Melissa Butcher

Ties that bind: The strategic use of transnational relationships in demarcating identity and managing difference

Transnational migration is disrupting definitions of cultural identity as its processes of cross-border mobility unsettle associations between people and place. Relationships, as one element of everyday cultural practice that circumscribes identity and belonging, are also affected by this mobility. Using data from qualitative research with Australian transnational professionals working in Asia, this paper elaborates on the interaction between identity and relationship formation. The findings indicate that participants’ attempts to develop professional and social relationships in a new cultural context lead to a re-evaluation of identity and the development of mobile subjectivity to manage difference and re-find points of comfort defined by shared meanings. The analysis is placed within broader reflections on the processes of migration and the dynamics of cultural change that are taking place within transnational global flows, supporting arguments that processes of deterritorialisation do not necessarily equate with declining allegiance to a national identity.

Cultures of Commuting: The Mobile Negotiation of Space and Subjectivity on Delhi's Metro

Abstract As part of Delhi’s redevelopment, aimed at creating a ‘global city’, new public transport infrastructure is being built. The Metro, in particular, has become iconic of what city authorities and developers refer to as Delhi’s ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘world city’ status. Authorities have attempted to change commuting practices embedded in the culture of Delhi, a crowded, economically and culturally diverse city, in line with desired new behaviours including an emphasis on cleanliness, order and quiet. To explore these developments this paper presents findings from a qualitative study (conducted in 2009) analysing the urban mobility of a diverse group of young people. Their experiences of the Metro revealed interacting fields of power in the city, between passengers, and between passengers and those in control of the network. These relationships were situated within wider processes of urban reconstruction that intersect with global flows of capital, technology and ideologies of ‘modernity’ and development. The findings also highlighted the contestation of cosmopolitanism: its use to describe a desired urban imagination and its deployment as everyday competencies of negotiation and flexibility designed to manage change, unfamiliarity and inequality.

Pedestrian Crossings: Young People and Everyday Multiculturalism

Young people have been the focus of both hopes and fears about the futures of culturally diverse nations. It has become commonplace to centre youth in debates about the impact on social cohesion of rapid and increasingly diverse global flows of peoples. Concerns proliferate about the capacity of youth of migrant and refugee backgrounds to ‘integrate’, and about the more flexible and critical forms of citizenship and belonging that some youth are forging. Others are idealised as the new cosmopolitans, eager consumers in the global youth market and adept players in the global economy. Paradoxical images emerge. Youth are often simultaneously imagined as at the vanguard of new forms of multicultural nation-building and social cohesion, and as those most inclined towards regressive nationalism, fundamentalism and racism. Images of youth-led interfaith and intercultural harmony projects compete with those of race riots and racist youth violence, deeply complicating the public representation and interpretation of young peoples place in multicultural nation-making.

FOB Boys, VCs and Habibs: Using Language to Navigate Difference and Belonging in Culturally Diverse Sydney

Language, like other elements of popular culture, is an explicit marker of belonging and identity. It also represents the tension between cultural continuity and change in diverse societies. This paper examines how second-generation migrant youth in western Sydney utilise language to navigate difference and belonging, between communities and between generations, establishing boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The data, based on qualitative interviews, are analysed within a framework linking the deployment of language with power and social context. The findings argue that language is used as a symbolic resource in acts both of demarcating difference and belonging, at times defining new social spaces, as well as defying points of authority within dominant fields of power. Social context is at times more important than language in determining feelings of affiliation or difference. As new frames of reference for Australian culture and new understandings of what it means to be Australian are expressed, vocabularies other than mother tongues are incorporated into this process.

Universal Processes of Cultural Change: reflections on the identity strategies of Indian and Australian youth

This paper explores the universality of processes of cultural change by comparing identity narratives of young people living in periods of intense social and personal transformation in India and Australia. The responses of Indian youth to economic liberalisation in that country and the generational experiences of young people from migrant backgrounds in Sydney highlights that, despite different contexts, common responses to change appear in the processes of identity re‐evaluation and in the creation and consumption of strategies of identity. These processes revolve around the tensions of difference and continuity, managing hybridity and the reconciliation of ‘being in‐between’.

Navigating ‘New’ Delhi: Moving Between Difference and Belonging in a Globalising City

Delhis government is remodelling the built environment into an imagined ‘global city’, to attract transnational capital, human resources and an international sports spectacle (the Commonwealth Games 2010). As the citys population is diverted and moved on to make way for new infrastructure, residents are, in the process, traversing new spaces, reappropriating space in new ways and engaging in new interactions. This paper explores the possibilities and challenges of these interactions in a qualitative study of the everyday mobility of 23 diverse young people living in Delhi. The study found that interactions were defined by existing perceptions of ‘order’ and ‘proper’ behaviour by known and unknown others. The navigation of both familiar and uncomfortable territories was carried out through the deployment of competencies such as translation and avoidance skills. While the findings indicate that the city contains spaces of interaction that can generate unintended meanings and contest established power relations, these interactions were not always harmonious, reinforcing the idea that social relations that constitute urban space are divergent and unequal. The paper concludes by arguing that while Delhi was divided into spaces of belonging and familiarity, working against the possibilities of interactions with ‘others’, these spaces can be necessary to manage positions of difference and inequality.

Spatial Dislocation and Affective Displacement: Youth Perspectives on Gentrification in London

Analyses of contemporary processes of gentrification have been primarily produced from adult perspectives with little focus on how age affects or mediates urban change. However, in analysing young people’s responses to transformations in their neighbourhood we argue that there is evidence for a more complex relationship between ‘gentrifiers’ and residents than existing arguments of antagonism or tolerance would suggest. Using a participatory video methodology to document experiences of gentrification in the east London borough of Hackney, we found that young people involved in this study experienced their transforming city through processes of spatial dislocation and affective displacement. The former incorporated a sense of disorientation in the temporal disjunctions of the speed of change, while the latter invoked the embodiment of a sense of not belonging generated within classed and intercultural interactions. However, there are expressions of ambivalence rather than straightforward rejection. Benefits of gentrification were noted including conditions of alterity and the possibility to transcend normative behaviours that they found uncomfortable. Young people demonstrated the capacity to re-imagine their relationship with the complex spaces they call home. The findings suggest a need to reframe debates on gentrification to include a more nuanced understanding of its differential impact on young people.

Dissent and cultural resistance in Asia's cities

This book documents urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local capital, technology and labour flows that converge and intersect in some of Asia’s fastest growing cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as simply passive victims of globalisation or urbanisation, it presents ways in which people are using everyday strategies embedded in cultural practice to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces impacting on urban space. Taking the city as a site of contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out, the book highlights the connections between urban power and dissent; the nature and impact of resistance; how the spatiality and built environment of the city generates conflict and, conversely, how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday and public dissent. The contributors explore the conditions, strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural resistance, and explore the following themes: the impact of urban development, gentrification and ghetto-isation; urban counter narratives and the re-imagining of city spaces; the role of grassroots activism and social movements; cultural resistance in the creation of neighbourhoods and communities; the impact of gender, class and the politics of identity on forms of dissent; the formation of transgressive spaces.

Re-working encounter: the role of reflexivity in managing difference

Abstract Marked by high levels of diversity and gentrification, changing demographics in east London highlight the need for new analytical tools to examine how formerly familiar spaces must now be re-negotiated. Conceptual frameworks of habit and affect have informed the contemporary analysis of how encounters with difference unfold within transforming cityscapes. However, findings from a participatory research project with young people suggest a more reflexive management of classed and racialised encounters is occurring as accumulated cultural knowledge is tested and revised from which new practices emerge. Attention to processes of reflexivity highlighted the capacity of young people to consciously weigh options and choose a range of strategies under conditions of ‘breach’, including: degrees of acceptance of change; re-working space use through avoidance and adapting everyday practices such as dress and food; as well as developing attributes that enable engagement such as empathy. Feelings of judgement appeared as a dominant driver of reflexivity, while disposition and place contextualised and modified responses. Yet, while the possibilities for subjective re-evaluation and adaptation are apparent, the study raises questions of inequality in the expectation that young people are being asked to adapt to new cultural norms not of their making.

Defying Delhi’s enclosures: strategies for managing a difficult city

Abstract Reflecting wider debates on the city as a site of coercion and opportunity, Delhi is marked by the coordinates of both cultural nationalism and neo-liberal aspiration. The former positions the city as a site of cultural pollution, at times claiming ‘western lifestyles’ have contributed to gendered assault. In juxtaposition, Delhi’s neo-liberal landscape positions the female body as a valued commodity, iconic of ‘globalised living’, embedded in discourses of autonomy and modernity. This article will argue that these entangled cultural constructs have created a city of threat and discomfort that problematizes women’s access, be it for livelihood or leisure, enclosing women within coordinates not of their making. Yet rather than acquiesce to this urban topology, the agency of the single, middle-aged, middle-class women in this ethnographic study extends our understanding of the agonistic relationships within urban space, and the capacity to negotiate them using practices of avoidance, deception, adaptation, defiance, and care, at times creating their own enclosures in the process that enabled access to the city. Age and class as well as gendered expectations impacted on the available resources and outcomes of these negotiations, revealing the diverse possibilities of urban living that can enable pockets of social and political flourishing even within a difficult city.