Join the Boston University Initiative on Cities, Center on Forced Displacement, and the Boston Urban Salon for a discussion exploring how displacement – both structural and episodic – shapes people’s lives, identities, and urban spaces. Rather than a one-time event, displacement is an ongoing condition that continues to influence how individuals navigate new environments and build lives in unfamiliar cities. Focusing on the United Kingdom, Dr. Romola Sanyal (London School of Economics and Political Science) examines how displaced populations often occupy the racialized margins of urban economies, facing precarious work, persistent poverty, and the risk of further displacement.

At the same time, these communities actively reshape the social and economic fabric of the cities they inhabit. Drawing on migration scholarship, Dr. Sanyal considers how “southern” urban dynamics emerge within “northern” contexts and asks how we understand populations who, despite living in the Global North, remain on its racialized and economic margins.

Dr. Sanyal will be joined by two discussants: Professors Nazli Kibria (Boston University Sociology) and Ayşe Parla (Boston University Anthropology).