Border ecologies of urban distincion

2026, published in full length in Spanish, in Fronteras urbanas latinoamericanas: heterogeneidad, productividad y epistemología de la frontera para repensar la ciudad, edited by R. Segura, T. Lulle, and A. Salcedo Fidalgo. Buenos Aires: Clacso, pp. 27-51. (Spanish full text, full OA book)

Border ecologies are key to understand urban differentiation in the ongoing ecological transformation of cities. Rather than perceiving equality as a side product of sustainability, border ecologies highlight the persistence of inequality as socio-ecological differentiation. Apart from toxicity, pollution and overheating, the abyssal side of the (urban) ecological crisis, the presence/absence of certain materials defines border ecologies, such as wood. In border ecologies wood appears in form of the arborization of public spaces, the presence of wooden derivatives in construction, or artfully crafted wooden interiors. The multifaceted appearance of wood, the deep contradictions in its material presence, and the urban relations it forges unravel the workings of the ecological reproduction of social inequalities. In this article, I develop a political ecology of urban borders by discussing its key three conceptual dimensions: (1) the productivity of border thinking; (2) insights from a political ecology of urban borders; and (3) the materiality of distinction. I use globally comparative literature on the urban transformation and wood-related analysis to further sustain that sustainable urban change remains deeply unequal. 

Border thinking is productive to understand urban processes of differentiation as it highlights the relationality of processes of differentiation in three-dimensional zones of contact. It draws from a long tradition that ranges from the relational work on ethnic groups (Barth, Wimmer) and margins of the state (Das/Poole) to the debate of mixing and intersectional struggles (Anzaldúa) as well as border thinking as a decolonial option (Mignolo). Despite the vast variety of concerns, border conceptually provides valuable insights into the layered and contradictory dynamics of border ecologies in contemporary urban processes. At the border, difference is produced through forms of relation. The dynamics of contact, even if asymmetric or partial, move centre stage. It is at borders or margins that relations of power and mechanisms of their reproduction become tested and eventually institutionalized. The limits define the core, and at the border the hegemonic forms of social organization and governance are contested. 

Conceiving a political ecology of borders can renew the analysis of the reproduction of urban differentiation as part of sustainability. The ecological or new materialist foundations of urban life are entangled with the political and capitalist logics through extraction, degradation, and renewal. Socio-ecological borders further dissect the discontinuous urban space. Obvious examples are the distribution of materials and matter in lived space, mapped in cartographies of building materials, biomass, leave cover, urban heat islands, infrastructure densities, air pollution, or the habitats of co-living species. How do ecological densities, rifts and shifting zones map onto economic and social differentiation? How do sustainable urban development initiatives related to the reproduction or dismantling of social inequalities? Which political and economic explanations can be found? These are some of the relevant questions to be asked to address the political ecology of urban borders. 

The urban materiality, such as concrete, brick or tarmac, mirrors urban inequalities. Wood, a player in the urban sustainable transformation, does not seem to be an exception. Border ecologies are interested in the full range of material distinction. The techno-material variation may reaffirm or contradict the social meanings afforded by specific materialities. Regarding wood, social meaning and techno-material quality animate the dynamics of social distinction. In accordance with its substance, appearance and manipulation, urban dwellers animate either discourses of beauty, life quality, and distinction, or of negligence, risk, and precarity. Questions of taste and desirability have a strong material basis which in response, conditions their direction and power of distinction. This interrelation changes over time in response to parallel processes. These can be market logics and fashions, global concerns regarding sustainability or climate change, or the local and transnational manifestations of neoliberal exploitation and zombification. The materiality of distinction offers tangible expressions of the cross-cutting effects of these processes. The various dimensions of the border ecologies of urban distinction appear on all scales of urban life, from the private to the public, from the house to the metropolitan area, within the city, and – possibly – beyond.

forthcoming in Tomo

Repertórios sensoriais de migrantes internacionais no Rio de Janeiro

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Resumo

Migrantes internacionais que chegam à cidade desigual do Rio de Janeiro se deparam com diferenças e hierarquias étnico-raciais, de classe e gênero, que constituem a paisagem urbana e os corpos que nela circulam. A etnografia com migrantes senegaleses e espanhóis chegados na década de 2010 analisa como estes se envolveram de forma diferenciada com as atmosferas afetivas e estéticas coletivas proporcionadas pelos espaços urbanos e seus habitantes. A partir de uma abordagem fenomenológica e crítica, os registros urbanos visuais estão concebidos como parte de repertórios sensoriais. Ao analisar os repertórios sensoriais emergentes das trajetórias locais e transnacionais dos migrantes, o artigo revela como os recém-chegados se sintonizam nas densas paisagens urbanas e nas contradições e contingências entre experiências e sensibilidades, oriundas de privilégio e racismo, medo e curiosidade. A heterogeneidade dos repertórios dos migrantes reflete e co-constitui esse mundo urbano denso, multifacetado e desafiador.

