Rescaling migrant lives: Beyond nested identities

This paper addresses the multiple frames of migrant lives and action. While there are several studies drawing attention to the shifting frames of migrant identities, including local, regional, national, ethnic and/or urban, the nature of relations among these have received rather a scant attention. Despite the questions of rescaling that are brought into the analysis, questions of scale in migrant frames of action and identities most often remained confined to nested relations. While migrant urban identities are valorized, the broader dynamics behind the peculiar city in shaping these very frames and their reach are not explored and theorized. The urban then remains as a flattened and generalized 'context' for migrant lives and identities. Drawing from the perspective that underlines the importance of struggles of repositioning between the cities within and across borders in shaping the location of migrants and their transnational reach (Glick Schiller and Caglar 2011), this paper argues for the need to relate migrants’ frames of action to the dynamics of urban rescaling processes that connect places and their imaginaries beyond any nested relations. On the basis of examples from migrant youth in different European cities, the political economy behind rescaled migrant lives and identities and the specificities of the cities they are located are explored.