Public Libraries and Spaces of Micro Connection in the Intercultural City

• Authors: Melike Peterson

Abstracts

EN

Everyday spaces represent central platforms that provide opportunities for encounters marked by ethnic and cultural diversity, where transformations can be negotiated that rethink living together. The significance of these ‘third places’ has been extensively researched. Yet, some spaces such as public libraries continue to be largely overlooked by geographers. Public libraries also remain under-appreciated within wider society despite their obvious social functions. Central here is that public libraries can be understood as dynamic and ‘lived spaces’ that enable the emergence of transient connections and relationships. Such spaces are increasingly sparse within modern cities. This paper explores the potential of everyday spaces of encounter, specifically public libraries, to facilitate the unfolding of ‘light’ connections and relationships, nurturing more inclusive forms of urban togetherness and belonging in multi-ethnic societies and the significance that people attribute to these often mundane encounters and micro connections. In so doing, this paper combines findings from two research projects that investigate mixed or intercultural encounters in public libraries in Bremen (Germany) and Glasgow (Scotland).

Keywords

EN

public libraries; intercultural encounters; micro connection; shared spaces; belonging; multi-ethnic societies

• Publisher: Ośrodek Badań nad Migracjami Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego oraz Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Central and Eastern European Migration Review
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 65-79

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Melike Peterson

• University of Bremen, Germany

• https://orcid.org/0000000326792475

References

• Aabø S., Audunson R. (2012). Use of Library Space and the Library as Place. Library & Information Science Research 34(2): 138–149.
• Amin A. (2002). Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity. Environment and Planning A 34: 959–980.
• Amin A. (2008). Collective Culture and Urban Public Space. City 12(1): 5–24.
• Amin A. (2012). Land of Strangers. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Askins K. (2016). Emotional Citizenry: Everyday Geographies of Befriending, Belonging and Intercultural Encounter. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41(4): 515–527.
• Askins K. (2018). Feminist Geographies and Participatory Action Research: Co-Producing Narratives with People and Place. Gender, Place and Culture 25(9): 1277–1294.
• Bennett K., Crochane A., Mohan G., Neal S. (2016). Negotiating the Educational Spaces of Urban Multiculture: Skills, Competencies and College Life. Urban Studies 54(10): 2305–2321.
• Blokland T., Schultze H. (2017). Belonging, Conviviality or Public Familiarity? Making Sense of Urbanity in Rapidly Transforming Neighbourhoods Through the Lens of Berlin and Rotterdam, in: M. Smagacz-Poziemska, K. Frysztacki, A. Bukowski (eds), Re-Imagining the City: Municipality and Urbanity Today from a Sociological Perspective, pp. 243–264. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press.
• Botterill K., Hopkins P., Sanghera G.S. (2019). Young People’s Everyday Securities: Pre-Emptive and Proactive Strategies Towards Ontological Security in Scotland. Social & Cultural Geography 20(4): 465–484.
• Brinks V., Ibert O. (2020). From Corona Virus to Corona Crisis: The Value of an Analytical and Geographical Understanding of Crisis. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 11(3): 275–287.
• Butler J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge.
• Chan, J. (2020). Beyond Tokenism: The Importance of Staff Diversity in Libraries. British Columbia Library Association Perspectives 12(1). https://bclaconnect.ca/perspectives/2020/11/30/beyond-tokenism-the-impor... (accessed 12.01.2023).
• Cronin B. (2002). What a Library is Not. Library Journal 127: 46.
• Darling J., Wilson H. (2016). Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. London: Routledge.
• Dirksmeier P., Helbrecht I. (2015). Everyday Urban Encounters and Stratification Practices. City 19(4): 486–498.
• Duveneck A. (2018). Bildung und Stadt, in: B. Belina, M. Naumann, A. Strüver (eds), Handbuch Kritische Stadtforschung, pp. 201–205. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
• Edwards R., Mauthner M. (2002). Ethics in Feminist Research: Theory and Practice, in: M. Mauthner, J. Birch, J. Jessop, T. Miller (eds), Ethics in Qualitative Research, pp. 14–31. London: Sage.
