Global Villages: Coexistence of Human Extremes in Metamorphosing Confined Spaces (Lagrasse versus Cadaqués)

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Session "Villages in the Age of Migration and Metamorphoses: Mobilities and Human Diversification vs. Homogenissation?" ---------- This presentation delves into the deepening of the ‘global village’ concept, examining two metamorphosing village realities. Focused on diverse and (non)vulnerable populations, it investigates the challenges arising from their cohabitation, exploring habitability and living concepts. The unique global village configuration under study, with cosmopolitan and urban-like attributes, generates issues through tourism and connections with distant worlds by means of migrations and mobilities. Densely populated cores witness the coexistence of human extremes amid challenges of proximity, promiscuity, and foreignness. Multifunctional and hosting diverse inhabitants, these villages provide opportunities for enrichment and discord regarding ‘rights to the village’. The analysis relies on narratives from fifty diverse inhabitants in each municipality, covering biographical interviews on backgrounds, habitability, perceptions, and sociabilities. Methodologically, the approach combines legal and psychosocial geographies, focusing on two Occitan villages with tourist and cultural economies, investigated through immersive fieldwork: Lagrasse in France, featuring a Reception Center for Asylum Seekers and a Medieval Abbey (2023); Cadaqués in Spain, renowned for Dali’s heritage and attracting vulnerable foreign workers (2012-2016). The article aims to explore how geographical configurations of global villages contribute to explosive sociabilities, bringing together human extremes in spatially confined spaces. It seeks to explain the cohabitation, its normative and subjective challenges, and its political and practical implications. The overarching goal is to understand the singularities and universalities of global villages while assessing the implications of the specificity of village space, the quality of ‘rural’ public/common space, and habitability on inhabitants’ vulnerability, as well as on the sociabilities of diverse inhabitants.