expo Park into an international business hub. Paris Terres d'Envol, on the other hand, is an intercommunal body established in 2016, bringing together eight cities in Seine-Saint-Denis<fnref n="2" /> to support local economic development.

The Chinese community played an early and important role in the development of the project, led by Zheng Xuefen. A former wholesaler in textiles and ready-to-wear clothing, Mrs. Zheng transitioned into real estate and founded her own

<footnote n="2">²Aulnay-sous-Bois, Drancy, Dugny, Le Bourget, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Sevran, Tremblay-en-France, and Villepinte.</footnote>
company, Secom Tremblay.<fnref n="3" /> From the beginning, she advocated for the creation of a central commercial hub dedicated to the Chinese wholesale clothing community. Drawing on her extensive experience in the wholesale textile import-export trade since the 1990s, as well as her active involvement in Chinese residents' associations in France, she leveraged her reputation and close connections with Chinese traders community to encourage their participation in establishing a specialized wholesale market in Tremblay-en-France. Mrs. Zheng herself owns two counters in the new center. Additionally, Chinese traders' associations played a key role in promoting the new center. For example, Mr. Su Rongwu, former president of the Franco-Chinese Trade Association of Aubervilliers (2013–2018), was among the first buyers.

The Silk Road Paris market was developed by two international private real-estate companies: the St Germain Group and Alves Ribeiro France Invest. The St Germain Group is a family business founded by Carlos de Matos in 1995. It is based in Ferrières-en-Brie in the Île-de-France region, but has, through its founder, Portuguese origins. According to an interview with Mrs. Zheng, she knew Carlos de Matos for several years prior to the project's inception and had shared with him the idea of building a commercial center for importing Chinese goods. This led to their close collaboration in launching the Paris Asia Business Center project, renamed Silk Road Paris in 2015.

Initially, the St Germain Group was the majority shareholder, while AR France Invest held a minority stake. However, the St Germain Group withdrew the project in 2015, leaving AR France Invest to take over as the sole developer when the project was relaunched later that year. AR France Invest is the French subsidiary of the Alves Ribeiro group, a family-owned company founded in Portugal in 1941. The group is a prominent player in international construction and real estate; Silk Road Paris is its first investment in France. In December 2015, AR France Invest renamed the project Silk Road Paris. The CEO of the Alves Ribeiro group attended the relaunch ceremony in 2015 and the inauguration ceremony in 2018. In addition to overseeing construction, AR France Invest is responsible for promoting and managing the wholesale market, as well as providing services to retailers within the center. Currently, the company is preparing for the second phase of the project: a shopping center called Paris Fashion Mart. This new center, located on a 220,000 m² site north of Silk Road Paris, is intended to accommodate traders of Tunisian origin.

Despite the St Germain Group's departure in 2015, the collaborative origins of Silk Road Paris have endured. The partnership continues to involve the French government, which provides land and policy support; Portuguese construction companies, which manage development and construction; and Chinese real estate companies and entrepreneurs' associations, which oversee sales.

The opening of this new Chinese wholesale market underscores the evolving roles of public and private actors in urban development, as well as the rise of power

<footnote n="3">³Mrs. Zheng Xuefen followed a typical path for an immigrant from Wenzhou in France. She arrived in 1983 and initially worked with her parents in the garment and catering business. In the 1990s, she shifted from catering to running a wholesale clothing shop in the 11th arrondissement (Popincourt). Following the protests in Sedaine-Popincourt, she relocated to Aubervilliers in 1999.</footnote>
coalitions that involve the cooptation of entrepreneurial planners (Brenner, 2004; Halbert, 2013). In recent decades, this trend has become increasingly common in global urban development—but it is striking that it now extends to the creation of ethnically diverse business establishments, as demonstrated by Silk Road Paris. This marks a shift from the traditional model, where such spaces were typically established and managed by migrant communities themselves. With Silk Road Paris, the migrant wholesale market has, for the first time, become a “conceived space” in the sense described by Lefebvre (1974).

### 5.3.2 Silk Road Paris as a Branded Space

Unlike earlier Chinese wholesale sites in the Paris area, the name “Silk Road Paris” explicitly references the Chinese government’s official “New Silk Roads” or “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), launched by Xi Jinping in 2013. The use of this official label for a business center serving the Chinese migrant community in Paris represents a departure from the earlier grassroots, migrant-led business spaces. This symbolic naming underscores the project’s global economic ambitions. The economic and diplomatic importance of the initiative was further highlighted by visits to the construction site by ambassadors from seven countries, including Singapore, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Jordan.

Beyond its global ambitions, the narratives on the official website of Silk Road Paris focus on addressing the shortcomings of previous Chinese commercial marketplaces in the Paris area. Emphasis is placed on its connectivity with France's primary international airport, Charles de Gaulle airport, described as being at “the heart of Europe”; with the high-speed train station (TGV Aéroport Charles de Gaulle); with major highways such as the A1, A3, and A104 (linking to the Benelux, England, and Central Europe); with the RER B line (serving the key business station “Parc des expositions”); and with other bus and road networks. The planned opening of the Grand Paris Express network, particularly metro line 17, is expected to further enhance this prime connectivity.

The website also highlights the “native aptitude” of Silk Road Paris for business, exemplified by features such as direct parking access for every shop. This design feature specifically addresses a major limitation of trade spaces in inner Paris and Aubervilliers, where marketplaces were not originally built for wholesale activities, resulting in traffic congestion and urban disruption that negatively affected both residents and businesses.

The urban layout of Silk Road Paris differs from that of earlier Chinese marketplaces in Paris. Profiled as a high-end development, it features open-air galleries within the newly established logistics and commercial zone Aerolians Paris. Each trading counter is equipped with not only private parking directly connected to the shop or showroom, but also a storage area on the first floor, a freight elevator, and an office space. As a formal mega-project, Silk Road Paris offers a coherent architectural vision, ensuring consistency across all storefronts. At the same time, traders
can create larger shops by purchasing two or even three counters, and are free to customize their shop space as they see fit.

