New York’s lonely streets: Constructions of soledad in Colombianx migrant experiences

Publication Date

8-14-2020

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Urban life in New York City is structured in ways that accentuate the affective dimensions of migration experiences for Colombianx migrants, who describe soledad as an integral quality of their life, despite being surrounded by the second largest group of Colombianxs in the United States. This ethnographic study draws on more than 8 years of fieldwork to describe the social forces at work in the normalization of migrant solitude. This article describes soledad, simultaneously an invisible and quotidian element of migrant life, as actively produced in/through the spatialized practices of city life. Grounded in the descriptions and voices of Colombianx migrants, soledad is a phenomenon that is collectively experienced yet articulated as an individual experience. The city shapes Colombianxs’ uses of both space and time in a way that exacerbates the effects of its racialized, spatial hierarchies and creates painful and stark differences in transnational migrant life that make New York’s streets lonely.

Publication Title

Latino Studies

Volume

18

Issue

3

First Page

420

Last Page

441

DOI

10.1057/s41276-020-00266-4

Open Access Status

Licensed

This document is currently not available here.

Find in your library

Share

COinS