Migration is Not a Crisis

&rchitecture // Master of Architecture // Manchester School of Architecture

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A study on the journey Sub-Saharan migrants endure to neutralise the territorial, political, 

social and legal barriers in space throughout time.

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Being a migrant worker in the UK myself, I have been going through personal circumstances which have exposed me to a great amount of stress and anxiety. Having a reasonable amount of commodities and access to fundamental services, I wondered what could be making me feel this way. Furthermore, it made me reflect on the situation of migrant workers, which are forced into labour due to their illegal condition but are not protected by the law, leaving them in a vulnerable position, without access to fundamental rights. Instantly, I established a connection between my personal situation, my grandparents - who were migrants - and the family business - in an industry where illegal migrants are often employed. This three-generation relationship with economic migrations created a premise from which to develop the subject further through comparative methods.

The ethnographic study, which explores the journey Sub-Saharan migrants endure to cross the border and settle in Spain by re-creating narratives in film, collage and written form, demonstrates how migration is another step in the life of a great part of society. The politics that surround migration flows, when these economic migrants come from underdeveloped countries into Spain, intend to solve the issue by avoiding it, rather than by embracing it. This issue derives from the misconception of migration as a crisis. 

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Through architecture, the design journal has the objective of representing how migration in the South of Spain is currently treated, where social and political actors have turned a blind eye towards this social constant, which it’s still treated as a crisis. The current migration landscape in Spain is conditioned by a great disregard towards the issue. The informal settlements are not conceived as residential typologies by society, not providing them with essential resources such as water, electricity and sanitation. This document question how the liberalisation of society towards the issue - in particular of employers who have the resources to provide migrants with improvements in the settlements - could affect how migrants transition from a liminal to settled status. What are the limits of architecture when it clashes against the political and social landscape?