Migration Trajectories and Urban Home/lessness: Measuring the Intersections

Abstract

Observing from closely the rapid urban transformations the city of Lagos is undergoing, the increase of daily migration to the city, and the proliferation of humans’ dwelling arrangements, the authors of this contribution delve into the questions of homemaking and homelessness of migrants* in the city - reflecting on data scarcity and bias around these processes. The Lagos state department of emergency management, and in general the political stance of the State’s authorities, relies on its own categories to determine degrees of migrants’ vulnerability, need, and legality - accordingly planning city spaces and infrastructures, or rather not planning them. To exemplify, Lagos State officials deny the presence in the State’s territory of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) from the northern part of the country, and are concerned with the people on the streets of Lagos as just economic migrants. Based on two case studies of vulnerable migration to the city of Lagos, this paper retraces the migration trajectories of internally displaced people and economic migrants from northern Nigeria to Lagos through an intersectional reflection of its diversity. Secondly, this paper looks at the arrival spaces of the two different groups and analyse their home-making practices through the notions of home and “homelessness” and refugee agency within it - critically engaging with the frameworks that shape and measure the relationship between homelessness and vulnerable migration. Our contribution foregrounds that debate is direly needed about the ways homelessness’ discussions include/exclude specific groups as city makers and agents in public space transformation - from the African urban viewpoint. * In the urban context, we employ the term 'migrants' to refer to all different groups of displaced people (international refugees, internally displaced people, vulnerable economic migrants, climate refugees) that are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish since they share the same spaces, activities, and trajectories.