Urban nature and transnational lives

This paper explores ways in which first generation migrants living in a UK city engage with urban nature. Through understanding mundane connections with local nature (plants, animals and seasons), we attend to two questions ‘ what can narratives of urban nature tell us about experiences of migration ’ , and inversely ‘ what can diverse migrant voices tell us about experiences of urban nature ’ ? We draw on interview data with 23 participants, all born overseas, with a diverse mix in terms of age (young adults to older retired people), gender, country of origin and length of time resident in the United Kingdom. The analysis focuses on three areas: multisensory engagements with weather, care for nature and how transnational identities surface through the relational dimensions of nature narratives. We conclude by highlighting the potential of embodied nature engagement to support a sense of wellbeing and transnational identity across the life-course, with potential to more broadly reflect pluralist understandings of the urban environment.


| INTRODUCTION
As succinctly stated by O'Connor (2010, p. 75), 'international migration is an inherently embodied process'. Within both academic research and popular culture, this embodiment is almost entirely recounted within a built urban context, 1 where common narratives of the mundane materiality of migrant lives are told through artefacts, food and paperwork. The spatial dimensions of transnational experiences are explored through appropriation and adaptation of the urban realm, played out through changes over time to shop fronts, eating establishments, places of worship and city squares. Our notion of the 'transcultural city' (Hou, 2013), the 'superdiverse street' (Hall, 2013), or 'cosmopolis' (Sandercock, 2003) is shaped by a tacit notion of materiality in the form of a built hardscape, albeit one which responds to multiple connections across global borders.
Yet within this built matrix is a locally specific vegetated softscape. Glimpsed through most urban windows, plants (trees, shrubs, flowers and weeds) are present, themselves providing home and nourishment to a range of less visible scurrying and grazing creatures.
Above the buildings is the mottled blue/grey/whiteness of the sky and the various flight paths of resident or migratory birds. This is how urban ecology is experienced: the planted and emergent ways in which nature is cultivated and cherished within designated public open spaces, tolerated in the cracks, or simply providing a backdrop of distant hills or changing skyscapes. People living in cities have their own nature connections, from the immediacy of growing within a garden or balcony, to the recreational use of the local park, to trips out to nearby countryside (Dobson et al., 2021). These reflect interests, values and competing priorities at different life stages as well as various opportunities of specific jobs, homes and neighbourhoods.
In this paper, we explore the extent to which urban nature reflects and informs transnational dynamics within the everyday lives of first generation migrants living in one city in the north of England. 2 Through narratives of being outdoors, feeling better (or not) and engagement (or not) with urban flora and fauna, we attend to the ways in which perceptions and preferences for experiences of nature can be both local, embedded in the here-and-now, and transnational, defined here as reflective of global 'not-here' places. We develop a framing that focuses on the relational, encompassing intergenerational near and distant ties and the role of embodied sensory experiences.
The 23 interviews that provide the primary data for the study allow us to understand some specific dimensions regarding the value of nature for wellbeing. By focusing on people who were born and spent their childhoods in different regions of the world (all but two non-European), we are able to explore the influence on early years' experiences in informing adult preferences for outdoor places and environmental values. What remains, what changes? We focus on the challenges of adaptation, the range of responses to both novelty and familiarity in natural places (Rishbeth & Finney, 2006), and how this may reflect length of time in the new home country. And although our focus is primarily on the urban contexts of nature and use of greenspaces, we also tease out the various ways in which this is framed in relation to rural natural environments in the United Kingdom and in countries of origin.
The first question of this paper is 'what can narratives of urban nature tell us about experiences of migration?' This is a meaningful question to ask in that we learn how connecting with urban nature contributes to shaping migrant identities. We explore how talking about nature and embodied 'doing nature' in different ways lead to wider understandings of how migrants' relationships are conducted across time and space. We gain insight into how nature connections can support the wellbeing of someone who is a migrant and the diverse ways this happens across different life stages and personal histories.
