Cities have never been entirely harmonious, and in today’s world they remain spaces of conflict and contentious politics. Whether thriving or struggling, cities simultaneously serve as sites of wealth generation and battlegrounds for resources, space, rights, and justice. As both the objects and subjects of these dynamics, urban residents—especially the displaced and marginalized—often challenge existing narratives of participation, redistribution, social and historical justice, and the politics of living together.
At the same time, global forms of extraction go beyond the forced removal of raw materials and life forms from the earth’s surface, depths, and biosphere. Extraction extends into new domains such as finance, logistics, culture, and the migrant and refugee industries. The governance of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers increasingly relies on commodification, outsourcing, and financialization—turning their biological routines, surveillance, detention, and deportation into profitable mechanisms. These shifting frontiers of extractivism have profound consequences for how displaced populations are managed, how cities are governed, and how urban narratives are shaped.
Migrants and Urban Politics focuses on the containment, housing, and provision of services to displaced populations, revealing how these processes become sites of value extraction from those seeking protection, and how they also shape struggles for justice, redefine urban political landscapes, and reimagine the relationship between migration, governance, and statehood.
Head of Project
Ayşe Çağlar
IWM Permanent Fellow
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna
