Abstract
In a time when globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism have become regular fixtures in migration research, Bönisch-Brednich and Trundle argue for the enduring importance of ‘place’ and ‘locality’. Local Lives: Migration and the Politics of Place shows that while migration studies often emphasize the free-flowing and agentic dimensions of movements, fixity remains. Migration does not obliterate the importance of locality, but rather rejuvenates the dynamics between movement and rootedness. Identities have not become totalized nor have place-making strategies vanished. This collection consists of ethnographic explorations of ‘local’ and examines the physical and material realities and counterbalances the rhetoric of unfettered mobility. While globalization studies struggle to mark the boundaries of mobility, community studies need to expand ideas of boundaries beyond that of the physical realm. Situated in-between these two extremes, this collection calls for more nuanced understandings of the dynamic and static aspects of places.
Locality is often intertwined with politics and micro-politics. Since politics is in flux, locality is similarly never cast in stone. It is instead, a process of becoming. In Chapter 1, Bon discusses the fall of communism and its effects on the economic and political systems in Southern Albania. Specifically, ‘decollectivization’ has influenced changes in the perception of land – land no longer has a collectivized value but a market value (p. 27). This reconfigures social relations tied to land and changes meanings attached to it. With their circumstances in flux, villagers are ‘on the move’ and constantly negotiate, manage and contest their locality. In this case, place is not a bounded site but an experiential entity, or, in James Clifford’s words, ‘a series of encounters and translations’ (p. 11). The meaning of locality is paradoxical: on the one hand, it refers to a group’s sense of rootedness, but on other hand, it refers to continuous movements and migration. However, this process of becoming is never an unfettered one. In Chapter 3, Pickering elaborates on the example of hippies and dropouts who have moved from the mainland US to Hawaii; they deliberately abandon middle-class environments for self-development in a more rural place. Yet, this desire to be part of the indigenous group is unsuccessful as locals view these ‘existential migrants’ as guests. The idea of ‘host’ remains largely unproblematized despite being hotly contested on the ground. Existential migration is, therefore, an emerging space/tool for analysis of migrant identities and motivations. Micro-politics of space could also translate into a larger politics between values and nationalities. In Chapter 2, Trundle examines the contestations sparked off by the development of gated communities in New Zealand by American migrants. American residential developers capitalize on market demand for holiday or retirement houses in New Zealand but locals respond unfavourably to having ostentatious expatriate houses in their neighbourhoods. On a larger scale, this encapsulates the conflicting perspectives between the global and the local – land as commodity/property and land as belonging/identity respectively.
Local spaces are, on the one hand, transnational in character, but on the other, imbued with emotions derived from local experiences. Benson demonstrates this in Chapter 4 through the case of British lifestyle migrants to rural France. The migrants continually attempt to feel part of the local community through the establishment of social relationships and identifications with the place. However, these attempts are not always successful because international migrants have inherently different orientations from the locals. This case shows that locality is something that is daily negotiated by migrants vis-a-vis locals. It is thus impossible to discount locals in light of prevalent transnational movements because many transnationals are, to some degree, aspiring locals. Locality in this instance is defined by the tension between ways of being and ways of belonging. On a more optimistic note, the local–global relationship is at times one of constructive coexistence. In Chapter 5, Waldren identifies one obscure Spanish village which has over time become a place which rich transnationals frequent. While seemingly disparate, the locals and tourists interestingly coexist and collaborate. Foreigners are not representative of the outside world and locals feel on par with them. In fact, foreigners impact the landscapes through their preferences and capital, despite being marginal in terms of numbers. The insider and outsider statuses here are intermeshed, and locality is not about contestations between locals and non-locals; it is about complementarity between them.
Apart from being publicly contested, locality is also an inherently intimate and symbolic concept. In Chapter 7, Andrews describes of the attempts by Anglo-Indians in Australia to localize a place. They showcase their unique cultural influence by creating a uniquely Anglo-Indian hostel called the St Joseph’s Hostel. Andrews notes three distinct place-making strategies which are executed in material and ritualized ways: the presence of home food, the display of Christian materiality and engagement with Anglo-Indian recreational activities. Locality, in this example, is not a fixed local place but rather, a framework (the hostel) through which expressions of locality assert themselves. This idea is in line with Appadurai’s argument that locals are not necessarily rooted and are instead, often deterritorialized, diasporic, and transnational. Interestingly, the symbolic element of locality could also be expressed on a larger level – it is globally constituted. In the transnational context, locality is often symbolic rather than material. In Chapter 6, Taylor describes Santo Domingo as a ‘reluctant locality’; he argues that the politics of place is undergirded by people’s perceptions of belonging outside of locality, coupled with their desires to leave it, rather than their embeddedness in the locality itself. The existence of the locality stands due to things outside the locality, so while locality has agency on its own, people are never merely local. The production of locality has as reference points, the state and various actors in the transnational sphere. Global connectedness is ironically the very driver of thriving localities for it is in the face of intense globalization that we see the heightened importance of locality.
This review has hitherto highlighted the intersections of global and local. However, as much as this is true, global and local regularly clash as well and this is most evident in the contestation in urban public spaces. This, however, does not lead to a decline in either influences but a redefinition of what ‘local’ means. In Chapter 8, O’Reilly observes a small English town in which migration is seen as a threat to community life. The outflow of people leads to rapid loss of community; materially, jobs and facilities are on the decline and psychologically, people are beginning to view the town as a dumping ground. Interestingly, rather than to dissipate, the presence of community is seeing a revival. Community is a resource for identity formation and expression, as well as collective claims for place-based material resources and is thus a key constituent of ‘local’. Similarly, religion is another contested sphere or urban life. In Chapter 9, Voloder shows how the Bosnians in suburban Melbourne negotiate identities across scales and engage with discourses on inclusion. This includes strategic public and private displays of religious identification; Bosnian Muslims regularly embrace ethnicized religious identifications as this allows them to be incorporated into the Australian multicultural imaginary. At the same time, this intermeshing of religion and nationality has been challenged by the Bosnian Muslim community and it is through these processes of engaging with various aspects of society that they become more emplaced in society. The process of becoming evidently involves strategic actions. The educational landscape is yet another terrain in which global and local realities are negotiated. Writing as a ‘migrant on campus’, in Chapter 10, Bönisch-Brednich reflects on the intersection between local lives and global knowledge economy. As a foreign academic, she grapples with adapting to a different language and culture, and through it realizes the prominence of localities. While there is much research on cosmopolitan ideals, daily lives reveal the real and inevitable challenge of engaging with the local. Qualitative and ethnographic accounts on locality therefore remain central to global studies as they shed light on global–local dynamics.
Ultimately, this book rethinks the concept of ‘local’. First, it acknowledges the local as an existential being – a self-conscious and politically aware entity. This explains contestations between the locals and people who inhabit their territories. However, these cases point more towards the process of ‘becoming’. All the chapters argue that local identities are constantly being reshaped according to conditions they are put under and correspondingly, understandings of locals should be fluid and processual. Second, the book interrogates the concept of ‘locality’ against the backdrop of intense globalization. Moving away from the idea of static place, locality is a series of place politics. Identities do not merely exist in a place but are constituted through spaces. Migrants appropriate space symbolically through notions of belonging and place-references. Despite these arguments about locality, this book is not about essentializing the local, but about emphasizing the processes which constitute locality. Place itself is evidently an animated and social entity, and a worthy conceptual tool.