The outer-inner city: urbanization, migration and ‘race’ in London and New York

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of ‘outer-inner cities’ located on the periphery of London and New York. As traditional ‘zones in transitions’ and inner city districts of both cities have gentrified, these neighbourhoods no longer offer an affordable entry point to the low-waged immigrants whose work is necessary to keep the global city working. Moreover neoliberal practices of immigrant and working class dispersal in addition to the manipulation of fear regarding the ethnic and ‘racial’ other and the threat of deportation exert considerable centrifugal pressure making the central an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants. As such devalued sections of the periphery, such as suburbs suffering from disinvestment, are emerging as unlikely meeting points for new immigrants, those displaced from the central city and descendents of previous waves of suburbanisation. Common to both forms of inner city is the racialization of antagonistic community relations. Yet in contrast to the ‘inner city’ of the Fordist metropolis the outer-inner city is more fragmented, characterized by informal and flexible arrangements of labour and dwelling and most crucially lacks symbolic resonance on a government and policy level.

Keywords:

• inner city
• immigration
• suburbs
• London
• New York
• race
• gentrification

Acknowledgements

I thank Per Gunnar Røe and Jan Erling Klausen for organizing a fantastic conference and for encouraging me to submit this article. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am grateful to the ESRC for funding the Southend research (R42200154335) and the British Academy for supporting the New York research (SG49636).

Notes

1. An extended and more detailed account can be found in Millington (2011).

2. Harvey (1990, pp. 147–148) writes that ‘flexible accumulation appears to imply relatively high levels of “structural” [ … ] unemployment, rapid destruction and reconstruction of skills, modest (if any) gains in the real wage, [ … ] and the roll back of trade union power – one the political pillars of the Fordist regime’.

3. Foreign-born migrants now account for 35% of London's working age population (Spence 2005, p. 35).

4. There has actually been a concern with preventing concentrations of immigrants in London since the mid-1960s when a government circular advocated bussing African-Caribbean children to schools in parts of the city where ‘immigrant’ numbers were smaller. There have been dispersal programmes from London since for Polish, Ugandan Asian, Chilean, Vietnamese, Bosnian and Kosovan refugees.

5. This section is based on primary research undertaken by the author and supported by the ESRC (award number R42200154335). See Millington (2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011).

6. For example, the average monthly rent for a one bedroom flat in Barking, one of London's most easterly boroughs, is £937.00. In Westcliff-on-Sea the average monthly rate for a similar property is £540.00. (Prices obtained from RRPI (Residential Rental Price Index) at http://www.rentright.co.uk/essex/barking/1_rrpi.aspx [Accessed 7 April 2010].)

7. A 8 is the term used to describe the eight states that entered the EU in 2004 (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and those countries that entered in 2007, Romania and Bulgaria, are referred to as A10.

8. This is not to suggest, however, that conflicts and/or racism existing between black and white ‘native’ populations have necessarily subsided.