Fine-tuning differences upon arrival in the city.

Sensorial repertoires of international migrants in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

International migrants arriving in the unequal city of Rio de Janeiro encounter ethno-racial, class and gender differences and hierarchies that shape the urban landscape and the bodies that circulate within it. This ethnography with Senegalese and Spanish migrants who arrived in the 2010s analyses how they engaged differently with the affective atmospheres and collective aesthetics own to urban spaces and their inhabitants. Within a critical phenomenology, visual registers are conceived as part of sensory repertoires. By analysing the sensory repertoires emerging from the local and transnational trajectories of newly arrived migrants, the article reveals how newcomers tune into dense urban landscapes and the contradictions and contingencies between experiences and sensibilities, arising from privilege and racism, fear and curiosity. The heterogeneity of migrants' repertoires reflects and co-constitutes this dense, multifaceted, and challenging urban world.

Experiencing Rio de Janeiro upon arrival

forthcoming in July 2026

International Sociology

Abstract

How do newcomers to Rio de Janeiro engage with difference and inequality in the urban landscape and the bodies circulating within it? In the 2010s, recently arrived Senegalese and Spaniards unevenly engaged with the affective atmospheres and collective aesthetics which urban spaces and their inhabitants afforded. Combining critical phenomenology and performativity, I conceive of repertoire as the conceptual lens to account for the newcomers’ struggles with and specific ways of relating to the countless hierarchies that pervade urban life. More specifically, their sensorial repertoires articulate how newcomers attune to dense urban landscapes mediated by their embodied experience that ranges from privilege and racism to desire and fear. In sensorial repertoires, newcomers continuously modulate the racial, gendered, and classed reifications and prejudice which they situate within transnational and local trajectories. More broadly, repertoires echo and co-constitute the challenging everyday of dense, unequal, and multifaceted urban worlds.

Link to fulltext when available via LIRIAS (KU Leuven)

Handbook article in German!

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2027, forthcoming, in Handbuch Stadtanthropologie, Springer

Zusammenfassung

Stadträume sind weitgehend und meist implizit gegendert, wobei sie auch das Verständnis von Gender und Sexualität prägen. Welche städtischen Sozialitäten und Materialitäten rücken in den Blick, wenn Gender und Sexualität und andere Differenzkategorien in der stadtethnologischen Forschung zentral werden? Zunächst werden Gender und Sexualität im städtischen Raum kontextualisiert, danach wichtige Erkenntnisse aus deren Zusammenspiel mit anderen Differenzkategorien diskutiert, bevor neue epistemologische Horizonte für städtische Infrastrukturen und Natur eröffnet werden.

Schlüsselbegriffe

Gender, Sex, Sexualität, queer, trans, Intersektionalität, Macht, Verlangen, urbane Natur, Infrastruktur

Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

Urban spaces are largely and mostly implicitly gendered, whilst they also shape the understanding of gender and sexuality. Which urban socialities and materialities come into focus when gender, sexuality and other categories of difference take centre stage in urban anthropological research? Firstly, I contextualise gender and sexuality within the urban space, I then discuss key insights arising from their interaction with other categories of difference, before opening up new epistemological horizons for urban infrastructures and nature.

Keywords

Gender, sex, sexuality, queer, trans, intersectionality, power, desire, urban nature, infrastructure

Forthcoming book!

Diálogos sociopolíticos sobre convivialidades urbanas a partir das cidades latino-americanas

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Resumo

Convivialidades urbanas na América Latina provocam diálogos e debates sociopolíticos relevantes acerca do mundo contemporâneo. Os processos urbanos são um terreno fértil para compreender a coconstituição entre convivialidade e desigualdade. Eles nos permitem abordar a díade convivialidade-desigualdade como um repertório analítico compartilhado para pensar a vida urbana contemporânea e suas formas de coabitação, sensíveis tanto a assimetrias, limites e clivagens, bem como a colaborações, negociações e conflitos entre agentes humanos, não humanos e mais que humanos na definição e na produção do mundo urbano comum, disputado, descontínuo e desigual. Os processos urbanos latino-americanos e suas especificidades nos oferecem elementos para elaborar comparações translocais. Assim, a partir da América Latina, surgem contribuições para teorias sociais e para debates políticos que circulam globalmente.

forthcoming as

Heil, Tilmann, Ramiro Segura, and Bianca Tavolari. 2026. “Diálogos sociopolíticos sobre convivialidades urbanas a partir das cidades latino-americanas.” Pp. 9–26 in Convivialidades urbanas: debates sociopolíticos a partir da América Latina, Coleção Convivialidade em Disputa, edited by T. Heil, R. Segura, and B. Tavolari. São Paulo: Hucitec.

