ABSTRACT
This paper suggests that a short cycle of British films (1999-2007) concerned primarily with migration offers a rare, sustained examination of urbanization and the right to urban life, in relation to both the city (London) but also to the transformation of sites ‘outside’ the city that occupy subordinate positions within London’s power geometries. The first section of the paper introduces Rancière’s understanding of the relationship between politics and aesthetics. The second section examines planetary urbanization and explains why this emergent terrain is haunted by the spectre of the city. Following this there is a discussion of the urbanization-migration nexus, which it is suggested is just one of the neglected social and cultural dimensions of existing literature on planetary urbanization. This is followed by an analysis of concerned primarily with migration. This analysis is split between ‘images of the city’ and ‘images of urbanization’.