Lars Meier

Dwelling in mobile times: places, practices and contestations

ABSTRACT Mobile people dwell in local environments. The present special issue considers the relation between mobility and dwelling. This introduction to the special issue on ‘(Im)mobilities of dwelling: Places and practices’ provides a general introduction to places and practices of dwelling of highly mobile people and discusses why it is a promising subject for both cultural and mobilities studies that still needs to be addressed in its full theoretical and empirical significance. We carve out the state-of-the-art of research regarding (im)mobilities of dwelling and argue that dwelling and mobility are also an issue of power relations and contestations. Against this backdrop we demonstrate that mobility and dwelling are embedded in broader transformations of society, social inequalities and home. Moreover, this introduction demonstrates how the subsequent papers contribute to this integrated perspective on the mobile–immobile nexus.

The importance of absence in the present: Practices of remembrance and the contestation of absences

The importance of absence in the present : practices of remembrance and the contestation of absences

Encounters with haunted industrial workplaces and emotions of loss : class related senses of place within the memories of metalworkers

This article is about the relevance of social class within emotional geography. Based on life history interviews with former metalworkers in Bavaria, it analyses their identity-related sense of place and the feelings of loss they experience when encountering their former places of work. By concentrating on the perspective of those who have worked on industrial sites, and their encounters with those sites, now transformed, this article focuses on a specific identity-related emotion experienced by working-class people, which is often underestimated. Recollections of common experiences linked to the workplace may seem haunting in the form of memories of body routines within a place ballet, or of former buildings and walls. Workers describe how, when they visit their former workplace, they have to confront this haunting from the past; and it is through these haunting experiences that their class identity takes on a new but often painful existence.

Das Einpassen in den Ort : der Alltag deutscher Finanzmanager in London und Singapur

Sie gelten als Agenten der Globalisierung: Finanzmanager. In diesem reich bebilderten Buch werden erstmals hochmobile Expatriates in ihrem alltäglichen Handeln direkt an städtischen Orten betrachtet. Wo und warum halten sie sich in den Städten auf? Wie betrachten und erleben sie bestimmte urbane Orte? – Interviews und Beobachtungen zeigen die alltäglichen Handlungen der männlichen deutschen Manager in London und Singapur und lassen so die meist unsichtbar bleibenden Identitäten der weißen und globalen Elite sichtbar werden. Die vergleichende Analyse des Alltags in beiden Städten macht die Bedeutung des besonderen Ortes für das Handeln deutlich. Die ehemals koloniale Beziehung zwischen dem Zentrum London und der Peripherie Singapur ist noch heute für das Handeln der Finanzmanager bedeutsam. Es zeigt sich: Die Finanzmanager passen sich in den Ort ein.

Dwelling in different localities: Identity performances of a white transnational professional elite in the City of London and the Central Business District of Singapore

ABSTRACT Besides being mobile, migrant professionals dwell at specific localities. It is in this article that identity performances of one social group with equal identity dimensions, white, male German financial manager, are compared in two different local contexts of their dwelling: in the City of London and in the Central Business District of Singapore. This article demonstrates that by comparing similar social groups in different localities, the effects of locality become clearly visible. As the managers are temporal migrants, their dwelling practices are to arrange themselves with locality for the time of their delegation. Everyday practices and the specific symbolic labelling of localities are expressions and producers of identity. The mobile managers encounter the two localities with unique images rooted in the colonial period; as a centre and an outpost, respectively. As these images have an impact on their identity performances today, this article demonstrates that the mangers perform whiteness and being transnational elite with different emphasis regarding locality.

Everyone knew everyone: diversity, community memory and a new established–outsider figuration

This article explores the transformation of a community and its diversity as narrated by former industrial workers from a neighbourhood in Nuremberg, in a context in which company-based social housing of workers had been replaced by private rented accommodation accessed by middle class residents of migrant backgrounds. In biographical interviews, narratives emerge in which diversity and social difference are not seen as ethnic difference, but rather as a power difference within an established–outsider figuration. In this figuration, heterogeneous past and present cultural practices are homogenised through community control and regulation along normative rules as defined by the established. Workers’ nostalgic laments for the loss of their former status show that figuration of established and outsiders is dynamic, opening up new ways of thinking about diverse place-making and alternative perspectives on urban gentrification.

Who are the New Middle Classes and why are they Given so Much Public Attention

Although still a relatively unexplored group, the new middle classes are enjoying a great deal of public attention. The first section discusses the question of why, then, the new middle classes have become a favored topic in the media and the broader political public. Section 1.2 looks at who the new middle classes are and how they can be examined empirically. Section 1.3 links the issue to the overarching debate on cultural globalization between McDonaldization, modernities and cultural hybrids. The focus of Section 1.4 is on the emergence of “civic environmentalism” between individual concern, social protest and political decision making.