Sociopolitical dialogues on urban convivialities grounded in Latin American cities

Abstract

Urban convivialities in Latin America give rise to significant sociopolitical dialogues and debates concerning the contemporary world. Urban processes provide fertile ground for understanding the co-constitution of conviviality and inequality. They allow us to approach the conviviality-inequality dyad as a shared analytical framework for thinking about contemporary urban life and its forms of cohabitation, sensitive both to asymmetries, limits and cleavages, as well as to collaborations, negotiations and conflicts. Human, non-human and more-than-human agents together shape the common, contested, discontinuous and unequal urban world. Latin American urban processes and their specificities provide rich ethnographies to spark translocal comparisons and conceptual insights. We introduce the contributions to social theories and political debates that emerge from Latin America and circulate globally.

I am glad to organize this interdisciplinary panel with Clara Ruvituso, Ramiro Segura and Astrid Ulloa from Mecila! Consider submitting your work:

Interdisciplinary Panel

07.09 Latin America under the Conviviality-Inequality lens: Current scenarios and possible futures of living together 

at the

Congreso Internacional del Consejo Europeo de Investigaciones Sociales de América Latina (CEISAL)

13-15 June 2022 in Helskinki, Finland

Abstract

This panel invites contributions that discuss the current scenarios and possible futures in Latin America under the lens of Conviviality-Inequality. In the last years, Conviviality-Inequality studies developed a focus on Latin America, initiating productive dialogue with Latin American social thought, otherwise often displaced to the margins of global knowledge circulation, where it dwells together with postcolonial studies, the critiques of anthropocentrism, and further critical theories of the other "souths" and "norths". The panel aims to go beyond established conceptions of coloniality and modernity, globality and locality, or parallel notions that present all too simple binaries, juxtapositions, and closures.

Multiple and intersecting social, political, and material regimes have shaped Latin American territorialities. They have emerged from the confluence and entanglement of colonial and imperialist, as well as modern and developmentalist globalizing forces and their contestations. These regimes shape time-spaces of different scales, from the global to the local, from the event to long durée. The paired concept Conviviality-Inequality captures the co-existence of ever-changing configurations of these multiple processes and their spatializations. While conviviality theoretically encompasses the spectrum from conflict to peace, its conceptual marriage to inequality hones in on the hierarchical, unequal historical condition, in Latin America and beyond. Current debates of zumbification, aquilombar, buen vivir, and ways of rethinking creolization, mestizaje, négritude, imperialism, and ancestral knowledge explore the convivial configurations of the Latin American pasts, presents, and futures. They take the interdependent inequalities and differences into account (among others, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, citizenship, human/more-than-human) as

well as the countless forms of resistance and contestation that have arisen in the region. Attention to such configurations brings onto-epistemological openings to the forefront: spatialities, temporalities, colonialities, and modernities are all constituted in the plural.

Within the rapidly changing global scenario of both global social movements, such as “Vidas negras importam”, “Estallido social”, “Fridays for Future”, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Conviviality-Inequality opens a novel and productive opportunity for analysis given its focus on specific tensions at local and global levels, between inequality and differences, and their contestations. Papers should empirically explore concrete examples of Conviviality-Inequality, making use of the full spectrum of onto-epistemological, material, and symbolic plurality. Beyond the debates addressed so far, some such examples: the re-emergence of State power from urban centers to national borders, from the intimate community to the geopolitical scale; the salience of less-regarded categories of difference, such as age, dis/ability, or legal status in interaction that unfold in the configuration of race, class, and gender; the reconfiguring and diverse contestations in relation to the body, nature, or the non-human; the tensions, inequalities, and opportunities of the digital transformation and social media in knowledge circulation. Based on empirical reflections of the current conjuncture, we would like to discuss what kinds of convivial scenarios and futures become possible and conceivable in Latin America when the pluralities, synergies, tensions, interconnections, and contradictions are fully explored to address both continuities and change.

Practical Information

• Submissions via: https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/ceisal-2022/call-for-papers-open-from-sept-15-to-nov-30-2021
• Deadline 30 November 2021
• Abstract Length 300 words