Crossing the commodification boundary: Migrants in the cultural industries

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Crossing the commodification boundaryMigrants
in the cultural industries

• Amanda Brandellero and Robert Kloosterman
• Kunst, Cultuur en Integratie een krachtig
  drietal?
• 20 June 2007

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Cultural industries recap

• Mainstay of contemporary urban economies
• Sectors related to the creation of aesthetic and
  semiotic content
• Producing goods and services whose subjective
  meaning to the consumer is high compared to
  utilitarian
• Competition based on design content and styling,
  not just price
• Highly localised and visible, drawing on local
  creative milieux and cultural forms while
  circulation at global scale
• (Hesmondhalgh, 1996 Scott, 1999 2000 2004)

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Bollywood in Indische Buurt
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Bollywood in Indische Buurt
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Words of wisdom?

• Cultural capitals have a history of absorbing
  countless different cultural streams and
  manifold artistic talent
• Probably, no city has ever been creative without
  continued renewal of the creative bloodstream
  .
• A creative city will be a place where
  outsiders can enter and feel that state of
  ambiguity they must neither be excluded from
  opportunity, nor must they be so warmly embraced
  that the creative drive is lost
• (Hall, 1998, p.171 p.285-6).

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Research questions

• To what extent are different cultural industries
  open to the cultural diversity brought by
  migrants?
• What are the mechanisms shaping the
  incorporation of migrants in cultural industries?
  
• To what extent is there a qualitative
  contribution in initiating or generating
  competitiveness-enhancing innovations?

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Incorporating the CIs

• CIs product cycle, from creativity to consumption
  (Leyshon, 2001)
• Commodification boundary between the creative
  idea and its mediation into a product with
  economic value
• Filtering process whereby some novelties pass,
  others are rejected
• Related to the time-and-place-specific creative
  field shaping the interaction between supply and
  demand

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CI commodification process
COMMODIFICATION BOUNDARY
COMMODIFICATION BOUNDARY
COMMODIFICATION BOUNDARY
Mainstream
Reproduction distribution
Consumption
CREATIVITY
Reproduction distribution
Consumption
Niche
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Mapping resources/entry level
music
architecture
music
architecture
music
architecture
music
architecture
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Exploring the boundary

• Reviewing dynamics behind the competitiveness and
  innovativeness of specific cultural industries
  sectors
• Opportunity structure (interaction between supply
  and demand)
• Exploring resources mobilized by migrants
  participating in the sectors
• Resources (human, social, ethnic, financial
  capital)

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Methodology

• Explorative, hypotheses-generating
• Sectoral analysis
• Music, architecture, (fashion)
• Quantitative patterns of participation (CCI data)
• Qualitative research
• Interview-based
• Migrants who made it and not
• Sectoral gatekeepers (at creative, production,
  distribution, consumption phases)
• Transnational comparison
• Amsterdam, London and Paris
• Exploring contextual factors (creative field,
  institutional setting)

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Snapshot 1 the music industry

• Nobody knows leading to over-production yet
  concentration in distribution on few stars
• Digitalisation of music opportunity or
  constraint for diversity of recording artists?

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Snapshot 2 architecture

• Higher threshold in becoming self-employed, due
  to high degree of formalisation of career path
• Restricted niche markets
• Being different has strategic value (Burton
  Hamfelt, architect)

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• Onze taak is om een nieuw Amsterdam in het oude
  Amsterdam te maken, want er is meer dan één
  Amsterdam
• (Burton Hamfelt, architect, in Kibbelaar, 2007,
  p.31)