What does this research mean for the field?

Public secrecy and sonic practices enable asylum seekers to create 'secretly public' commons, allowing them to generate shared resources and reconfigure their public presence in cities characterized by both sanctuary initiatives and state enforcement. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.INCREMENTAL. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

What question did this study set out to answer?

Investigate how secretly public musical practices generate alternative urban commons among people seeking asylum within cities characterized by sanctuary initiatives alongside state-sanctioned violence.

September 7, 2026Urban StudiesOpen Access

Sounds of Asylum Bristol: Musicking and secretly public commoning in a city of sanctuary and violence

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Authors

NUNicola De Martini UgolottiAssociazione Frantz Fanon

Discussion

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Implication

Participatory ethnographic study reveals secretly public music spaces foster collective commoning among asylum seekers, highlighting how sonic practices resist urban dispossession and state control.

Key Points

Investigate how secretly public musical practices generate alternative urban commons among people seeking asylum within cities characterized by sanctuary initiatives alongside state-sanctioned violence.
Conducted 18 months of ethnographic and participatory fieldwork in Bristol, UK.
Engaged a group of approximately 60 men and women of diverse origins, predominantly asylum seekers, attending weekly music sessions.
Demonstrated that public secrecy functions as an essential operational condition for sustaining shared affective, social, and material resources under state enforcement.
Showed that sonic commoning establishes strategic thresholds of visibility that surpass normative public narratives of asylum eligibility and undeservingness.

Cite This Study

Nicola De Martini Ugolotti (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a9e85b3c3034f961570dffd https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980261480968

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Implication

Participatory ethnographic study reveals secretly public music spaces foster collective commoning among asylum seekers, highlighting how sonic practices resist urban dispossession and state control.