Beyond ethnicity: understanding the interplay between migration, commercial centralities and urban diversity

Abstract

The paper contributes to the discussion on how human geography and the social sciences more broadly have approached the nexus between international migration, trade and urban retail. The aim is to better understand the results and limitations of promoting dialogue between very different and complementary approaches - in terms of spatial scale, methodology or conceptual framework - to a complex and multidimensional issue. More specifically, the article focuses on how French-speaking research has participated in a major conceptual shift that took place between the 1980s and 2010s. It draws on a multidisciplinary literature review to show how ethnicity-based analyses of migrant entrepreneurship have been incorporated, debated and enriched by new conceptual frameworks such as urban diversity, transnational circulation or identity negotiation.

Keywords

• circulation
• trade
• international migration
• ethnicity
• migration studies
• urban retail