Page - 61 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

Parading in the city’s public space: Migrant Belonging through the Hare Krishna festivities1 Debora Baldelli Abstract The cosmopolitan character of Lisbon along with the process of touristification and gentrification of the city in the past ten years has changed its cultural activities. It also influenced the way in which the Lisbon City Council decided to integrate (or not) immigrant communities into a social and cultural policy focusing on “interculturality”. Immigrant neighbourhoods become tourist districts with “diversity”, changing the inhabitants’ very relationship with the city. Through the Yatra Ratha Festival, Hare Krishna devotees and Hindu immigrants together appropriate the public space to express themselves in the city where they live. I propose to discuss the role of performance in the public space as an expressive practice that provides moments of union between a diverse group of immigrants living in Lisbon who, despite having similar religious practices associated with Hinduism, belong to different religious groups and countries of origin. I argue that through the Ratha Yatra, participatory performance in the form of collective mantras, singing and dancing, becomes fundamental to creating a sense of belonging to the city of Lisbon. Keywords migration; performance; Hare Krishna; public space; expressive practices DOI 10.25364/08.4:2018.1.5 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal, Vol. 4 2018, 61-76 Peer reviewed article Open Access: content is licensed under CC BY 3.0 1 This article is based on my doctoral thesis entitled “Spiritual and expressive practices in a migratory context: an ethnography of the Hare Krishna Movement in the city of Lisbon”, at the New University of Lisbon, 2017, funded by Capes (11871-20); and an unfolding project focused on the Ratha Yatra Festival I developed inde- pendently after my viva.