The 'Wrong' Type of Chinese and the 'Captured' City: Contesting of Urban Spaces and Constructing Practices of Interacting with the 'Other'

Abstract

The article analyses the process of constructing disputed urban spaces in connection with a change in migration flows from China. The analysis is based on two series (2014–2017 and 2017–2019) of semi-structured interviews in Irkutsk in the framework of the ideas of the 'right to the city'. A comparative analysis of two types of urban localities, defined by the
townspeople as 'migrant' and 'Chinese', is carried out. From the late 1980s, stable localities have been formed that are described as 'Chinese': open-air markets, car repair shops, restaurants. Its 'Chineseness' pointed not so much to the dominant group as to the repertoire of acceptable practices of interacting with the 'Other'. The mass entry of tourists from China later on led to the emergence of new urban spaces, described by residents and media as 'Chinese'. Its visual markers became a symbol of violation of convention on the possible places and practices of interaction between citizens and migrants. New symbolism is interpreted by the host community as a sign of a change in the space of representations and an invasion of the 'habitable space' of citizens. If earlier 'Chinese' locales have acted as a 'meeting place', a platform for the joint creation and use of urban infrastructure, then now they are a space of conflict, a struggle for the city. The redefinition of migrant urban localities from the place of contact to the space of contesting the right to the city can be a mechanism for developing a new range of interaction practices. Changing the 'Other' requires a new repertoire of permissible performances, and it is precisely conflict that allows us to determine new boundaries for the permissible and approved.