Another notable feature emphasized in the official narratives is that each trader owns their counter outright, with no leasing option. This policy is explicitly designed to address—and stands in direct contrast to—the counter-renting system in Aubervilliers. Most of the traders we interviewed highlighted promise of affordable ownership as a deciding factor in relocating their businesses to Tremblay-en-France. They frequently pointed out that rising land prices in inner Paris, such as is Sedaine-Popincourt, have made property ownership unattainable, while rental costs in Aubervilliers have likewise become prohibitively expensive. Owning their premises provides traders, particularly those of migrant origins, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan for long-term business development. Marketing materials available online present this ownership model as both a hallmark of quality and a premium business opportunity. Although the wholesale centers in Aubervilliers are never explicitly named, the marketing discourse of Silk Road Paris clearly positions itself as an alternative to Aubervilliers. Indeed, every feature promoted on the website addresses a specific issue associated with daily operations in Aubervilliers.

The website places particular emphasis on security, highlighting a privately managed system of 200 surveillance cameras operating 24/7. This directly addresses the persistent insecurity in Aubervilliers, another concern frequently raised in local narratives. The project site is self-contained and separate from its surrounding area, which facilitates surveillance and management. During our visits, shopkeepers and management representatives repeatedly approached us to inquire about the purpose of our visit, underscoring the focus on security and controlled access.

The marketing narratives surrounding Silk Road Paris portray this Chinese marketplace as a global, high-end business hub situated in a well-connected commercial area. This marks a significant shift in the perception of Chinese-run marketplaces. Previously, such marketplaces were located in ill-regarded urban interstices and faced suspicion from local residents and authorities. Indeed, these spaces were occasionally stigmatized as “organized mafia-type systems,” as was the case in Sedaine-Popincourt (Chuang, 2013). In contrast, Silk Road Paris represents a reimagining of these marketplaces, elevating their status to that of prestigious showrooms that foster the globalization of the Paris region.

### 5.3.3 Silk Road Paris as a Lived Space: An Ambivalent Reality

Despite its ambitions, Silk Road Paris has yet to achieve its objectives. Only half of the counters have been sold, and many of these remain vacant or have been converted into storage spaces. Our repeated site visits throughout 2021 and 2022 consistently revealed low levels of activity, regardless of the day or time. Shops were often closed, displaying only a telephone number for contacting the shopkeeper. Most notably, very few visitors or potential clients were present. Interviews with stakeholders confirmed our observations.
These findings can be attributed to three key factors. First, in the public imagina-
tion, Chinese wholesale in the Paris region is still strongly associated with
Aubervilliers, where clients have access to the full range of suppliers they are accus-
tomed to working with. Relocating to Tremblay-en-France to follow a specific sup-
plier is perceived as both risky and time-consuming: the Aerolians economic zone
remains incomplete and customers are accustomed to the efficiency of the estab-
lished Aubervilliers trade ecosystem. Moreover, the significant distance between
the two locations further discourages customers from visiting or conducting busi-
ness at both sites. According to the managers of Silk Road Paris and the traders we
interviewed, rebuilding an integrated trade ecosystem in a new location will
take time.

Second, Silk Road Paris opened in late 2018, just over a year before the COVID-19 crisis. This timing partly explains its “false start.” Beyond the disruption to economic activity caused by the lockdowns, the crisis accelerated the rapid growth of e-commerce, rendering physical showrooms increasingly outdated and underscoring the crucial importance of building trust in business relationships (Guiheux, 2022).

Third, the entire economic sector has undergone significant transformation with the rise of direct sales in China, bypassing local intermediaries in Chinese emporiums. Many traders pointed out this deeper shift within the clothing import-export industry. Chinese digital companies, in particular, have emerged as disruptive forces in the ready-to-wear market. By leveraging technological advancements and artificial intelligence, producers now have direct access to a global consumer base. Instead of physical stores, products are marketed online, produced locally on demand using sophisticated algorithms, and shipped directly to consumers worldwide. This transition from physical to digital marketplaces poses a challenge to the viability of wholesale markets distributing Chinese goods in Europe and all over the world.

In this evolving context, the Silk Road Paris business model risks appearing out-
dated before even becoming fully operational. Nonetheless, it remains too early to
draw definitive conclusions about the economic success of this new type of market-
place in the Paris region.

## 5.4 When Migrant Businesses Fuel Urban Entrepreneurialism: Conclusion and Theoretical Implications

This place-based analysis of the recently opened Silk Road Paris Chinese market-
place in Tremblay-en-France sheds light on the evolving role of Chinese migrant
entrepreneurs in shaping urban development within the French context. Marketplaces
are deeply rooted in their local economic and political contexts while remaining
intricately connected to global networks. This multiscalar perspective mirrors the
transnational nature of migrant entrepreneurs themselves.
Historically, Chinese wholesale markets have been largely overlooked by local residents and the French authorities, existing in the hidden corners of the city. Today, however, they have been transformed into prominent showcases that bolster Paris's image as a global city. This shift, not only in location but also in visibility and perception; is shaped by multiple factors across various scales. At the city level, it reflects the increasing recognition of Chinese entrepreneurs as valuable assets by local authorities. Our case study of Silk Road Paris highlights the pivotal role played by Chinese traders' associations in this transformation.

With successive generations of Chinese migrants establishing businesses in Paris, contemporary entrepreneurs possess a deep understanding of national systems and have forged strong professional networks with local authorities and investors. As a result, they now actively participate in reshaping the urban governance landscape. This transformation is facilitated by the global rise and expansion of Chinese wholesale markets, in tandem with China's integration into the global economy. Chinese migrant marketplaces can thus be viewed as an integral part of the “urban spectre of global China” (Shin et al., 2022: 1465). As described by the mayor of Tremblay-en-France, they symbolize China's economic vitality and global reach; therefore, studying such marketplaces in France also reveals how China's global influence is reshaping urban spaces in profound ways.

Moreover, our case study raises critical questions about the role of the Chinese migrant community in the entrepreneurialization of urban spaces. Ceccagno (2017: 87) describes Chinese migrants involved in wholesale activities in Prato, Italy, as “agents of neoliberal restructuring.” In this light, examining the recent opening of Silk Road Paris allows us to revisit four key dimensions of entrepreneurial urbanism (Harvey, 1989).

First, the case highlights the fragmentation of urban governance through the proliferation of project-based urbanism. Silk Road Paris is a distinct, self-contained space, detached from residential areas and historic city centers. Second, it reflects the increasing prevalence of public-private development arrangements and privately owned public spaces in global metropolises, with the emergence of “growth coalitions” (Molotch, 1976; Logan & Molotch, 1987; Zhang et al., 2022) that promote the Chinese business model while coopting Chinese entrepreneurial actors.

Third, communication and marketing play a central role in shaping a positive narrative around Chinese business in France. Despite its mixed economic success thus far, Silk Road Paris serves as a symbol of Tremblay-en-France's international business ambitions. As mentioned above, during its construction, ambassadors from seven countries—including Singapore, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Jordan—were given tours, illustrating the project's economic and diplomatic aspirations.

