The Moving MarketPlaces (MMP) project investigates the role of ambulant traders in the everyday production of inclusive public spaces in Europe. Previous studies on marketplaces have frequently illustrated how markets are experienced and consumed as flexible spatial-temporal organisations that facilitate a spontaneous synergy between people of different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.
Markets are prototypical public spaces or “cosmopolitan canopies” where diverse people feel they have an equal right to be. MMP adds to this body of knowledge by focusing on the actors that make markets work: the traders. Through their mobility practices they help to transform marketplaces into inclusive public spaces by brokering everyday interactions.
Our research starts from two marketplaces in each of the four partner countries: one urban and one ‘not-so-urban’. From these eight entry-points, we applied an in-moment approach that enabled us to follow traders in their navigation to other localities, including other marketplaces, wholesalers, storage rooms and traders’ homes. As such, it developed into a translocal ethnography of traders and their navigation within and between different marketplaces, including the institutional barriers they encounter. Through the incorporation of key actors on national and transnational levels, we translated our findings to concrete policies for city planners, market managers, wardens and other place-makers on how we can promote more inclusive societies in Europe through supporting convivial social infrastructures.
Results
Breines, M.R., J. Menet & J. Schapendonk (2021) Disentangling Following: Implications and Practicalities of Mobile Methods. Mobilities, 16(6): 921-934
Lindmäe, M. & M. Madella (2023) La Boqueria: ‘the mirror of what Barcelona represents’: An analysis of public policy and the commodification of food markets. In: Sezer, C. & R. Van Melik (Eds.) Marketplaces: Movements, Representations and Practices. London: Routledge.
Lindmäe, M. (2022), “¡Tengo gloria bendita!”: Pitching and the sonic production of place atmospheres under increasing marketplace regulation. Cultural Geographies.
Menet, J. & J.Dahinden (2023) Mobility and transnationality in the production of the local marketplace. In: Sezer, C. & R. Van Melik (Eds.) Marketplaces: Movements, Representations and Practices. London: Routledge.
MMP et al. (2022a), Moving marketplaces: Understanding public space from a relational mobility perspective. Cities.
MMP et al. (2022b), Re-producing public space: The changing everyday production of marketplaces. Urban Geography.
Sezer, C. & R. Van Melik (2023) (Eds.) Marketplaces: Movements, Representations and Practices. London: Routledge.
Van Eck, E., R. Van Melik & J. Schapendonk (2023) The multi-scalar nature of policy im/mobilities: Regulating “local” marketplaces in the Netherlands. In: Sezer.
C. & R. Van Melik (Eds.) Marketplaces: Movements, Representations and Practices. London: Routledge.
Van Eck, E. (2021) “That market has no quality”: Performative place frames, racialisation, and affective re-inscriptions in an outdoor retail market in Amsterdam. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, DOI: 10.1111/tran.12515
Van Eck, E., R. Van Melik & J. Schapendonk (2020) Marketplaces as public spaces in times of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak: First reflections. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 111(3), 373-386
Watson, S. & M. Breines (2023) Markets and belonging: Untangling myths of urban versus small town life. In: Sezer, C. & R. Van Melik (Eds.) Marketplaces: Movements, Representations and Practices. London: Routledge.
