Encounter, Transport and Transitory Spaces

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a particular aspect of everyday encounter in diverse neighbourhoods that has been largely overlooked in the literature — the temporary movements through spaces of transport and transit that urban residents regularly traverse. Although there has been a significant amount of research on contact zones (see, for example, Amin 2013, Wise 2013) and of interactions and segregation in residential areas (DeFina and Hannon 2009, Deener 2010, Wladyka and Moren-Alegret 2013), there has not been significant attention paid to these in-between and often overlooked areas of momentary occupation (cf. Wilson 2010). This chapter demonstrates the importance of these spaces associated with mobility and transit through weaving ethnographic descriptions with interview quotes in order to suggest that it is often momentary, fleeting and unspoken encounters that shape attitudes, potential prejudices and, most importantly, where residents of diverse cities learn the social codes and intangible aspects of negotiating difference. This chapter speaks to an emerging strand of literature that acknowledges the small-scale but incremental ‘work’ in quotidian encounter that is imperative for a sustainable ‘rubbing along’ in the super-diverse society (cf. McFarlane 2011).