Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and IntegraTion in Europe (NITE)

How are night spaces imagined, produced, experienced and narrated by migrant communities in Europe?
This research project considers this question in eight European cities: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cork, Galway, Lisbon, London, Rotterdam.
Led by the University of Leiden, the research is a collaboration between teams at University College London, Humboldt University, Aarhus University and the University of Limerick.
At the HU this subproject investigates the cultural practices and narratives of a new social public figure which pervades the so-called ‘smart city’ at night: migrant bike couriers, who gather on public squares around Berlin. Understanding the ‘digital shift’ is of vital importance when we take the blurring between day and night in terms of work culture into account.
Our project directs the attention to the workers who remain largely invisible in the reproduction of the ‘Smart City’ while being hyper visible at the same time, filling the streets with their reflective bags and brightly-coloured jackets. Its focus lies on the night shift of bike couriers, many of whom come from crisis-ridden Southern and Eastern Europe, as they gather often in groups in public squares around the city waiting for their next job. These public spaces of social gathering and knowledge exchange, also often build the basis for a newly emerging protest culture of bike riders, expressed materially through clothing, collections of worn down bike parts, but also virtually through circulating slogans and hashtags. By contrasting the physical/digital geographies emerging through new work cultures in the Smart City, we seek to understand shifting representations of the urban landscape, perceptions of belonging and interculturality, and the worlding of European cities.