Our second question is an inverse, potentially more oblique enquiry: What can diverse migrant voices tell us about experiences of urban nature? Such a question raises issues of environmental equity (Agyeman, Schlosberg, Craven, & Matthews, 2016), the need to expand ways in which 'nature' is understood, discussed and given value in increasingly ethnically diverse urban contexts. Our enquiry demonstrates that social inequalities (in particular living in neighbourhoods with higher levels of deprivation) can constrain access to nature (especially high quality greenspace), but also that a childhood spent in a very different typology of landscape does not diminish the value many migrants place on experiential qualities of nature, and indeed, these experiences are further enriched and made meaningful through transnational connections.
The intersection of these two questions addressing urban nature with transnational lives, is fundamentally multiscalar, scoping both a wide range of spatial and temporal dynamics of people and place.
Though we are attentive to typologies of urban greenspace-woodland, parks and gardens-these are not neatly defined within the interview accounts, where narratives jump between long views and morning mists to pigeons and blossom. Change over time is reflected in both the human and the non-human: stories of personal movement between countries align with transitions from childhood to adulthood, and experiences of place are informed by seasons and times of day.
The concept of urban nature in transnational lives as spatially and temporally multiscalar sit comfortably within theories that foreground space as the 'product of interrelations' and as 'simultaneity of stories so far' (Massey 2005, p. 9). In the spaces of our migrant participants' lives, urban nature and experiences of migration are (co) cumulative.
Our research findings highlight just some of the assemblage components evident in stories about places, past lives, people and nonhumans across different scales of 'nature spaces'.
In our discussion of the research findings, we interrogate specific embodied experiences with attention to nature-in-place and the importance of social contexts. We explore three themes in detail, before discussing more broadly the relationship between migrants living in cities and nature connections. First, we turn to responses to weather, on adaptation to specific differences experienced postmigration with an emphasis on embodied and sensory responses to place. Second, we address transnational (sometimes nostalgic) practices as explored through the notion of everyday care for urban nature. Third, we look at the relevance of human relations for nature connection and at the transnational dimensions of these for both newly arrived and long-settled migrants. These three themes that emerged strongly from the data also offer a route towards understanding what urban nature experiences tell us about migration and what diverse migrant experiences tell us about urban nature experiences. In the discussion, we expand understandings across disciplinary fields attending to urban nature, to migration and attendant notions of social inclusion and supportive relationships and places. We address omissions in academic debates that commonly fail to articulate both how 'bodies in nature' are migrant and non-White, and how nature is urban, often domestic, and everyday (Macnaghten & Urry, 2001).

| NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS AND NATURE CONNECTIONS WITHIN ETHNICALLY DIVERSE CITIES
2.1 | Equity of access to nature for migrants Nature connections can encompass a wide range of actions-noticing, caring and advocating; emotions-gratitude, acceptance and compassion; and sensations-pleasure and grounding (e.g., Birch, Rishbeth, & Payne, 2020;Lumber, Richardson, & Sheffield, 2017).
Even in an entirely urban context, there is substantive evidence to demonstrate a wide range of positive impacts on personal wellbeing, especially related to mental health (Pritchard, Richardson, Sheffield, & McEwan, 2019;Villeneuve et al., 2012). What is often less well interrogated (both in academic debate and in environmental practice) is the relationship of these to human social diversity. Historically in the global north, ecology and conservation has been positioned within an 'anglo-normativity' (Byrne & Wolch, 2009, p. 752) a framing reiterated by leisure surveys that indicate lower 'frequency of visits' to 'natural environments' by members of Black and minority ethnic communities (Burt, Stewart, Preston, & Costley, 2013;Natural England, 2016).
Understanding of the dynamics between cultural diversity, migration and engagement with urban public open space, nature spaces, or what previous literature has often termed natural environments is gradually gaining traction as a theme of study, particularly within disciplines of landscape architecture, social geography and leisure studies.
