Migrants as Urban Actors. Interrelations of Urban and Migration Processes: Introduction

The key theme of the presented volume are the mutual connections and relations between the migration processes and the city. The case studies collected herein aim not only at showing the parallels between the migration and urban processes, but above all they focus on two fundamental issues: first, they show the specificity of the city as a living environment for immigrants, together with the consequences of this presence for the transformation of urban space (both in the historical and the contemporary dimension); secondly, they describe various aspects of the presence, social organization and social practices of members of immigrant groups in the urban space. The history of migration processes basically overlaps with the history of the development of the cities and the formation and transformation of large metropolises. From the time of the first mass migrations, which we dealt with from the mid-nineteenth century, emigrants headed mainly to industrialized and urban areas, and the scientific literature emphasizes their important role in the transformation of urban space and the development of the cities (e.g Foner et al. 2014)3. The present days do not differ much from the past in this respect. Masses of migrants choose cities and large metropolises