Lastly, the depoliticization of urban “production” (Lefebvre, 1974) is a defining characteristic of this entrepreneurial approach. Addressing ethnic inclusion through a purely economic lens fosters consensus while sidestepping broader debates and potential political conflicts, as seen in Sedaine-Popincourt. This new model of urban production and governance gives rise to an apolitical—even “post-political” (Wilson & Swyngedouw, 2015)—entrepreneurial city, where social and economic challenges are addressed through technical (“smart”) solutions.
In short, while Silk Road Paris accommodates the economic needs of the Chinese community in France, it does so within the confines of the project. Chinese businesses are primarily positioned as contributors to government-led land development policies rather than as independent agents actively shaping urban space. This prevents Silk Road Paris from serving as a site of protest or political advocacy for Chinese migrants. Instead, it reflects a carefully managed, apolitical urban project that addresses the functional needs of the Chinese community without providing them with political representation.

**Acknowledgments** This work benefited from its integration in the Urban DiverCities program (2021–2022), funded by the Global Research Institute of Paris. I would like to thank master’s student M. Wuzhi Li from University Paris Cité for his contribution to the data collection.

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# Chapter 6
## A Refuge for Whom? Orders of Legitimacy, Contradictions and Paradoxes of a Self-Labeled ‘welcoming city’

Camille Schmoll and Catherine Lejeune

### 6.1 Introduction

This chapter explores the place and role of the city of Paris in contrasting dynamics of solidarity and hostility at the urban level. With more than 12 million inhabitants, the Paris metropolitan region is the largest and by far the most populated French urban area representing one sixth of the total population of the country. The city is home to a large part of the foreign-born population (38%). As a major European economic power, France has long been a country of immigration, and the French capital has steadily concentrated an important share of the overall immigrant population. Combined with the fact that the Paris region has one of the highest GDP in the European union making it a major global hub across several fields, these factors have made the inner and outer city a strategic pole of attraction for migrants and refugees (see Mayors Dialogue on Growth and Solidarity, 2020).

Our intent here is to critically evaluate the place that can be assigned to Paris, wondering whether it can be considered a welcoming city or not. Recent literature in Europe and North America has extensively discussed the role of municipalities in a new governance of asylum and solidarity through the “local turn” (Zapata-Barrero et al., 2017; Dimitriadis et al., 2021; Bazurli et al., 2022). Drawing from most of the literature on the local turn, we wish to investigate into the ways the municipality acts, sometimes in alignment, sometimes in opposition with both institutional and non-institutional actors such as, for instance, the local administration in charge of governmental functions, NGOs, migrant and refugee networks and civil society.

<footnote>C. Schmoll (✉)
EHESS, Paris, France
e-mail: camille.schmoll@ehess.fr</footnote>

<footnote>C. Lejeune
Université Paris Cité, Paris, France</footnote>
In this chapter, we examine the intricate relationship between welcoming policies and the role of refugees and migrants as city-makers. To elucidate their differing impacts on urban spaces, we distinguish between the concepts of “city users” and “city makers”. The term “city-users” introduced by Guido Martinotti in the early 1990s encompasses a diverse population that consumes the city without necessarily residing or working in it (Martinotti, 1996). This category includes tourists, second-home owners, non-resident students, nomadic professionals and migrants. City-users interact with the urban environment in a transitory manner, often engaging with city services and amenities without contributing to its structural or socio-economic transformation in the long run. In contrast, and following the editors’ introduction, we propose the concept of “city-makers” to describe individuals or groups who establish a more dynamic and transformative relationship with the city in the long term. City-makers actively engage in shaping the urban landscape, influencing its socio-economic fabric through their presence and activities. This distinction underscores the capacity of certain groups of migrants to effectuate significant changes within the city, thereby altering its socio-economic dynamics and contributing to its development. Our analysis reveals that while some groups may be deemed legitimate city-users, they do not necessarily qualify as city-makers. City-users, by definition, only pass through the city, consuming its resources without inducing substantial change. Conversely, even when lacking formal public legitimacy, other migrants and refugees often engage more profoundly in the transformation of urban spaces.

Our approach leads us to raise the following question: to what extent may migrants and refugees living in Paris be viewed as city makers? To address this question, we suggest for consideration of three significant paradoxes and contradictions.

* The first paradox pertains to the gap between the municipality's rhetoric and the reality of local practices in both national and European contexts predominantly characterized by hostile policies towards irregular migration. Despite an official and symbolic discourse promoting support and integration, the implementation of accommodating policies can be hindered by institutional obstacles, budgetary constraints and political pressures in an overall inhospitable context, thus delineating a disjunction between stated intentions and tangible outcomes.

* The second paradox pertains to the disparity between the institutional reception granted to recently arrived Ukrainian forced migrants since 2022 and that previously accorded to other migrant groups. This discrepancy reveals the influence of the geopolitical landscape on local refugee-oriented policies, highlighting how global events shape local responses and underscoring the selective nature of refugee reception based on geographical origin. In France, as in many European countries, Ukrainian refugees have accessed sustainable assistance for secure living conditions, and the considerable outpouring of protective measures has notably surpassed that extended to other refugee cohorts. Without a doubt, the widespread and sustained support for Ukraine from most European states, coupled with the perception of shared values between Ukrainians and Europeans, explains this disparate treatment.
* The third paradox revolves around the discrepancy between the limited initiatives undertaken by the Paris municipality and the lived experiences of migrants and refugees within the urban environment. Despite institutional challenges and restrictive policies at the national level, combined with a lack of support from local authorities, many migrants and refugees decide to settle and live in Paris where they find opportunities in terms of employment as well as support from non-governmental organizations, volunteer associations and migrant networks. Alternative solidarities offer a counterweight to the institutional hostility they may encounter, sometimes proving unexpected effectiveness. Migrants and refugees actively contribute to the transformation of the city, thus acting as mere city makers.

The findings presented in this chapter stem from an on-going research endeavor grounded on observations and interviews conducted with migrants, refugees and institutional and non-institutional actors at the primary reception facilities in Paris, spanning from 2015 onwards.

Following the massive arrivals of exiles from Syria, Afghanistan, Tunisia and Sudan in 2015 and 2016, we started to inquire into the development of emergency schemes by the French government. Given the lack of places in regular reception centers, we were curious to examine the responses provided at both local and national levels to address the urgent need for assistance exiles found themselves in.