Research projects commonly scope the importance and intersection of various barriers-nonmajority cultural norms, demands of adaptation, impact of socio-structural factors such as precarious situations and low financial resources through methods such as literature reviews (Byrne & Wolch, 2009;Jay et al., 2012;Kloek, Buijs, Boersema, & Schouten, 2013;Ordóñez Barona, 2017) and large-scale surveys (Lovelock, Lovelock, Jellum, & Thompson, 2011;Peters, Stodolska, & Harolets, 2016). A more focused and context-specific work highlights the experience of being a person of colour in White-dominant spaces (Long, Hylton, & Spracklen, 2014), the impact of discrimination on confidence (Kloek, Peters, & Sijtsma, 2013), or the particularity of life situations (Rishbeth, Blachnicka-Ciacek, & Darling, 2019). Within this small but growing body of literature, the distinctions between an ethnic-cultural focus and that framed by a personal migration history begin to be teased out (we return to this in the following section) and the relationship of these to the notion of intercultural cities-urban life in an era of mobility (Council of Europe, 2016;Rishbeth, 2020). In this paper, we present a migration-specific lens, developed below in Section 3, while recognising the diversity of different migration trajectories and how these shape mundane experiences (Bhugra, 2004).
However, barriers to nature connection due to living in deprived or disadvantaged circumstances are relevant within this debate. In the global north, migrants and members of migrant communities disproportionately live within these contexts and neighbourhoods (Lukes, De Noronha, & Finney, 2018), which can contribute to levels of everyday stress (Spicer, 2008;Zontini, 2004), as well as often having access to a lower quantity and quality of greenspace provision (Brindley, Cameron, Ersoy, Jorgensen, & Maheswaran, 2019;CABE, 2010;Mears, Brindley, Maheswaran, & Jorgensen, 2019). Egoz and De Nardi (2017) analyse the evidence for spatial and cultural inequalities inherent in the provision of urban green infrastructure (parks, woodlands and waterfronts) as exacerbating and entrenching health inequalities.
Drawing on and extending theories of equity in place, they convincingly argue that the relationship between migration and access to natural landscapes is core to enacting landscape justice. Research with a specific health focus supports this, with both quantitative (Roe, Aspinall, & Ward Thompson, 2016) and qualitative (Hordyk, Hanley, & Richard, 2015) research concluding that though access to naturalistic urban greenspace has significant positive impacts on wellbeing for many people, it has increased positive impacts for people in 'Black and Minority Ethnic' groups living with higher levels of deprivation. Hordyk et al. (2015, pp. 80-81) summarise some of the key benefits: nature as a no-cost recreational resource (especially when housing is of poor quality), opportunities for 'lingerings and diversions' which frame urban greenspace as a socially integrative environment, and nature as a buffer for stress. So though the potential for nature 'disconnection' is often high, the benefits of supporting access to nature can be claimed to support social equity in ethnically diverse urban contexts. This is significant for individual wellbeing (especially for migrants living in situations of hardship or precarity) but also for thinking more ambitiously about what it means-in theory and in practice-to value nature in an ethnically diverse society.
2.2 | Multiscalar aspects to urban nature, beyond a 'visiting' focus Understanding something of the theoretical approaches to urban places reflected in the ethos and methods of this research is also important.
Clearly, we are researching within intersections of migrant lives and place-but what does this mean in terms of conceptualising geographic (micro-macro-temporal) qualities of urban nature? Research agendas that give primary emphasis to social dynamics rather than qualities of specific places can tend towards a rather functional framing of urban greenspace as a public venue for integration (Peters, 2010;Seeland, Dübendorfer, & Hansmann, 2009), understanding these places as socially permeable resources but neglecting the relevance of materiality and the non-human within them. Research that examines specific typologies of the 'natural environment' usually evokes a stronger sense of place identity-the affordances of a park (Neal, Bennett, Jones, Cochrane, & Mohan, 2015) or a riverside (Goodall, Cadzow, Byrne, & Wearing, 2011)-but tend to analyse greenspace as a bounded entity, adrift from a broader analysis of the urban outdoor environment. More pertinent to our inquiry is Horolets' (2016, p. 144) compelling and evocative list of themes that she identified from her interviews about nature with Polish migrants living in a UK city. Defying scale or location, it includes air temperature, animate world (including domestic, farm, and zoo animals), plants, nature as place, nature as viewed landscape, seasons and weather. This eclecticism reflects experiential qualities of being in place that clearly leap from the page in many of the sociological focused explorations foregrounding urban nature, the relevance of sensory qualities (Bhatti et al., 2016, p. 144, on garden spaces and temporality Bennett's, 2015, being 'snowed in!'), and how these inform understanding of human presence alongside/as part of nature (Christensen, 2014;Sutcliffe, 2018). Therefore, in this paper, we attend to nature connection as an assemblage of things, actions, places and experiences across gradients of public/private, rural/urban, designed/ spontaneous and moving/growing (Edensor, 2011). We explore multiscalar understandings of urban nature and the experiential qualities of being outdoors and do not limit discussion to visiting natural environments.

