Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the significance of night-time spaces associated with the Cape Verdean community in Rotterdam, home to the third largest Cape Verdean diaspora in the world. Through interdisciplinary approaches including interviews with key figures in music production and nightlife, mapping of key historical and contemporary sites, and close analysis of artefacts and music lyrics, this article considers how music practices of huge historical and cultural significance have been deeply embedded in the night-time cartography of the city. Following Doreen Massey's formulations, it considers urban space as a mobile junction of historical, sociopolitical and cultural layers, in constant transformation, and argues that night-time spaces were, and continue to be, integral to the development of a political–cultural consciousness among the Cape Verdean community in Rotterdam, in colonial and postcolonial contexts. These discussions are also relevant given current debates on the value of the 'night-time economy' in Rotterdam's post-industrial landscape.

This introduction provides an overview of this Special Issue: 'Night Stories: Urban Narratives of the Migrant Lives in Europe', which originates from work undertaken within the collaborative HERA-funded research project 'Night spaces: Migration, culture and integration in Europe' (NITE). It argues that experiences and representations of the urban night are often overlooked in Humanities research. It contends that understandings of this overlooked dimension of the urban night can provide important and more nuanced insights into questions of migration. It surveys the collection of academic and artistic contributions to the Special Issue, which provides a transdisciplinary survey on the storytelling that emerges from diverse experiences of migration and their connections to the urban night.