In the early months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we decided to investigate into the way emergency reception was organized in the city of Paris with the primary intent to understand how the reception system actually worked on the ground. The setting-up of a dedicated facility for displaced Ukrainians at *Porte de Versailles* in Paris made our research work possible. With the assistance of *France Terre d'Asile* (the NGO offering social and legal support to asylum seekers and refugees in France and serving as an approved operator regarding the management of asylum facilities), we were able to access the site between March and June 2022, witness the organization of reception and conduct preliminary interviews with Ukrainian families and individuals during the surge of arrivals.

## 6.2 Between Local Branding and National Policies: The Difficulties of a Welcoming Posture

### 6.2.1 An Unwelcoming Event in a Self-Labelled Welcoming City

Let us first examine the disparity between the municipality's official rhetoric of hospitality and the actual local practices, beginning with a brief vignette: on the evening of November 23rd, 2020, the police used tear gas and containment grenades to evacuate people who had set up their tents in the emblematic square of *Place de la République* in Paris. After being abruptly displaced from a tent city in suburban
Aubervilliers, they had sought refuge in this Parisian square with a view to raising awareness on the criminalization of migration and homelessness in the city. That evening, one could witness the brutal dispersal by the police of a collective of nearly 500 Afghan exiles, whose visible presence in this major and newly redesigned public space, was deemed particularly undesirable and disturbing.

The evacuation of the square brought two rationales into conflict: on the one side, the collectives that orchestrated and supported the occupation with, at the forefront, such NGOs as “Utopia 56” and “Solidarité Wilson” for whom humanitarian dignity and the right to housing justify protest movement; on the other side, the French government preparing to vote on a law for global security in parliament, asserting that a public square cannot be used as a space for actions as radical as occupations.

Since 2015 evacuations of makeshift camps in the Paris region - often euphemistically called “sheltering” - have occurred almost daily (Piva, 2021). Such practices are embedded in a long colonial and postcolonial history of precarious and unsanitary housing, and in the moral concerns and processes of forced displacement that accompany them (see Delon, 2019).

But occupying *Place de la République* revealed a special aspect: by their presence in the heart of Paris, in a square long dedicated to the circulation and leisure of Parisians, the migrants’ tents challenged ordinary citizens to legitimately access - and use - the city center.

The forced removal of migrants and refugees occurred in a context of recurring occupations of symbolic places whose visibility and centrality leverage the sense of social injustice. It activated a mechanism that goes against the ordinary geographies of residents from the domestic space, ‘home’, represented by the Quechua tent planted in the middle of public spaces, to the hypercenter of a capital city where real estate prices continue to rise. From homeless individuals who have used tents as a tool of action since the 2000s to irregular migrants and the collectives of exiles who have been expelled from Parisian and Calais camps since 2015 occupations have aimed to make visible what is hidden from the view: an injustice often concentrated in the margins and outskirts of the city.

On that evening, at *Place de la République*, alongside the collectives involved in the protest, numerous public and political figures spoke out to question the authorities on the brutality inflicted upon the occupiers: “we do not respond to misery with a baton,” reacted Delphine Rouilleault, CEO of *France Terre d’Asile*. “The only response from the French authorities is force,” pointed out Corinne Torre, head of *Médecins sans Frontières* in France. “And force, in times of health crisis, is not acceptable.”

The day after the eviction took place, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo fiercely criticized the operation which she described in a press conference of the *Association for the Mayors of France* as “deeply shocking”. In a letter to the Interior Minister, she expressed her strong concern: “For months we have been warning the authorities about the lack of appropriate measures to provide migrants and refugees
accommodation. We have suggested solutions to this pressing need for shelter but the State has not responded to our call. Dismantling makeshift camps is no solution. It only generates violence: violence against vulnerable individuals and tensions with elected officials from all sides who stand by associations and refugees.”

The mayor’s statement brings to light the following realities: first, local authorities have limited capacity to make decisions in a migration emergency context, even when the incidents occur in central Paris; second, the city hall - composed of left-leaning elected officials since the early 2000s - wants to voice its clear opposition to the national government’s migration policy.

Clearly, two conflicting perspectives on urban legitimacy are at stake here: one, aligned with activists and the Paris mayor, views migrants as legitimate urban inhabitants. Conversely, the opposing viewpoint, backed by the government, asserts that migrants have no entitlement to the city.

In the months following the *Place de la République* event, similar actions of occupation backed by NGOs and civil society were staged in highly symbolic Parisian spaces (including the City Hall court, *Place du Palais Royal* and the French Council of State esplanade) while the pace of evictions persisted, constituting a routine of Parisian life. Overtime, the clearing of migrant makeshift camps in Paris has taken the form of a strange ballet featuring daily police interventions.

It is necessary at this point to provide some background information that may explain political tensions. As mentioned above, the incident occurred in a context of growingly repressive migration policy in France. In the last decades, several European states have adopted similar restrictive policies towards migrants and refugees, and France is no exception.<fnref n="1" /> Consequently, the situations of migrants and refugees have become more precarious and unstable, particularly amidst a housing crisis. Homelessness and makeshift camps have proliferated, with French authorities primarily responding by attempting to expand the number of housing facilities designated for asylum seekers. However, these facilities only cater to a portion of the migrant and refugee population in need of accommodation, that is, asylum seekers, and more particularly those considered the most vulnerable. Spread across the country rather than concentrated in urban areas like Paris, the objective has been to redistribute them nationwide through relocation initiatives. Yet, these efforts have faced criticism from researchers and activists as they merely displace vulnerable individuals without effectively addressing their needs. By relocating individuals far from city centers, thereby complicating their access to vital resources such as employment opportunities for instance, operations of dispersal only create new barriers (Berthomière et al., 2020; Slama, 2020).

<footnote n="1">¹Not to mention, the highly-disputed immigration law recently passed in early 2024, which reflects this trend. It is even seen by advocacy and human rights groups as “the most regressive reform of the past 40 years”. By imposing additional restrictions and limiting access to welfare, the law aims to discourage migration, but ultimately exacerbates the daily challenges faced by migrants.</footnote>
### 6.2.2 The Ambivalent Position of Paris

In recent decades, cities have emerged as significant entities in the governance of international migration and in the management of migration emergencies on the ground (Garcia Agustin & Bak Jorgensen, 2019). Various terms such as “solidarity cities”, “cities of refuge” and “sanctuary cities,” as well as “rebel” “fearless” or “resilient” have surfaced to refer to the increasing role of cities in addressing the challenge of hospitality in a context of migration crisis and lack of solidarity. These labels reflect diverse situations and policies, each subject to varying interpretations, illustrating distinct stakes and positions. Such terminology encapsulates institutional, political, scholarly, and intellectual changes, sometimes intersecting and at other times diverging Léa Réville’s.