| MIGRANT EXPERIENCES OF NATURE
While drawing on literature that encompasses how different Black and minority ethnic communities do or do not access nature and greenspace in urban contexts, in this paper, we focus on the experiences of first generation migrants (in comparison with research informed by ethnic background). This shifts the emphasis. Though also referencing aspects of ethno-cultural values and preferences, and the relevance of often visibly 'sticking out' (Askins, 2009;Rishbeth et al., 2019), this paper gives specific attention to the role of childhood experiences, and memories of these, in shaping nature connection (a dominant theme in research on environmental preference, Christensen, 2014;Ward Thompson, Aspinall, Bell, & Findlay, 2005). The paper also attends to the impact of potential unfamiliarity of both an ecological knowledge and of 'norms' of recreation and use of outdoor spaces.

| Unfamiliarities of relocation
Experience of the outdoors and nature as unfamiliar (the shock of the new) may be more strongly felt among those recently migrated compared with people born abroad but long settled. More general experiences of dislocation and being unsettled can find focus in specific experiences of being outside, for example, difference in climate from a previous country of residence. Migrants talk about bodily reactions to seasons and weather, the greyness of the skies and bare winter trees (Rishbeth & Powell, 2013), indignities of slipping in the snow (Hurley, 2019;Leikkilä, Faehnle, & Galanakis, 2013) and the unusual smell of the not-warm air (Christou, 2011). Research in the United Kingdom with refugees and asylum seekers, both younger participants (Rishbeth & Finney, 2006) and adults (Rishbeth et al., 2019), emphasises the disorientation of unfamiliar typologies of public spaces-periurban and suburban parks, cemeteries and canal-sides-and how these can often be experienced as disconcerting: too quiet, possibly unsafe, and difficult to comprehend which activities are appropriate or not.
Unfamiliarity is not necessarily 'bad' in itself and can be cause for concern or a point of novel delight dependent on context (Rishbeth & Finney, 2006). Research focused on urban gardening and allotmenting (Coughlan & Hermes, 2016;Lapina, 2017;Taylor & Lovell, 2015) mostly highlights positive emotional reactions, including recognition of plants and transnational practices of growing. The particularity represented by the non-human-a plant in place or out of place-does appear to support migrants developing broader conceptions of their own sense of (transnational) belonging (Rishbeth & Finney, 2006;Strunk & Richardson, 2017). Strunk and Richardson (2017, p. 19) suggest these micro-relationships indicate conceptions and challenges of nature, land-use and ecological imaginings, informing a need for urban environments to be shaped by and reflect social diversity.

| Being in outdoor natural spaces and cultures of recreation
In discussing recreation practices and 'new' migrants, there can be a tacit emphasis on leisure activities as paths towards integration and adaptation (Lewis, 2015). While being mindful of the potential for re-enforcing assimilationist notions (Byrne, 2012;Taylor & Toohey, 1999), foregrounding 'recreation' can shift stories of migrant lives beyond the functional and bureaucratic to recognise the importance of mundane joys, and the potential richness of hybrid and transnational identities. Nature connection, of course, is not always related to recreation-the fox passed on the way to work, the bird outside the window-but longer periods of engagement with nature often reflect recreational cultures: walking, socialising and playing particular sports (Goodall et al., 2011;Hurley, 2019;Jay & Schraml, 2014;Kloek, Buijs, et al., 2013;Ratna, 2017). Though barriers to participation are commonly identified (many structural, many similar to those previously discussed in Section 2.1), striking across a number of research projects is the focus on outdoor leisure as reflective of aspirations and values, such as experiencing new activities (Lovelock et al., 2011), or even hope for the future (Stone, 2018). The idea of recreation as choice (Lewis, 2015) and as expressive of identity is one that we develop through this paper, and echoes some of Neal et al.'s (2015) discussion on the social solidarities of elective leisure found in parks.

