Urban diaspora space: Rural–urban migration and the production of unequal urban spaces

•Incorporating migration in understandings of urban inclusion and exclusion.•Urban diaspora space is a lens for studying the production of unequal urban spaces.•The study explores rural–urban migrants in the process of becoming urban in Nepal.•Diasporic communities come to define the social and political urban agenda.•Social and political rural geographies are reproduced in the urban.