Arrival cities under occupation? Political economies of urban consolidation and rural migration in the contemporary West Bank

Kareem Rabie, CUNY Graduate Center, gives a talk for the Arrival Cities COMPAS Seminar Series. This talk explores the arrival city framework in the context of occupied Palestine, beginning with a consideration of the ways that markets and immigration are treated in that framework. Next, it introduces ethnographic material on ordinary Palestinians' relationships to a particular massive housing development being built in the West Bank, and the increasing stratification between Palestinians in urban (as well as new, potentially-urban) and rural areas. New forms of political, social, and economic imagination integrate Palestinians into a vision of the future formed through privatization and market creation, and led by private developers and the Palestinian Authority. Yet not everyone is equally integrated. What does the Palestinian case - one characterized by unevenness, differentiation, and equalization at different geographical scales - tell us about the arrival city model? This talk asks, what do social capital, ambition, privatization, or immigration mean under stifling structural political conditions?