Route-ines

Abstract

The concept of route-ines was developed during the GlobaldiverCities project to account for the ways in which diversity in the three sites is often encountered and navigated through the relatively prosaic rituals and habitual trajectories of everyday life in the neighbourhood. Despite their particularities, in all three sites route-ines not only enable particular encounters with diversity but also structure those encounters.

‘Route-ines’ are patterns of encounter that arise from fleeting interactions — or, indeed, merely regular observations of others — along habitually travelled pathways or routes (to work, shopping or leisure activities). The spaces themselves might be near transport hubs, on buses or metro trains, in parks and playgrounds, at libraries, around schools or within commercial districts. Those involved in the encounters might both be on their way and ‘meeting in motion’, or one party might be moving through a given space while the other is stationary (e.g., in front of a personal dwelling, at a selling point, or waiting for transportation). Within these socio-spatial patterns, (a) a distinct ‘other’ (usually a combination of variables comprising ethnicity/race, language, gender, age, migration status and class) is repeatedly observed along a route, (b) a mode of interaction often arises and becomes methodically routinized between the actors (entailing variations on a kind of scripted exchange of words and practices), or (c) little or no actual social interaction takes place, but the actors nevertheless become ‘familiar strangers’.