• Everts J., Wagner L. (2012). Guest Editorial: Practising Emotions. Emotion, Space and Society 5(3): 174–176.
• Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon. New York: Vintage Books.
• Giddens A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Grzymala-Kazlowska A., Ryan L. (2022). Bringing Anchoring and Embedding Together: Theorising Migrants’ Lives Over Time. Comparative Migration Studies 10: 46.
• Hawkins H. (2015). For Creative Geographies: Geography, Visual Arts and the Making of Worlds. London: Routledge.
• Heil T. (2015). Conviviality: (Re)Negotiating Minimal Consensus, in: S. Vertovec (ed.), International Handbook of Diversity Studies, pp. 317–324. London: Routledge.
• Hitchen E. (2019). The Affective Life of Austerity: Uncanny Atmospheres and Paranoid Temporalities. Social & Cultural Geography 22(3): 295–318.
• Hodgetts D., Stolte O., Chamberlain K., Radley A., Nikora L., Nabalarua E., Groot S. (2008). A Trip to the Library: Homelessness and Social Inclusion. Social and Cultural Geography 9(8): 933–953.
• Iveson K., Fincher R. (2011). ‘Just Diversity’ in a City of Difference, in: G. Bridge, S. Watson (eds), The New Blackwell Companion to the City, pp. 407–418. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Johnston J. (2016). The Use of Conversation-Based Programming in Public Libraries to Support Integration in Increasingly Multi-Ethnic Societies. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 50(2): 130–140.
• Johnston J., Audunson R. (2017). Supporting Immigrants’ Political Integration Through Discussion and Debate in Public Libraries. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 51(1): 228–242.
• Katz C. (2007). Banal Terrorism, in: D. Gregory, A. Pred (eds), Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence, pp. 347–361. New York: Routledge.
• Klinenberg E. (2018). Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization and the Decline of Civic Life. New York: Penguin Random House.
• Knief A. (2020). Wir Versuchen Voran zu Gehen [We Try to Move Forward]. Weser-Kurier, 10 November. https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/bremen-kultur_artikel,-wir-versuchen-... (accessed 12 January 2023).
• Kosciejew M. (2019). Information’s Importance for Refugees: Information Technologies, Public Libraries, and the Current Refugee Crisis. The Library Quarterly 89(2): 79–98.
• Langer P.C. (2016). The Research Vignette: Reflexive Writing as Interpretative Representation of Qualitative Inquiry – a Methodological Proposition. Qualitative Inquiry 22(9): 735–745.
• Latham A., Layton J. (2019). Social Infrastructure and the Public Life of Cities: Studying Urban Sociality and Public Spaces. Geography Compass 13(7): e12444.
• Laurier E., Philo C. (2006). Possible Geographies: A Passing Encounter in a Café. Area 38(4): 353–363.
• Lefebvre H. (1974, 1991). The Production of Space. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Lees L. (1997). Ageographia, Heterotopia, and Vancouver’s New Public Library. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15(3): 321–347.
• Lossau J. (2017). Unheimliche Infrastruktur. Die Doppelte Paradoxie Unterirdischen Städtebaus [Uncanny Infrastructure. The Twofold Paradox of Underground Urban Planning], in: M. Flitner, J. Lossau, A.L. Müller (eds), Infrastrukturen der Stadt, pp. 163–180. Wiesbaden: Springer.
• Low S. (2006). The Erosion of Public Space and the Public Realm: Paranoia, Surveillance and Privatization in New York City. City and Society 18(1): 43–49.
• Massey D. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today 38: 24–29.
• Massey D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage.
• Meissner F., Heil T. (2021). Deromanticising Integration: On the Importance of Convivial Disintegration. Migration Studies 9(3): 740–758.
• Messerschmidt I. (2020). Lange Schlangen vor Bremer Büchereien [Long Queues in Front of Bremen’s Libraries]. Weser-Kurier, 11 May. https://www.weser-kurier.de/region/die-norddeutsche_artikel,-lange-schla... (accessed 12.01.2023).
• Moran D., Turner J., Schliehe A.K. (2017). Conceptualizing the Carceral in Carceral Geography. Progress in Human Geography 42(5): 666–686.
• Neal S., Bennett K., Cochrane A., Mohan G. (2018). Lived Experiences of Multiculture: The New Social and Spatial Relations of Diversity. London: Routledge.
• Norcup J. (2017). Educate a Woman and You Educate a Generation. Performative Research 22(1): 67–74.
