Arrival City Reading Reflection

“I believe that these transitional spaces offer a solution. I believe that these transitional urban spaces offer a solution. It is here, rather than at the ‘macro’ state or ‘micro’ household level, that serious and sustained investments from governments and agencies are most likely to create lasting and incorruptible benefit.” (3)

            The author says this is where everything occurs, in the transitional urban spaces. This caught my eye because in Black Feminist Geographies, we learned about how we always have gaps of information that we choose to ignore, and in those gaps, is where important things happen. These gaps are transitions from one piece of information to another, and here borders and boundaries are created.

“It has become a commonplace in the German media to refer to Kreuzberg as a ‘parallel society’ or an ‘urban village,’ where nonintegrated Turks preserve their traditional village ways.” (245)

            I like this quote because I read an article for my cultural geography class about how as a westernized society we tend to bestialize groups of people because of their practices, when many westernized practices, while normalized, are just as shocking or even worse than many “village” practices. For example, chicken farms and the way we slaughter cows, leaves these animals in pain, which cannot be much less humane than goat sacrificing. I find this discussion interesting because I think this fear of “traditional village ways” shows many excuses people tend to come up with to rationalize their intolerance. And frankly, I love how present the Turkish community is in Kruezberg because I love the food!

“There may be some services that Spaniards don’t agree with, but as long as they comply with the law, that’s the only condition we put on them. These migrants are working legally now and paying the taxes that finance the pensions for a million Spanish people.” (258)

*Cough cough @the United States*

I wonder why the U.S. hasn’t taken some of the Spanish practices to help deal with immigrants in our country. Do we not do this because people in charge of our government have not looked into Spanish immigration policy, or do we not want to try out these practices because of our nationalist pride? The immigrants in Spain help support Spanish citizens, which could happen in our country.