The narratives of Hardship: : The new and the old poor in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis in Europe

This paper examines poverty and hardship in Europe after the 2008 crisis, using household interviews in nine European countries. A number of findings deserve highlighting. First, making a distinction between ‘the old poor’ (those who lived in poverty before as well as after the crisis) and ‘the new poor’ (those who fell into hardship after the crisis), we show that hardship is experienced quite differently by these groups. Second, the household narratives showed that while material deprivations constitute an important aspect of hardship, the themes of insecurity and dependency also emerged as fundamental dimensions. In contrast to popular political discourse in countries such as the UK, dependency on welfare or family was experienced as a source of distress and manifested as a form of hardship by participants in all countries covered in this study.

Den Ort spüren, Distanz erfahren -Irritationen der alltäglichen Handlungen deutscher Finanzbeschäftigter in London

London ist das wichtigste europaische Finanzzentrum und hat im weltweiten Vergleich die meisten auslandischen Bankensitze (vgl. Corporation of London 2003). Hier konzentriert sich der internationale Finanzbereich in so genannten lokalen Clustern: im Westend, den Docklands und in besonderem Mase in dem zentralen Stadtteil City of London (vgl. G. A. S. Cook et al. 2003). Die Internationalitat in der City ist unubersehbar, an nahezu jedem Gebaude hangen Unternehmensschilder von auslandischen Banken und Versicherungen, so dass es nicht uberrascht, dass hier ca. 40 % aller Beschaftigten fur auslandische Unternehmen arbeiten (vgl. Corporation of London 2003). Diese Dienstleistungsbeschaftigten kommen nicht nur aus Grosbritarmien in die City of London, ein bedeutender Teil wandert oder besser fliegt uber den nahe gelegenen City Airport, uber Heathrow, Stansted oder Luton aus verschiedenen Landern der Welt ein, um sich fur die Arbeit in der City in London niederzulassen. Diese hoch qualifizierten ArbeitsmigrantInnen leben und arbeiten nur fur einen begrenzten Zeitraum in London. Wenn der Arbeitsvertrag erfuillt bzw. das Projekt beendet ist, ziehen sie fur die Arbeit wieder in eine andere Stadt. Ihre Aufgabe ist es, den Transfer von Kapital und spezifischem Wissen zwischen den Finanzzentren zu vermitteln (vgl. J. V. Beaverstock 2002, 2003) und somit die Ausweitung internationaler Untemehmens und Bankennetzwerke zu begleiten (vgl. A. M. Findlay et al. 1996).

The Limits of Resistance in Public Spaces

From demonstrations, jaywalking, and graffiti to guerrilla gardening, public space can be used to stage multiple forms of resistance. These practices oppose dominant orders and the rules of established structures. They range from the micropolitical and ephemeral, such as revisualizing space through artistic work (Murphy & O’Driscoll, 2015), to more permanent restructurings of the material and political orders of public spaces. Acts of resistance carry very different personal risks for the activist and can even result in torture or even death. Examples of the homeless who challenge rules by occupying public spaces (Casey, Goudie, & Reeve, 2008) or by establishing temporary dwellings (Meier & Frank, 2016) can show the limits of resistance. The homeless might get chased away, demonstrations eventually end, and graffiti can be removed. While traces of previous resistance might remain and be remembered by some, the afterlife of instances of resistance is often obscure and not accessible to everyone in a diverse society (Frers, 2016). This special issue focuses on the limits of resistance in public space. With the exception of one theoretical article which suggests a threefold approach to examine practices of resistance, the articles in this special issue use concrete examples to explore the manifestation of resistance in public places and to examine where it fails to bridge sociocultural divisions. This issue analyses the manner in which the limits of resistance establish themselves and raises the possibility of expanding these limits. At the same time, however, since such an expansion might also mitigate the intended effect or even just the performance or act in and of itself, its desirability is open to debate. In short, the articles in this special issue go beyond a mere description and praise of acts of resistance to advance a more critical consideration of the ambivalence of resistance. Unlike the products of academic practices, characterized by Latour (1986) as immutable mobiles, acts of resistance are often very difficult to transport and “consume” in other places. To investigate their mobility and immobility, this volume addresses questions dealing with how acts of resistance are affected by the role of recording techniques, different media, and by the everyday use of public spaces. It also seeks to determine the limits of different kinds of metaphors such as the public space as stage, theatre, or gallery. Other issues include the difference between the event or spectacle and the everyday, the nature of the “claim,” and different issues of ownership in reclaiming the streets and occupation scenarios. To this end, the contributors to this issue explore a range of highly significant and diverse cases in depth—diverse both in a geographic sense, as well as with a perspective that goes beyond the usual focus on Western cultures, and in relation to the actors and policies involved, from the negotiation of the bodies of pregnant women and images of abortion on sidewalk spaces to large-scale protests in places like Tahrir Square in Cairo, Gezi Park in Istanbul, and Tiananmen in Beijing.