THE CITY BETWEEN MIGRATION AND SETTLED EXISTENCE: DISCIPLINE, DEMOCRACY AND THE DISCOURSE OF PROHIBITIONS

• Published in: Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya, sotsiologiya, politologiya no. 82; pp. 245 - 256
• Main Author: Kasavin, Ilya T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• ISSN: 1998-863X; 2311-2395
• DOI: 10.17223/1998863X/82/21

The article raises the problem of the relationship between migration and settled existence in the modern city. A conceptual analysis of the status of migration as an empirical generalization and metaphor is carried out. The author reconstructs the historical crises of the European city in the 15th–19th centuries, when the city changed its status from a territory of settled existence to the status of a migration hub. The city of the future is the subject of numerous philosophical and literary utopias and dystopias. Ancient Greeks firmly connected human nature with their polis, urban existence. However, philosophy initially problematizes this nature through the opposition of sedentarism and migration, developing a dualistic ontology of being and nonbeing, essence and phenomenon, is and ought, knowledge and opinion. This ontology presupposes high cognitive tension, as well as reflexive and practical-spiritual efforts to build bridges between its poles. Migration is a constant fluctuation between the poles of expanding horizons and striving for goals, between the tyranny of circumstances and the chaos of decisions, precaution and proactivity, between freedom and obligations. It manifests itself in the form of the inevitable ambivalence of the “fenced”, i.e., regulated urban existence. For Zygmunt Bauman, who was generally rather pessimistic about the nature of our century, this is a characteristic feature of modernity. With regard to the modern city, the question is raised to what extent market democracy contributes to transport mobility, to what extent information feudalism is compatible with the well-being of city dwellers, and the traffic congestion price solves the problem of unloading urban highways. The hypothesis is put forward that knowledge, information, expert and humanistic discourse provide the means to achieve a settlement–migration balance in the urban transport environment.