Migration Is Not a Crisis: From Limbo to Settled.
A study on the journey Sub-Saharan migrants endure to neutralise the territorial, political, social and legal barriers in space throughout time.
My final year thesis explores the limits of architecture when it clashes against the barriers established by political and social actors. Throughout a ethnographic study which takes the form of re-constructed narratives, I reflected on my personal situation as an economic migrant, to the extrapolate the findings onto my family’s migration, which is deeply connected to the journey Sub-Saharan migrants endure. Through comparative methods, the thesis questions the legitimacy of borders, being the main obstacle for Sub-Saharan migration flows. The politics that surround these flows, when economic migrants come from underdeveloped countries into Spain, intend to solve the issue by avoiding it, rather than by embracing it, due to the misconception of migration as a crisis.
Through architecture, the thesis 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. How does 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?
The complete “Migration Is Not a Crisis: From Limbo to Settled” portfolio can be downloaded at: https://nestorruizmedinagc.wixsite.com/architecture-design/border-report