In France, a stark dichotomy exists in approaches adopted by cities towards refugees and migrants. Some municipalities have openly voiced their opposition by developing hostile practices. The case of Calais in Northern France is a good example of such a defiant attitude: Mayor Natacha Bouchard has consistently opposed the use (or construction) of emergency facilities in her municipality and has actively campaigned against the presence of migrants and refugees. In contrast, many French cities have implemented friendly policies thus acting as cities of refuge. In 2018, the National Association ANVITA, a coalition of welcoming cities and regions, was formed to unify existing local initiatives and advocate “for a policy of unconditional hospitality”.<fnref n="2" /> The municipality of Paris joined the association in 2019 and has held the position of being a “welcoming city” since then.

Even before Anvita was created, Paris took part in several international events aimed at promoting migrant/refugee-friendly policies. For instance, in September 2015 Anne Hidalgo, Paris mayor since 2014, co-signed the now famous statement drafted by Barcelona mayor Ada Colau along with mayors from other European cities such as Spyros Galinos (Mytilene) and Giusi Nicolini (Lampedusa). Entitled “We, the cities of Europe” the call has widely circulated since and has been published in several European newspapers. It advocates the urge of cities to become places of refuge for migrants arriving in Europe via the central Mediterranean route (Hombert, 2023).

> We, the cities of Europe, are ready to become places of refuge. We want to welcome these refugees. States grant asylum status, but cities provide shelter. Border towns, such as Lampedusa, or the islands of Kos and Lesbos, are the first to receive the flow of people seeking asylum, and European municipalities will have to take these people in and ensure they can start a new life, safe from the dangers from which they have escaped. We have the space, services and, most importantly, the support of our citizens to do so. Our municipal services are already working on refugee reception plans to ensure food, a roof, and dignity for anyone fleeing war and hunger. The only thing missing is state support.<fnref n="3" />

<footnote n="2">²https://www.anvita.fr/en/who-are-we/notre-charte2/#:~:text=The%20association%20promotes%20hospitality%20as,social%20cohesion%20and%20individual%20emancipation.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Colau, Ada/Hidalgo, Anne/Galinos, Spyros (2015): we, cities of Europe Ada Colau-Blog, 17/9/2015, available at https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/alcaldessa/en/blog/we-cities-Europe</footnote>
The Paris city hall has launched symbolic initiatives such as the organization of so-
called “republican sponsorships”. Although these ceremonies hold no legal value,
they send a symbolic message. Like other French municipalities who have adopted
this practice, Paris aims to contribute to the building of public opinion in favor of
restoring the rights of exiled individuals to citizenship through sponsorship, paving
the way for an alternative hospitality policy.<fnref n="4" /> In addition, the city has implemented
some specific programs supporting, for example, artists in exile.

Paris has also made facilities and properties available to the *Préfecture* and asso-
ciations in charge of emergency housing or day reception of exiles. As an example
of how the city responded to the massive arrival of migrants and refugees in 2016,
two emergency shelters were opened at *Porte de la Chapelle* in northern Paris (the
so-called bubble; see Vitale and Cremaschi in this book) and in Ivry-sur-Seine, a
southern Parisian suburb. One center was soon closed but another facility, the “halte
humanitaire”, opened in downtown Paris to guarantee access to basic welfare and
rights to asylum seekers (see Réville, n.d., in this book). However, even though it
has occasionally advocated for a more generous support of vulnerable populations,
Paris has not been at the forefront of supportive actions towards them. The positions
of Mayor Hidalgo are received with mixed feelings by many local actors who have
strongly disapproved of her lack of commitment to effectively implement emer-
gency reception policies for refugees on the streets. Overall, her absence of dialogue
with activists and associative actors has been pointed out, so has her inability to
establish alternative forms of local citizenship that could truly protect and empower
individuals.

Such criticisms have been supported by recent research: in a recent comparative
study of urban solidarity in Europe, Gülce Özdemir shows how Paris, unlike other
European global cities such as Vienna, Milan or Barcelona, has failed to create a
supportive environment for vulnerable individuals since 2015 (Özdemir, 2022).
Özdemir argues that solidarity in the city has stemmed not from the mayor's office
but from the commitment of civil society actors, local activists and NGOs. Some
studies have even documented the active contribution of the City Hall to strategic
urban planning policies aimed at discouraging people from settling in the city
(Gardesse et al., 2022).

In sum, while actively branding itself as a “welcoming” or a “refuge city” (see
also Réville, n.d., in this book), Paris is highly criticized by activists and scholars
and is considered as having done very little to promote a different model of inclu-
sion. To be fair, it should be acknowledged that the French governance system does
not grant municipalities significant autonomy in migration and asylum policies.
France is a very centralized state and, when it comes to migration, the action of the
local Préfecture supersedes that of the mayor. Officially, the only prerogative of
Paris is the protection and support of unaccompanied minors; consequently, it is the
responsibility of the city to provide them with shelter. However, in other fields such
as the reception of populations excluded from asylum and assistance in accessing

<footnote n="4">⁴https://cdn.paris.fr/paris/2019/07/24/856fa3619b64bcab0e7cc7378dea032a.pdf</footnote>
rights, we argue that the city’s policy could have been more ambitious and, more importantly, less ambivalent.

Of course, implementing accommodating local policies can be hindered by insti-
tutional obstacles and budgetary constraints. As an example, the preparation of the
2024 Olympic Games in Paris became an obstacle to the conception (and manage-
ment) of truly welcoming policies. The increasing need to make the city “safer” and
to get rid of its most undesirable inhabitants became prominent in the months pre-
ceding the games. Policies were designed to forcibly remove such residents to far
away camps and relocate the homeless in remote places or in neighboring cities
such as Orléans,<fnref n="5" /> while the city of Paris simultaneously boasted about the presence
of a team of refugee athletes for the Olympics.<fnref n="6" /> City branding, it seems, is not lack-
ing in contradictions...