| Transnational connections
Given the relevance that many accounts of nature connection give to the evocation of memory, it is unsurprising that research including migrant participants evokes 'translocal sensescapes', embodied responses to the smells, sounds and textures of city places (Lahiri, 2011, p. 855). Times spent in urban greenspace, views of rural landscapes, activities such as family celebrations, gardening or sport are all shown to evoke memories of past locations (Askins, 2009;Hurley, 2019;Ratna, 2017;Rishbeth & Finney, 2006;Silveirinha de Oliveira, 2012). Some researchers explore the cumulative influence of these recognitions for developing framings of transnational place attachment (Addas & Rishbeth, 2018;Silveirinha de Oliveira, 2012) and a sense of belonging shaped by relationship to urban landscapes (Lovelock et al., 2011;Peters et al., 2016;Ratna, 2017). Radstone (2011) highlights the elusive nature of transnational memories, emphasising the need for 'memory research' that gives 'an attentiveness to the locatedness of memory with an awareness of memory's potential to wander' (p. 114). This acknowledgement of hybridity reflects some of the nuances of landscape qualities, an openness and fluidity to memories and connections.
With regard to migration, a focus on process and time gains importance. Attending not only to recent arrivals but also to settled residents helps develop theory relating to transnational nature connections. Exploring across both the tangible and the experiential qualities of 'nature' extends place-based notions of transnational belonging (De Nardi, 2017), engages with cultural heritage through mundane practices (Goodall et al., 2011), questions the oft-assumed neutrality of natural environments (extending work by Askins, 2009;Kloek, Peters, & Sijtsma, 2013) and hopes to give weight to the way in which both connections and disconnections can shape a sense of a self in the world.

| METHODOLOGY
The interviews that inform our two central questions were undertaken as one component of a 3-year research project. Improving Wellbeing through Urban Nature (IWUN) was an interdisciplinary project that involved multiple qualitative, quantitative and participatory methods to explore themes of mental health and wellbeing relating to proximity to and engagement with urban nature. All research activities focused on a city-wide case study of Sheffield, population 500,000, located in the north of England. Within this, we conducted a qualitative strand exploring cultures and values of urban nature, involving 90 participants of ages 16-80 in either in-depth interviews or in artsbased workshops (the latter specifically recruited people with lived experience of mental health difficulties). The findings of this paper are based only the data from the interviews. We drew on narrative approaches (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2008) and Tolia- East Asia (two), Caribbean (five, all older age band) and Europe (two). The employment status of the participants was three homemakers (with degree education, two educated to PhD), five in paid work, seven retired, two in full-time postgraduate study, three unemployed and three asylum seekers.
Participants were recruited using a diverse range of 'enquiry points' both in terms of social context and geographically across Sheffield, none of which were related to nature or environmental causes. Over the duration of a year, we built up links with community and third sector groups, meeting at participants' choice of home or public meeting place. We approached participants with a careful process of information, request and consent, using video recordings to present the research information and consent process. We respected opting out, expressed both explicitly and obliquely and gave choices as to whether the interviews were conducted individually or as pairs (friendship or couples). Most participants allowed us to audio record and transcribe, with four of the interviewees requesting notes instead.
The average length was 1 h. One person (Birch) conducted all the interviews, and a translator was used in only one interview with an older south Asian woman.