• Oldenburg R. (1989). The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Paris: Hachette Books.
• Philo C. (2004). A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.
• Philo C. (2012). Security of Geography / Geography of Security. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(1): 1–7.
• Peterson, M. (2017). Living with Difference in Hyper-Diverse Areas: How Important Are Encounters in Semi-Formal Spaces? Social and Cultural Geography 18(8): 1067–1085.
• Peterson, M. (2019a). Encountering Each Other in Glasgow: Spaces of Intersecting Lives in Contemporary Scotland. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 112(2): 150–163.
• Peterson, M. (2019b). Meeting Spaces: Everyday Spaces of Multicultural Encounter in Glasgow. PhD Dissertation, University of Glasgow.
• Ponterotto J.G. (2006). Brief Note on the Origins, Evolution, and Meaning of the Qualitative Research Concept ‘Thick Description’. The Qualitative Report 11(3): 538–549.
• Probyn E. (1996). Outside Belongings. London: Routledge.
• Robinson K. (2020). Everyday Multiculturalism in the Public Library: Taking Knitting Together Seriously. Sociology 54(3): 556–572.
• Ryan L. (2018). Differentiated Embedding: Polish Migrants in London Negotiating Belonging Over Time. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44(2): 233–251.
• Schloffel-Armstrong S., Baker T., Kearns R.A. (2021). Geographies of the Public Library: Institutions, Architectures, Interactions. Geography Compass 15(10): e12592.
• Smith M., Davidson J., Cameron L., Bondi L. (2009). Emotion, Place and Culture. Farnham: Ashgate.
• Sue D.W. (2010). Microaggression in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Hoboken: Wiley.
• Thrift N. (2005). But Malice Aforethought: Cities and the Natural History of Hatred. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(2): 133–150.
• Valentine G. (2008). Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounters. Progress in Human Geography 32(3): 323–337.
• Valentine G., Sadgrove J. (2014). Biographical Narratives of Encounter: The Significance of Mobility and Emplacement in Shaping Attitudes Towards Difference. Urban Studies 51(9): 1979–1994.
• Valluvan S. (2016). Conviviality and Multiculture: A Post-Integration Sociology of Multi-Ethnic Interaction. Young 24(3): 204–221.
• Van Eck E., van Melik R., Schapendonk J. (2020). Marketplaces as Public Spaces in Times of the Covid-19 Coronavirus Outbreak: First Reflections. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 111(3): 373–386.
• Van Melik, R., Merry M.S. (2021). Retooling the Public Library as Social Infrastructure: A Dutch Illustration. Social and Cultural Geography, early online view. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2021.1965195.
• Varheim A. (2014). Trust and the Role of the Public Library in the Integration of Refugees: The Case of a Northern Norwegian City. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 46(1): 62–69.
• Vertovec S. (ed.) (2015). Diversities Old and New: Migration and Socio-Spatial Patterns in New York, Singapore, and Johannesburg. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wessendorf S. (2014). Commonplace Diversity: Social Relations in a Super-Diverse Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wessendorf S., Phillimore J. (2018). New Migrants’ Social Integration, Embedding and Emplacement in Superdiverse Contexts. Sociology 53(1): 123–138.
• Wilson H. (2011). Passing Propinquities in the Multicultural City: The Everyday Encounters of Bus Passengering. Environment and Planning A 43(3): 634–649.
• Wilson H. (2016). On Geography and Encounter: Bodies, Borders and Difference. Progress in Human Geography 41(4): 451–471.
• Wise A. (2005). Hope and Belonging in a Multicultural Suburb. Journal of Intercultural Studies 26(1–2): 171–186.
• Wise A. (2013). Hope in a ‘Land of Strangers’. Identities 20(1): 37–45.
• Wise A., Noble G. (2016). Convivialities: An Orientation. Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(5): 423–431.
• Wiseman J.V. (2020). Young Refugees in Glasgow: The Politics of Living and Celebrating Multiculture. Geoforum 116: 296–302.
• Ye J. (2016). The Ambivalence of Familiarity: Understanding Breathable Diversity Through Fleeting Encounters in Singapore’s Jurong West. Area 48(1): 77–83.
• Ye J. (2019). Re-Orienting Geographies of Urban Diversity and Coexistence: Analysing Inclusion and Difference in Public Space. Progress in Human Geography 43(3): 478–495.

Identifiers

DOI

10.54667/ceemr.2023.03

Biblioteka Nauki

2233806