6.3 When Solidarity Works: The Example
of Welcoming Ukrainians

In the second part of our chapter, we shift our focus to the contrast between the reception granted to recently arrived Ukrainian populations and that reserved for other migrants and refugee groups. Let us start this development with another vignette, this one describing a major event in Paris following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

6.3.1 Reception in the Turmoil of the Ukrainian Crisis, and the Role of Local Authorities

In late February 2022, Ukrainians had to flee their homes in an emergency, leaving behind the men who would engage in fighting against the enemy and the elderly who could not come along. Mostly women embarked on the journey with their children, their pets and sometimes with their parents. International students and foreign-born residents (spouses of Ukrainian nationals) had to leave too. Within days of Russia's invasion, European states decided to activate the - hitherto unused - Temporary Protection Directive that grants Ukrainian nationals the right to live and work in the EU for up to 3 years without having to claim for asylum.

<footnote n="5">⁵ https://www.liberation.fr/politique/jo-de-paris-le-maire-dorleans-denonce-le-deplacement-dans-sa-ville-de-migrants-exclus-de-paris-20240326_EVD7U4UWVJESHPL5IAT7YMG5CQ/</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Actually, the establishment of a team of refugees supported by both UNHCR and the International Olympic Committee is not a new development, given that a similar team participated in the Tokyo and Rio Games. https://olympics.com/cio/equipe-olympique-des-refugies-du-cio-paris-2024</footnote>
As in many other EU states, the responsiveness of the French authorities was admittedly exceptional and unprecedented. In France, the rights granted by the status included residence permits, medical assistance, access to education and housing, employment aid and some social benefits. Each region was to provide provisional shelter combined with adapted social support. Offering displaced Ukrainians open sanctuary caused no friction, no controversy. It should be noted that, in the context of upcoming presidential election in France, all institutional actors had communicated somehow on the issue: some staging solidarity to their profit, others jumping aboard the train of hospitality to take the credit of being at the forefront of action.

Hosting Ukrainian exiles in France remains the responsibility of the government via local *Préfectures* but other actors took part such as associations, municipalities and NGOs, notably *France Terre d'Asile* and *La Croix Rouge*. A temporary housing scheme was implemented in March 2022 giving shelter to approximately 100,000 persons.

In Paris, the reception of refugees was very well organized. Most of those who ended up in France arrived by train. In the Paris railway station of *Gare de l'Est*, they were dispatched by *La Croix Rouge* whose expertise and experience were instrumental and comforting, especially for those who had no relatives or contact persons in France. Refugees were transported by coach to a *Porte de Versailles* center that was repurposed as a large processing facility where institutions, associations, support groups and volunteers could provide the necessary assistance. Those who wished to apply for a provisional residence permit were assisted by the *Préfecture* which had opened an office in that same facility. Paris was not the only institutional actor in charge, but it managed to increase its reception capacity, making temporary shelter available in the city by turning sports centers into dormitories. Also, at the *Porte de Versailles* facility, a playground for children was staged and municipal agents were sent to provide for their needs in terms of welfare and protection (Fig. 6.1).

Following the principle described above of distributing exiled populations across the national territory, Ukrainian refugees were rapidly dispersed and relocated. Many French city mayors were prompt in making accommodation available for them by turning holiday resorts, boarding schools and vacant units into temporary housing. Clearly, the process of relocation was much smoother than with previous migratory inflows, though the overall number of refugees reaching Paris was higher than in 2015 or 2016. From local authorities, public institutions to NGOs and private organizations, all entities actively worked together to ensure an effective and tailored response to the needs of displaced individuals and families.

However, while the collective and enthusiastic goodwill proved helpful for most refugees, some encountered obstacles. As an example, foreign students residing in Ukraine were not included in the Temporary Protection scheme. Associations and civil society actors voiced their concern about the exclusion of non-nationals in the directive (Fig. 6.2).
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.1** Some of the support services provided by the municipality in Porte de Versailles reception facility</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.2** Children drawings in the Paris reception centre</figcaption></figure>
### 6.3.2 Ukrainians as Legitimate City Users

For us, researchers specializing in the reception of migrants and asylum seekers, the welcoming of Ukrainians has functioned as a quasi-natural experiment providing insight into what an immediate and adequate implementation of asylum and reception policies could be like in a hospitable and favorable context. Some scholars and activists have contended that the positive reception and institutional legitimacy afforded to Ukrainian migrants can be attributed to factors such as race, gender, and religion. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully explore the underlying reasons for such positioning, it is undeniable that the above-mentioned factors - along with broader geopolitical reasons - have played a significant role in shaping the favorable institutional responses toward Ukrainians.

In terms of migration management, the joint response by local and national actors also illustrates the potential application of a perfect model of multi-level governance, articulating both horizontal and vertical structures and dynamics, functioning quite well when all the structures work in a good spirit of cooperation with a common goal (Özdemir, 2022). It represents a form of perfect territorial balancing of reception across different regions, as the Ministry of the Interior ensures an even distribution among territories, starting from the capital city. The reception of displaced Ukrainians serves as a notable example of how, from the local to the European level and in coordination with private and associative actors, various institutions and local stakeholders have facilitated the functioning of a solidarity network in response to the emergency. When all actors act in concert, the system tends to operate effectively, unlike situations discussed previously which notably strained the relationship between the French government and the Paris municipality.

Two conclusions can be drawn from the way the Ukrainian refugee crisis was handled in Paris. Compared to the way institutional actors have responded to migration emergency since 2015–2016, we can only be impressed by the near perfect management of the emergency scheme put in place for Ukrainians. The most striking elements in the response lie with the fact that not one single refugee went without shelter in the weeks and months following their arrival in Paris, and no camps were formed in the streets of the city. The immediate and collective protection provided by local and national authorities to Ukrainian exiles has made them undisputed city users who can access resources and services and seize opportunities they would not have had otherwise. The difference between Ukrainians and other migrants and refugees thus largely lies in the legitimacy that policies have decided to grant them in accessing urban and social services. Yet we argue that the city cannot take the whole credit for it: the city of Paris coordinated its actions with other actors without demonstrating a leadership role in managing emergency reception. In
<figure><img src="image_20.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.3** At the entrance of the Porte de Versailles facility, the presence of highly visible signposts exemplifies the misleading message that the city of Paris alone manages support and reception</figcaption></figure>

fact, the same ambivalences and inadequacies between implementation and branding (as those we evidenced in the case of other refugees) can be observed. Through public displays and online platforms, the city hall strongly communicated on the issue of refugee reception and its active role in it, sometimes bordering on exaggeration (Fig. 6.3).

