The Quest for Re-rooting in Barcelona: Everyday Life of Illegalized Migrants in the City of Refuge

What are the experiences of illegalized migrants as urban citizens in a city of refuge where their presence is supposedly welcomed? The article addresses a gap in empirical evidence in the existing literature on the nexus of cities of refuge (sanctuary, solidarity, welcoming, and so on.) and urban citizenship of migrants without legal status. Drawing on interviews I carried out with illegalized migrants in a self-declared refuge city, Barcelona, in 2021-2022, this article grounds the theoretical debate on this literature with empirical evidence. Their narratives show how their precarious legal status is intervened with their identities, and how marginality is reproduced in their everyday life. The findings illustrate those explicit policies of exclusion (e.g., deportation, surveillance, or immigration documents) are not only features of marginalization, but also discriminative practices in the society (e.g., keeping social distance even before Covid19 in the public transportations). Their experiences, therefore, are not merely related to their legal status per se. Rather, it is strongly related to their race, ethnicity and gender which have a strong impact on these experiences. It, therefore brought about, further questions on cities of refuge where identity politics intersects with historical-geographical-political context.