Dr. Laleh Foroughanfar has successfully defended her PhD thesis The Street of Associations - Migration and Infrastructural (Re)Production of Norra Grängesbergsgatan, Malmö. The thesis addresses issues related to the post-industrial city of Malmö, and how neoliberal urban planning and regeneration policies result in detrimental socio-economic effects for groups such as migrants. The area of NGBG has become a hub for migrant entrepreneurs, as well as artistic and activist groups. As such, NGBG provides a complex case of how migration and urban marginalisation intersect with neoliberal policies, and how migrants have responded creatively to such processes through spatial and material interventions. Based on a combination of ethnographic and architectural methods the thesis explores how migrants have (re)produced infrastructures in support of their aspirations to remain in the street in face of the risk of banishment.
In conversation with faculty opponent Professor Michele Lancione (Polytechnic University of Turin) and the examination board (Prof. Isabelle Doucet, Prof. Kristina Grange, and Prof. Shahram Khosravi), Laleh discussed her work on streetmaking, urban infrastructures and migration in Norra Grängesbergsgatan (NGBG) in Malmö. The conversation also touched on everything from using feminist epistemology in fieldwork and critically thinking about race and ethnicity, to spatial anti-capitalist resistance and building an infrastructure of care. Lastly, they discussed the thesis' suggested architecture of associations as an epistemological and empirical project, as well as an imperative for urban design practice.
The thesis defence took place at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment at Lund University on September 2.
