The Grandhotel Cosmopolis – a concrete utopia? Reflections on the mediated and lived geographies of asylum accommodation

Autor: Zill, M.O., Spierings, B., van Liempt, I.C., Social Urban Transitions
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Sociology and Political Science
media_common.quotation_subject
Refugee
Geography
Planning and Development

0507 social and economic geography
lcsh:Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
familiarization
lcsh:Social Sciences
lcsh:HT51-1595
Perception
050602 political science & public administration
Openness to experience
lcsh:HT101-395
Sociology
Everyday life
News media
media_common
Demography
Planning and Development
Levebvre
Geography
business.industry
Lived experience
05 social sciences
Statistics
Gender studies
Asylum accommodation
conceived space
0506 political science
lcsh:HT201-221
lcsh:H
Framing (social sciences)
lived space
utopia
degrees of openness
lived space
Lefebvre
utopia

lcsh:Communities. Classes. Races
Probability and Uncertainty
local innovation
Statistics
Probability and Uncertainty

business
050703 geography
Accommodation
Law
lcsh:City population. Including children in cities
immigration
Zdroj: Comparative Migration Studies, Vol 8, Iss 1, Pp 1-18 (2020)
Comparative Migration Studies, 8
Popis: This paper argues that perceptions towards asylum seekers are shaped by both media representation as well as lived experiences in and around asylum accommodation. Drawing on Lefebvre’s spatial triad, the paper aims at disentangling the conceived, perceived and lived spaces of asylum accommodation in order to understand asylum accommodation as a space that is produced and re-produced in everyday life. The paper discusses the case of the Grandhotel Cosmopolis (GHC), a prominent example of local innovation in asylum accommodation located in southern Germany. It compares and contrasts the GHC’ media representation in national and local news media with local residents’ evaluation and direct experiences with this project and its effects on how asylum seekers are perceived. The results of the media analysis highlight a difference between a national ‘utopian’ framing and a local ‘experiment’ framing of the GHC. Local residents’ direct experiences proved influential in their evaluation of the project, yet could not overrule dominant media representations of asylum seekers. The paper concludes by suggesting that the GHC’ relative openness produces a space which allows for contact and familiarization between local residents and asylum seekers, yet that dominant framings of asylum seekers as criminals or victims also contributed to a perceived closedness of its space and discouraged contact and familiarization.
Databáze: OpenAIRE