Understanding short and long mobilities together: Place attachment and community dynamics in Mouraria, Lisbon

Abstract

The increase in mobilities over the last decades has facilitated the circulation of people, with short- and long-term mobility practices often intertwining in the same destinations. Alongside migration processes of long-term mobility to search for better living conditions, short mobility processes, such as touristification, started to significantly shape some cities and their communities in Southern Europe. This study examines place attachments, community and cultural dynamics of ‘migrant’ and ‘local’ residents of Mouraria, a historic and multicultural neighbourhood in Lisbon, and the consequences of touristification on those. Through walking interviews with ‘local’ residents and long-term ‘migrants’ (n = 20), we concluded that most of the interviewed ‘migrants’ presented a traditional-active place attachment associated both with proximity to their culture of origin and practices envisioning the well-being of the neighbourhood's community. Additionally, we found that the essentialisation of Mouraria's community life (‘bairrismo’) was endorsed mainly by ‘local’ residents and associated with a conditional acceptance of new residents, while touristification tended to highlight structural social injustices for both ‘local’ and ‘migrant’ residents. We discuss how the community dynamics created between these different mobility processes contribute to generate multicultural and community practices in both groups of residents.