Anthropology Research Seminar: Prof Susanne Wessendorf (Coventry)

This paper uses the concept of infrastructures of kindness to examine how informal, everyday acts of support embedded within social infrastructures shape migrant settlement experiences in urban arrival areas. Drawing on ethnographic research in East London, it analyses how local actors—including shopkeepers, librarians, faith leaders, and community workers—operate as de facto “arrival brokers,” facilitating newcomers’ access to essential services.

Moving beyond integration paradigms that emphasise individual migrant responsibility, the paper foregrounds the micro-level, relational dynamics of arrival, highlighting how mundane acts such as ad hoc translation, signposting, and sustained handholding help mitigate structural barriers, including language limitations, digital exclusion, and legal precarity.

By conceptualising these practices as infrastructures of kindness, the paper contributes to current debates in anthropology, urban sociology, and migration studies concerning the role of informal care and sociality. It situates these dynamics within wider social infrastructure ecosystems to illuminate the interplay between formal and informal support structures, demonstrating that infrastructures of kindness constitute a vital yet under-recognised dimension of migrant settlement. In doing so, the paper extends theoretical understandings of migrant inclusion and exclusion and underscores the importance of recognising and sustaining informal support in contexts marked by austerity and welfare retrenchment.

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