Another paradox emerges from our investigation. A gap exists between the enthusiasm expressed in France toward Ukrainian exiles since the beginning of the war, and the fact that most of them have not formed a wish to settle in France. Today, numerous Ukrainians who passed through Paris are to be found in German, Spanish and Italian cities. Some have even returned to Ukraine. Others have settled temporarily in France but continue to express a strong determination to go back. Sometimes they manage to do so, for a short period of time and when the security situation allows it. For all these reasons, the number of Ukrainians in France has constantly decreased, from 110,000 in 2022 to 68,000 in 2024. The application of the temporary protection directive being set until March 4, 2026, their condition remains unpredictable beyond that date. As the war continues, displaced Ukrainians are faced with the challenges of an uncertain status, strained resources coupled with a difficult worldwide economic situation.
## 6.4 Illegitimate City Users, Yet City Makers

Let us now shift our focus to the third contradiction we have identified in the current situation of migrants and refugees in Paris. While most of the Ukrainians who were welcomed in the French capital have expressed no intention to settle in the city or even in France, Paris and its metropolitan region remains an important destination for several other vulnerable populations escaping poverty or persecution and seeking economic opportunities. The majority of these migrants and refugees are not offered protection or assistance by the French government, especially when they fall outside categories of vulnerability and protection such as the asylum system. Yet, they live, work and consume in the city. In Paris, like in many global cities, a significant portion of irregular migrants contribute to the development of the urban economy. They frequently fulfill short-term and precarious jobs, particularly within the gig economy, thus helping to meet the demand for labor in various sectors. In other words, though they are not legitimate city users, they are in many respects city makers who contribute to everyday life and urban change in Paris.

### 6.4.1 The Responsiveness of Association and Civil Society Actors

Paris is home to a large population of irregular migrants. Because they are not allowed to apply for asylum or their application has been rejected, many remain in limbo (Fig. 6.4). National and local authorities devalue and delegitimize these individuals whom they do not consider vulnerable. Those who suffer most are rejected asylum seekers and migrant adult youths who are deemed too old to be placed in the protective category of unaccompanied minors. Yet, in some cases, they may have lived in the Paris region for several years sleeping in the street, in makeshift camps or in temporary accommodation. Their daily lives are most often met with obstacles - they are regularly forced out of their tents by police raids - but they manage somehow. Occasionally, some of them find more permanent, though shared or precarious, accommodation.

Despite institutional oppositions, local initiatives by non-governmental organizations and volunteer associations emerge to provide for their everyday needs. Such alternative solidarity initiatives act as a counterweight to the hostility migrants may encounter at the institutional level, sometimes proving unexpected effectiveness.

First, the role of associations and collectives is instrumental in providing refugees emergency reception. In Paris, many solidarity collectives provide night and day assistance, working as mobile relief teams (*maraudes*) and reaching out for those who live in tents and sleep on the street. Food and clothes are distributed and support with administrative processes and paperwork is provided. NGOs are at the forefront of such supportive actions as the temporary protection granted to unaccompanied minors by MSF (*Doctors without borders*). Local engagement is also
<figure><img src="image_21.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.4** “Ordinary” homeless individuals set up their Quechua tents outside the Porte de Versailles facility exclusively reserved for Ukrainian people</figcaption></figure>

determinant in hosting vulnerable migrants. A shelter system supported by private individuals has emerged across the country (further underscoring the lack of commitment from the French state). Many mobilized citizens regularly open their homes to host migrants and refugees for a couple of nights, weeks and sometimes longer stays (Gardesse et al., 2022).

These collectives most often do not benefit from institutional support. Such models of solidarity stem from civil society actors and function autonomously. Sometimes they even organize actions in opposition to municipalities (example here: https://18dumois.info/jardins-d-eole-le-reve-se-referme.html) thus exemplifying what Garcia Agustin and Jorgensen have named ‘autonomous’ and ‘civic’ solidarity, that is a form of solidarity that acts despite the lack of support from the State (Garcia Agustin & Bak Jorgensen, 2019).

### 6.4.2 Ethnic and Transnational Solidarity Networks

The other main provider of solidarity in Paris and its region is the migrant and refugee population itself. By tradition, France is a country in which only the relationship between the state and individuals is valued compared to that between immigrant
groups. Yet, the existing relations between migrants themselves play a central role in the reception of newly arrived populations. In recent years, the basic needs of vulnerable individuals and families were mostly met by «long-term» migrants, such as co-ethnics or family members, whose commitment and capacity to navigate the system have made it possible for the recently arrived to survive in the city (Fogel, 2019).

While it has increased France's population for many generations, immigration has come from a much more diverse set of origins over the last 25 or 30 years. In Paris, numerous communities have settled, and the diversification of origins in the French capital has intensified in the last two centuries. Alongside the previous waves of migration that populated the city, more recent arrivals from Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria have joined in. Paris has become increasingly diverse and multiethnic, particularly in its northeastern part which includes the most deprived and working-class neighborhoods (albeit undergoing gentrification, thus somewhat showcasing these transformations). Specific and ethnic centralities have formed in the northern Paris neighborhoods of *Château d'Eau, Château Rouge, la Goutte d'Or, Barbès, and Porte de la Chapelle*. These areas serve as both consumption spaces, through the presence of numerous ethnic shops, and social hubs for African, Asian, and Middle Eastern migrants and refugees. They also provide employment opportunities within community economies (such as hairdressers, or bakers). Additionally, they are located close to the various makeshift camps described earlier in northeastern Paris, serving as places of congregation and urban landmarks for many precarious foreigners in Paris.

While the role of diasporic, transnational, and ethnic networks in the reception and integration of numerous migrants in large cities is documented by research (Silhouette-Dercourt, 2014), it is still not widely accepted by political actors, since public policies in France do not acknowledge the presence of individuals possessing a relatively autonomous capacity for action and adaptation to the city.

As a conclusion, it can be argued that irregular migrants are not considered as legitimate city users, even less city makers. Yet, despite their irregular status, they work and consume and, sometimes, even manage to raise a family. As such, they are city makers. They admittedly run most of the services inhabitants use and rely on daily. Hence, they are essential workers but they only exist in the shadows. While their workforce is instrumental, they are invisible in the official city. The city makers we describe here are largely invisible to those who see migrants and refugees only as recipients of public aid.

