Olfactory symbolism is linked to processes of social classification. Smell acts as a mark of difference and is used in avoidance processes twards immigrants who are considered as «smelly others». Using the ethnographic case of El Carmel neighbourhood in the city of Barcelona, this article analyses the odour-sociality related to the construction of the migrant body. Otherness and externality, together with issues around marginality, are brought together in shaping the idea of the migrant body. Such issues stemmed from broader power regimes of social acceptability. The presence of specific odours is constructed as an anomaly in the seemingly deodorized urban space of the city of Barcelona. Much on the contrary, this article shows how this city space is made of complex smellscapes subjected to capitalist commercialization logics. Reflecting on the role of odor in the social classification mechanisms allows us to approach in an incarnated way the processes of sociability that take place in supposedly odorless urban spaces, as well as to analyze processes of corporalization of tensions between identity and otherness. © 2018, Asociacion de Antropologos Iberoamericanos en Red. All rights reserved.

Migration Difference Barcelona Smell Body

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