| Summary/Abstract |
This paper discusses the significance of considering the relationship of urban space to affective intimacy. I consider the modes through which migrant students attending the University of Colombo experience Sri Lanka's capital city. Focusing on romantic relationships, I argue that the city presents a relational space that can be transformed through quotidian intimate experiences. Students inhabit and re-orient a potentially isolating and alienating space with emotionally-inflected interactions, routines and memories. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted with students at the university in 2007–08, this paper argues that building an affectionate and living relationship with the city is a way of ‘intimatising’ it.
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