In aiming to capture a range of voices and experiences, and being particularly interested in people who did not see themselves as 'nature lovers', we thought carefully about how the research themes were initially communicated and developed during the interview. We avoided any mention of nature, 'green' or the environment in participant recruitment, choosing instead a much broader (but also accurate) framing of the content as relating to Though this exercise was always prefaced with a 'this might feel a little weird but have a go', and often accompanied by shared laughter, it was usually extremely effective in capturing something otherwise elusive about the participants' ideas and ethos around nature-gratitude, awe or care.
The analysis process was multidimensional, the primary focus being reading individual transcripts (verbatim, pseudonymised) and building up an understanding of individual narratives, values, contexts and engagements. An additional approach was the use of NVivo (qualitative data management software) to conduct a process of coding and aid thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We used both approaches to identify migration-specific broader themes and more detailed categories (spatial, relational, temporal and object related), aiming not to essentialise or perfectly mirror participants' experiences but allowing for researchers' own positions and perspectives to emerge (Lenz Taguchi, 2012, p. 268). We brought to the analysis our shared and diverse academic interests in cultural diversity of landscape use, including previous academic and nonacademic connections with migrant experiences, while attentive to our own positioning as nonmigrants.
The following three sections present findings from the study, with each section exploring a key theme to emerge from interviews. We foreground personal narratives and stories from participants, which indicate the significance of 'weather', 'care' and 'relationships', responding to the call from Kloek, Buijs, Boersema, and Schouten (2015) for a greater diversity of migrant perspectives. We then interweave perspectives from other authors working across a range of fields that include transnational and urban studies as well as cultural and health geographies.
Sensory qualities of place are heightened by the immediacy of skin sensations and the cultural resonances of these-an embodiment that reflects a change in circumstance. Weather narratives, as references to ephemeral landscapes (Brassley, 1998) Feelings about weather as nature, as with other kinds of nature, are dynamic and changeable across time (Skår, 2010).
Some participants articulated what they saw as the particular beauty of weather in the United Kingdom, describing some very specific conditions that spoke to their sense of natural qualities, some framing this as a privilege of living in England.
When it rains you can see the cloud coming in a big mass and pouring down the rain. It's again a very beautiful thing to see, how the weather changes quickly and in such a dramatic way. Binita (female, middle age, moved to the UK from India sixteen years previous).
Idin described the pleasures of fog and mist, explaining how his 'connection' to nature becomes 'stronger' in these weather conditions: I like it especially when the clouds come down and it is cloudy-like today. This rain is so small. I have not seen it before. It does not make you wet. I like it. It comes on your skin and feels good. Most of the middle and older age migrant participants, men and women, talked about acts of growing, in gardens, yards, an allotment and a balcony. Those who appeared to have higher levels of nature connection generally were also those most keen on tending plants. Mr Miller, one of our oldest participants, in drawing his picture of his Sheffield nature chose to draw his allotment in plan view with 'a greenhouse with tomatoes growing'. He describes his experience there as 'Just happy, enjoyment and the best thing is to watch, watch them grow, watch the plants grow'. This response echoes others' study of older migrants' gardening experiences, which offered satisfaction and contributed to migrant's wellbeing (Beckie & Bogdan, 2010;Li, Hodgetts, & Ho, 2010).
The allotment is a place where Mr Miller has become both locally knowledgeable and productive. During the joint interview with his wife, he talked about differences in climate between the United Kingdom and Jamaica, about particular crops he grows and the territorial dynamics of birds in the allotment, naming many of them. There is significant effort involved in tending the allotment, and in the growing season, he is there most days. This is a 'labour of love' for Mr Miller but which care for self and for garden as part of daily life (Bhatti et al., 2009;Casey, 1993). When asked what the allotment would say to him, Mr Miller said 'I think it would say to me "well done"'.
