Description:

Throughout the academic year, the Center for Latinx Digital Media invites you to a series of weekly seminars held over Zoom on Thursdays. You can now register (click here) to the upcoming seminar of the Spring 2022 quarter, happening on May 5, at 12-1 PM US CT.

Patria Roman-Velazquez (King's College London) will give a presentation entitled “Latin Americans in London: Social and digital activism against gentrification.”

Abstract: This presentation sheds light on the digital strategies deployed by British Latinx populations to resist gentrification in some of London’s most deprived and ethnically diverse boroughs. I discuss how cultural symbols and practices were used as a tool to resist gentrification and as a statement for spatial justice. I argue that use of social media alone is not enough to change power relations in gentrification struggles, but it draws attention to a range of issues around affordable housing, and the loss of cultural and economic spaces for Latin Americans in London, a group that is underrepresented in media discourses in the UK.

Patria is an interdisciplinary researcher with an interest in urban communication, migrant and ethnic economies, and urban regeneration. Author of The Making of Latin London: Salsa Music, Place and Identity (1999, e-book 2017), and co-author of Narratives of Migration, Relocation and Belonging: Latin Americans in London (2020). Founder and Chair of Latin Elephant, a charity that works with migrant and ethnic groups to increase participation in processes of urban change in London.

This event is co-sponsored by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Radio/Television/Film, and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.