The multicultural city in the St. Petersburg press
Keywords:
kaupunki, monikulttuurisuus, lehdistöAbstract
This article discusses the ways in which two local newspapers in St. Petersburg represent the city, its
multicultural character and the spatiality of otherness in the light of the growing influx of migrant
workers. How is the represented urban space organised, shared or divided between different actors
when talking about St. Petersburg, and how does the emerging multicultural and even tolerant image
of the city become constructed and legitimised? The newspapers discussing migrant workers on one
hand represent and reproduce prejudices prevalent in society in their ethnocentric discourse, and on
the other attach elements of the discourse to the locations they name in the news, thus producing
images of how migrants and locals inhabit the city, and the cultural norms that should apply in St.
Petersburg. Rather than representing direct observations from social reality, the representations of a
tolerant St. Petersburg are rather constructed by employing established discourses on local history,
culture and identity. Simultaneously, migrant workers are represented in places where the stereotypes
of ethnocentric discourse are localised. Representations of a tolerant and multicultural St. Petersburg
are accompanied by accounts of contested urban space being claimed by both locals and migrants
and their distinct ways of inhabiting the city as a cultural template.