Contributing to understanding the interrelationships between nature connections and migration experience, we find that in this case, the allotment is a clear point of establishment and commitment to 'here', and did not appear to be used, by choice of crops or growing methods, as a specific connection to Mr Miller's rural childhood in Jamaica or traditions and memories, (e.g., Gerodetti & Foster, 2016 He recounts the exasperation but also the acceptance of his mother: 'My mother said, "oh here is the next one!"' Having come to the United Kingdom as a young adult asylum seeker just a few months previously, these squirrels are linked back to his mother's voice, but also importantly a point of consistency, an identity of someone who loves animals and cares for them. At this unusual 'here and now' in his life, this possibly transgressive contact with wildlife allows a way of being present and having choices, of offering a welcome rather than seeking one. Farooq grafts mulberries, an act that connects him to his uncle in Pakistan, the fruit trees also providing a play area for his granddaughter. These people are not necessarily physically present in the story, or play a central role, but are intrinsic to understanding relevance and meaning. Across the various accounts of nature connection from the interviews, social relations appear important to understanding transnational dimensions to connections with urban nature. Many of the relationships highlighted in nature stories were those pertaining to families, often intergenerational (older and younger).
Grandparents were often mentioned in stories of childhood, people who played an important caring role in their lives, often rural dwelling and representing traditional skills of living off the land. Middle-aged migrant residents were aware that these relatives from previous generations in distant places were remote to their own children. Landscape recollections were one way in which these temporal and relational disconnections could be reconciled.
Helima is a middle-aged Algerian woman with four children who has lived in the United Kingdom for over two decades. Here, she describes her time spent at a peri-urban farm run by an educational trust. The account highlights multiple ways in which she makes trans- Through these family stories, we learn that urban nature experience is, indicated in the introduction, a simultaneity of stories and a palimpsest of human relations across spatial and temporal scales. Nurturing of children, and how this relates to living in Sheffield but having memories of a childhood elsewhere, prompts reflection among parents in our study, especially female participants. Some talk about the difference between their childhood play environments (hide and seek in the streets of Jakarta and smelling market smells while walking to school in South India) and those available to their children ( What do you say to nature? 'I say: I love to be here.' Another asylum seeker, Hadil, spends long periods of time walking round Sheffield, using online maps on his phone to find and mark places of interest, seeing parks as places to 'find life' and watch people. Though he likes being in busier places, he also values relaxation, flowers, sitting alone or with his friend 'find a bench in the sun', with a small Bluetooth speaker he bought for £5 so he can listen to music at the same time.
He misses the outdoor music that would play in outdoor places in his home country of Sudan. Rojwan is a young man who recently gained refugee status, having arrived as an asylum seeker a year previously.
Coming from a country in which evening curfews operated, Rojwan described nature as 'free … not any rules in nature'. In relation to our first central question, it is clear here that nature supports a sense of freedom for Rojwan and has extra resonance for someone with experience of such tight spatial and temporal restrictions to his movements. He too preferred being outdoors, mostly on his own, valuing the sensory and restorative qualities of urban greenspace, the freshness of air and quiet of early mornings. He described relevance for his own health 'if you have been in more green places you will be getting more health'.
Another set of experiences we noted were those of loneliness and 'lonely'. We get a sense here of how relations in outdoor public spaces are important for a sense of 'self-worth, belonging and self-location' for young male migrants in particular 4 (De Martini Ugolotti, 2015, p. 26). Relational aspects of transnational connection seem weaker for participants at this stage of their migration history, or may be just too hard to talk about. Yet, at least for some, the neutral and engaging quality of spending time outside is shown as highly important and something that provides a measure of shared humanity, agency and dignity.
Although this paper has aimed to foreground the impact of migra- settings, it is important to attend also to the social dynamics shaping these locations (Neal et al., 2015), and the relationship of visibly different bodies (as individuals and as groups) to others in 'natural environments'.
Nonfamily relationships and social networks are important to supporting access to nature (urban and peri-urban) (Horolets, 2016). We found this especially the case for many of the middle-aged and older migrant participants. These are often local social and cultural contexts (health and community centres and religious settings) that provide opportunities to spend time outside with others. Kay, a retired women born in Jamaica, values her involvement with a local community organisation. From connections instigated here, she has taken part in healthy walking groups round local parks and a 'learn to cycle' course and becoming a regular participant in the 'Black Women's Walking Group' in the nearby Peak District National Park. Kay says 'I prefer a group, it feels a safer environment', and this has given her confidence to lead her own sisters out for walks. Other female participants talk about parks as places to meet up and spend leisure time with people from their own cultural community.
