The geographies of difference in conflating digital and offline spaces of encounter: Migrant professionals' throwntogetherness in Singapore |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium;2. OASeS — Centre on Inequalities, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City, Department of Sociology, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium;1. School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi''an 710119, China;2. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Tourism Informatics, Xi''an 710119, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China;4. Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1068 Xueyuan Road, Shenzhen 518005, China;5. School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China;6. National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Geo-spatial Information Technology, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350002, China;1. Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR_S 1136, Institut Pierre Louis, d''Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique, 75012 Paris, France;2. INSERM, UMR_S 1136, Institut Pierre Louis d''Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique,F-75012 Paris, France;3. Département de médecine sociale et préventive, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada;4. Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Montréal (CRCHUM), Montreal, QC, Canada;5. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique (EHESP), 35043 Rennes, France |
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| Abstract: | This article explores the effects of people's digital coexistence on the construction of difference and feelings of aversion to or recognition of “others”. It seeks to make a theoretical contribution to works on the geographies of difference and encounter, Internet or digital geography, as well as on migration and digital media, by highlighting the relevance of indirect and fleeting digital encounters and the dialectical process in which encounters play out in intertwined, specific and multiple digital and physical spaces that we define as “cON/FFlating situational places of encounter”. Based on a qualitative study with Chinese, Filipino and German migrant professionals in Singapore, it shows how fleeting digital encounters take an ambivalent role through challenging but also producing new “temporary fixings of difference”. As such they can engender new sensibilities for and openness toward the host society but also breed new, or aggravate existing, cultural stereotypes and prejudices. The findings show that inherited and instituted classificatory practices that people use to structure and make sense of their fleeting interactions with others in offline space are, where possible, transferred and imposed on encounters in digital space. At the same time, they are inflected or replaced with new markers of difference where ingrained sorting mechanisms applied in offline space did not help them make sense of encounters in digital space. |
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| Keywords: | Encounters Difference Diversity Digital space New media Prejudice |
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