## 6.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have shown that the question of whether Paris is - or is not - a welcoming city cannot be conclusively answered due to the three paradoxes and contradictions above-discussed. Neither can it be reduced to the single position of the municipality which is one among the many actors at play in providing welcome.
The complex and nuanced reality of migrant reception in the city reflects existing tensions between official discourses, national and European policies, and local and transnational dynamics of solidarity; as well as the different actors involved in welcoming and local incorporation. Our intent here has been to offer an in-depth analysis of these issues and stakes to highlight Paris's ambivalent position in the face of contemporary migrations. This scenario uncovers the complexity of managing migration flows in times of crises, emphasizing how significant the collaboration between the different actors is.

Furthermore, we have attempted to demonstrate that public actors such as the Paris municipality, by welcoming certain new residents and rejecting or neglecting others, contribute to establishing distinct orders of legitimacy in accessing the city. These orders of legitimacy have nothing to do with the relationship that migrants and refugees may forge with the city in their everyday life. Consequently, even the most undesirable migrants can be genuine city makers through the way they transform and inhabit the city. Their contributions can lead to the revitalization of neighborhoods, the establishment of new businesses, and the enrichment of the city's cultural landscape.

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<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>
Part II

The Migrant as City Maker
<figure><img src="image_23.png" /></figure>

Rochelle Yun Ge and Kong Chong Ho

**7.1 Introduction: International Students as City Makers**

The central argument we are making in this chapter is that students as migrants are also contributors to the cities where they are hosted. As a complementary concept to place-making, the term “city-makers” is useful because it focuses on the agents and not just on places in the city. And while Hoyler et al. (2018) use of city-makers is deployed in the context of the economically powerful producer services firms in global cities, shifting the focus to migrants allows an understanding of the roles of city makers with a view towards city-making as migrants participate in the daily life of the city (Yamamura, 2022; Çaglar & Glick Schiller, 2018).

There are three notable distinctions between international students and other migrant categories in the context of their potential role as city makers. The first pertains to the unique characteristics of international students. International students as young migrants are often welcomed because their student status is not seen by locals as a direct threat competing for jobs in the city. As students, they are expected to learn not only about their specific disciplines, but also about the culture and everyday lives of the city. Their longer stay covering the duration of their study creates opportunities for a deeper understanding of their host city and country.

The second relates to the specific locations where they are hosted and integrated. International students are a highly valued group within the realm of migration, whose value is validated by higher education institutions (HEIs) and positively

<footnote>R. Y. Ge (✉)
School of Education, University of Saint Joseph, Macau, China
e-mail: rochelle.ge@usj.edu.mo</footnote>

<footnote>K. C. Ho
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore,
Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: ho_kc@yale-nus.edu.sg</footnote>
perceived by host societies due to the belief that they can enhance educational and social environments, thereby contributing to innovation and a knowledge-based economy (Haapakoski & Pashby, 2017; Ge & Ho, 2018). The triple helix perspective on the ecology of innovation stresses the role of the research university in playing a critical role in the building of a country's innovaton infrastructure (Ranga & Etzkowitz, 2013). And graduate studies and the training of graduate students, especially in the fields of engineering and the physical sciences, play a critical role in the cultivation of research labour (Ge & Ho, 2018b).

A third and perhaps the most significant difference is the possibility of their city maker role in both host and home cities. While some international students stay on in their host cities or move on to the cities of other countries, the majority return to their home countries. For this group who return, a significant number continue to maintain ties with their host country friends. This return to home group are also integrated into formal and informal alumni groups which function to maintain ties through a shared memory of overseas student life in the host country, city and university. It is this group that can play an important role becoming bridges between home and host cities/countries through establishing and facilitating socio-economic ties (Liu-Farrer, 2009; Ge & Ho, 2018). This possibility of positive involvements by international students with host univeristies, cities and countries has led countries like China to devote resources to the education of large numbers of foreign students in the hope that they graduate to have a strong understanding of their host country and be in a position to foster positive bilateral country ties (Wu, 2019:90).

## 7.2 International Students as Educational Migrants

The potential impact of international students in their host cities can be gauged from their statistics. Globally mobile students predominantly possess non-resident visa statuses as they embark on their pursuit of higher education, particularly tertiary degrees, in their chosen destination nations. The population of these educational migrants has experienced substantial growth over the last two decades. According to data published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the international student cohort numbered over 5.3 million in 2017, marking a significant increase from the two million recorded in 2000 (OECD, 2020) (Fig. 7.1).

The process of international students adapting to their host society bears resemblance to the experiences of other migrant groups. These individuals often grapple with challenges related to housing, financial stability, cultural disparities, the establishment of social networks, homesickness, and the integration into a new university and society (Lee & Rice, 2007; Calder et al., 2016). The act of relocating and encountering distinct cultural norms can generate feelings of insecurity among these students. While they naturally turn to co-nationals for social support, they must also forge connections within the host society as they advance academically. The impact of culture and relocation on security is significant. These two factors
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 7.1** Growth in International or Foreign Enrolment in Tertiary Education Worldwide (1998 to 2019). Number of international or foreign students enrolled in OECD and non-OECD countries, in millions. **Note:** The data sources use similar definitions, thus making their combination possible. Missing data were imputed with the closest data reports to ensure that breaks in data coverage do not result in breaks in time series. **Source:** OECD/UIS/Eurostat (2021). See Source section for more information and Annex 3 for notes: https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/ EAG2021_Annex3_ChapterB.pdf</figcaption></figure>

intertwine to create a composite of cultural elements that shape perceptions of inse-
curity and define responsibilities for community and individual safety.

**7.3 Research Data: Student Housing and Social Networks**

HEIs often adopt progressive diversity management policies, placing a significant
emphasis on housing as a central component of their strategies (Gaisch et al., 2020).
Within this framework, residential campuses play a pivotal role in the accommoda-
tion and integration of diverse ethnic groups. Student housing presents opportuni-
ties for cross-cultural interactions, facilitated not only by its convenience but also by
the presence of on-campus dormitories equipped with dining facilities, sports ame-
nities, as well as a wide array of student-led interest groups and events. It is impera-
tive to gain a comprehensive understanding of university housing policies designed
to cater to international students, encompassing various types of residential arrange-
ments and their availability.

Extensive research has consistently highlighted the pivotal role of housing in the
settlement, sense of security, and adaptation of international students (Forbes-
Mewett & Nyland, 2008; Obeng-Odoom, 2012). The majority of studies have dem-
onstrated the favorable impact of accommodating international students on campus.
Specifically, students residing on campus have reported heightened satisfaction with
their environmental and financial security (Long, 2014). Moreover, on-campus