However, being alone in natural places is also something many participants valued, and many engaged with nature in and around the city because they saw it as important to their own wellbeing. Both Christians and Muslims talked about walking in parks and woods as a chance to pray. More broadly, emotional and spiritual benefits were recounted, 'feeling more energy' taking solo walks through woodland, and noticing the coming of spring 'Ah, it's time you came' (Mai, middle-aged female). Farida, a young female, spent time observing nature through a bedroom window as a way to build confidence during a period of ill health, and this resonates with other work indicating the value of indoor-experiences of outdoor nature for health and wellbeing (Speedy, 2015).

| CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
We return to the two central questions of our research, drawing together the narratives and themes of the interviews. In doing this, we review often the embodied qualities of experiencing nature, appropriating Crouch's reflection on 'space' as 'grasped through the doing, not as an object 'out there' or merely "felt" through the body; rather it is constituted by the numerous feelings, sensualities, and, in particular, the character of these things being expressed together ' (2003, p. 1953 (Hurley, 2019;Kloek et al., 2015), were sometimes a knowing linkthe jam making, the mulberry grafting and the forest walks. These material practices (Tolia-Kelly, 2004) and the embodied visceral qualities of them (Blachnicka-Ciacek, 2020) allow for transnational connections and make these communicable, something that can be shared especially with younger generations. Though experiences of nature engage the senses in a particular 'now' (and often an ecological specificity), the narratives here reflect some of the themes of Pahl's research on migrant belongings and artefacts (Pahl, 2012), in which a requirement for an exact likeness recedes. The significance and emotional resonance are remade by a combination of stories told and objects touched.
Secondly, how can awareness of migrant experiences inform understandings of urban nature?
We believe that the findings of our fieldwork shape a challenge to, and a necessary refinement of, notions of urban nature. Helpfully, urban nature discourses already include a rupture of the 'country/city and nature/city' dichotomies (Braun 2016, p. 647). We build on these and additionally situate ideas of urban nature as a mix of inside/outside and more boldly as dimensions of multi-ethnic urbanism. Too often nature-rural, wild and urban-has predominantly been articulated by White middle-class voices, often nostalgically informed by memories of playing out or holidaying in the British countryside (Barkham, 2019) and sometimes with disturbing colonial or exclusionary underpinnings (Smyth, 2019). northern European), we found no evidence that this constrains an ability to engage with nature in a range of ways. An educational focus on an inability to identify (e.g., species of birds or flowers, Lisewski-Hobson & Watkins, 2019) will miss much that people value. Joyful sensations (views, novel weather conditions, animal or plant observation) can transcend language (Horolets, 2016). Memories of elsewhere as shaping understandings of the present is a common insight in transnational urbanism (Hou, 2013). In this paper, we have extended this field, demonstrating how rarely articulated engagements with nature are highly personal and often meaningful ways in which place experiences transcend the purely local.
We conclude by highlighting a framing of urban nature and migrant lives, which emphasises temporality, multiscalar understandings of nature and the importance of relational contexts. Embodied sensory connections with local nature can resonate with transnational imaginings-engaging in the present with elsewhere people, activities, flora and fauna. These engagements may be fleeting or sustained, poised between comfort and sadness, but are often powerful and valuable in their ability for a sense of personal identity beyond a formal national identification. And though nature is often rooted, a locally specific ecology, it also can be migratory, shaped in different ways by non-local dynamics. How city residents 'think' and 'feel' about nearby nature is not reductive but pluralist-embracing both the known well and the novel, finding familiarity in unfamiliar places and points of connection through a responsive sensing. Diversity of nature cultures, that which is remembered as well as that which is familiar, can provide a small window into mutual belonging in a globalised world.
2 Though our research was conducted in a second-tier English city, we suggest that the focus on nature in urban environments is pertinent to migrants living in town contexts (especially if the nearly rural environment is not a primary feature of everyday life, e.g., through agricultural employment) and not just the highly metropolitan framing of an 'arrival city' (Saunders, 2012