РУАЭСТ (RUAEST)
Migrant Localities: “Gated Space” or “Access Points”?
The article considers the relation between media images of migrant localities and their role in everyday life of the city, the example being “Chinese” markets and “Chinese” greenhouses. Migrant localities are viewed as “gated space” and, at the same time, access points of local communities and migrants to multi-level social networks. It is shown that regional mass media shape the image of these localities as closed (gated) spaces that leads to a situation of contested space and the authoritative agents’ ambition to force migrant localities out of urban space. However, these objects perform the function of the terminals of access to networks, the function providing a stable position of migrant localities in the social space as well as reproduction in the physical space of host society.