Translocal Geographies Spaces, Places, Connections Edited by Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta TRANSLOCAL GEOGRAPHIES This page has been left blank intentionally Translocal Geographies Spaces, Places, Connections Edited by KATHERINE BRICKELL University of London, UK AYONA DATTA London School of Economics, UK © Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Translocal geographies : spaces, places, connections. 1. Acculturation--Case studies. 2. Emigration and immigration--Social aspects--Case studies. 3. Ethnic neighborhoods--Case studies. 4. Social ecology. I. Brickell, Katherine. II. Datta, Ayona. 304.8-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brickell, Katherine. Translocal geographies : spaces, places, connections / by Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7838-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9654-4 (ebook) 1. Human geography--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Migration, Internal--Cross-cul- tural studies. 3. Neighborhoods--Cross-cultural studies. I. Datta, Ayona. II. Title. GF41.B776 2010 304.2'3--dc22 2010036351 ISBN 9780754678380 (hbk) ISBN 9780754696544 (ebk) Contents List of Figures vii List of Contributors ix Acknowledgments xiii PART 1: INTRODUCTION: TRANSLOCAL GEOGRAPHIES 1 Introduction: Translocal Geographies 3 Katherine Brickell and Ayona Datta PART 2: TRANSLOCAL SpacES: HOME AND FAMILY 2 Translocal Geographies of ‘Home’ in Siem Reap, Cambodia 23 Katherine Brickell 3 Translocal Family Relations amongst the Lahu in Northern Thailand 39 Brian A.L. Tan and Brenda S.A. Yeoh 4 British Families Moving Home: Translocal Geographies of Return Migration from Singapore 55 Madeleine E. Hatfield (née Dobson) PART 3: TRANSLOCAL NEIGHBOURHOODS 5 Translocal Geographies of London: Belonging and ‘Otherness’ among Polish Migrants after 2004 73 Ayona Datta 6 ‘You wouldn’t know what’s in there would you?’ Homeliness and ‘Foreign’ Signs in Ashfield, Sydney 93 Amanda Wise 7 Ways Out of Crisis in Buenos Aires: Translocal Landscapes and the Activation of Mobile Resources 109 Ryan Centner vi Translocal Geographies PART 4: URBAN TRANSLOCALITIES: SpacES, PLACES, CONNECTIONS 8 Fear of Small Distances: Home Associations in Douala, Dar es Salaam and London 127 Ben Page 9 Translocal Spatial Geographies: Multi-sited Encounters of Greek Migrants in Athens, Berlin, and New York 145 Anastasia Christou 10 Translocality in Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa: Spaces and Linkages of the Ethiopian Diaspora in Two Capital Cities 163 Elizabeth Chacko PART 5: EPILOGUE 11 Translocality: A Critical Reflection 181 Michael Peter Smith Bibliography 199 Index 223 List of Figures 2.1 Channery’s picture of her mobile phone 30 2.2 Yan’s picture of his daughter on the Internet 33 2.3 Piseth’s picture of his garden feature 34 2.4 Dith’s picture of Notre Dame 37 3.1 Approximate Location of Research Areas 40 4.1 ‘My house in England’ [Amy] 65 4.2 ‘This Buddah [sic] head is probably the most treasured possession from Singapore.’ [Andrea] 67 5.1 Karol’s picture of his car rear windscreen in Australia, in which he travelled across the country 80 5.2 Dawid’s picture of his neighbourhood in East London 88 6.1 Typical Ashfield shops 95 6.2 The shop window referred to in the vignette below 101 7.1 madero½week at Opera Bay 119 7.2 La City, seen from Opera Bay (with World Bank in the crown of largest visible skyscraper) 120 This page has been left blank intentionally List of Contributors Katherine Brickell is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is currently working on a three-year project entitled ‘Geographies of Transition in the Mekong Region: Gender, Labour and Domestic Life in Cambodia and Vietnam’ (research which has been extended to Laos). Katherine has published her work in a number of international refereed journals including Geoforum; Antipode; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society; Progress in Development Studies; and Journal of Development Studies. Ryan Centner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Tufts University. His research focuses primarily on Latin American cities and processes of socio- spatial change as they relate to citizenship struggles, planning interventions, and political-economic shifts. He is currently conducting a comparative project about the intersection of geopolitics, conflicts over local identity representation, and landscape redevelopment in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Istanbul. His work has appeared in the journals City & Community, Local Environment, New Global Studies, Political Power & Social Theory, and the International Journal of Urban & Regional Research. Elizabeth Chacko is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on migration, transnationalism and how immigrants modify and affect cities and spaces within them. She has worked on these aspects particularly with the Ethiopian and Asian Indian immigrant populations in the United States. Elizabeth has published her work in international journals such as The Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Journal of Cultural Geography, GeoJournal, Openhouse International, The Geographical Review, Social Science & Medicine, Gender and Development and Health & Place. Anastasia Christou is Lecturer in Cultural Geography at the University of Sussex. She has been Research Fellow of the three year AHRC funded project ‘Cultural Geographies of Counter-Diasporic Migration: The Second Generation Returns “Home”’ under the Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme (2007-2009) affiliated with the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. She has published widely on issues of migration and return migration; the second generation and ethnicity; space and place; transnationalism and identity; culture and memory; gender and feminism; home and belonging. Her recent book Narratives of Place, Culture x Translocal Geographies and Identity: Second-Generation Greek-Americans Return ‘Home’ (Amsterdam University Press 2006) draws on all these issues. Ayona Datta is Lecturer in the Cities Programme, Department of Sociology in the London School of Economics. Her current research project titled ‘Home- building, migration and the city’ explores how notions of home and the city are shaped through the experiences of East European construction workers arriving in London after EU expansion in 2004. She has published her work in a number of international refereed journals Urban Geography; Gender, Place and Culture; Cultural Geographies; Environment and Planning A; Antipode; and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Madeleine E. Hatfield (née Dobson), completed her PhD research at the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London and is Managing Editor: Journals at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Her thesis is on the everyday experiences of return migration and homemaking, focusing on British households returning to the UK from Singapore and including children as well as adults. Madeleine has also researched the homemaking practices of students and the experiences of British skilled transients in Melbourne, Australia. Ben Page teaches geography at University College London. He has worked and carried out research in Southwest and Northwest Cameroon for the last fifteen years. He is interested in environment and development relations, particularly in relation to the politics of water supply and in migration and development relations particularly in relation to the politics of belonging. This chapter draws heavily on collaborative work with Claire Mercer (London School of Economics) and Martin Evans (University of Chester). The research project on which this chapter draws was funded by the ESRC and more details can be found in the book Development and the African Diaspora: Place and the Politics of Home (Zed 2008). Michael Peter Smith is Distinguished Professor in Community Studies and Development at the University of California, Davis. He has written extensively and published several influential books on cities and urbanism, global migration, and transnationalism. His scholarship on the interconnectedness of local and transnational social practices in specific cities is examined in his book Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization (Blackwell 2001). The politics of constructing and contesting ‘extra-territorial citizenship’ across the U.S.-Mexican border is a central focus of Smith’s latest book, Citizenship Across Borders (Cornell Press 2008). Brian A.L. Tan completed both his Master and Bachelor of Social Sciences in Geography at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include transnational migration, and Southeast Asian cultural and religious landscapes. He List of Contributors xi currently works at the Ministry of Manpower as a Senior Manager and has been instrumental