Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood

Practices of community-building in a globalised context

Urban neighbourhoods have come to occupy the public imagination as a litmus test of migration, with some areas hailed as multicultural success stories while others are framed as ghettos. In an attempt to break down this dichotomy, Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood filters these debates through the lenses of geography, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. By establishing the interdisciplinary concept of the ‘transnational neighbourhood’, it presents these localities – whether Clichy-sous-Bois, Belfast, El Segundo Barrio or Williamsburg – as densely packed contact zones where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, producing a constantly shifting local and cultural knowledge about identity, belonging, and familiarity.

Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood offers a pivotal response to one of the key questions of our time: How do people create a sense of community within an exceedingly globalised context? By focusing on the neighbourhood as a central space of transcultural everyday experience within three different levels of discourse (i.e., the virtual, the physical local, and the transnational-global), the multidisciplinary contributions explore bottom-up practices of community-building alongside cultural, social, economic, and historical barriers.

Contributors: Christina Horvath (University of Bath), Maria Roca Lizarazu (NUI Galway), Emilio Maceda Rodriguez (Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala), Naomi Wells (IMLR, University of London), Anne Fuchs (University College Dublin), Gad Schaffer (Tel-Hai Academic College), Daniela Bohórquez Sheinin (University of Michigan), Anna Marta Marini (Universidad de Alcalá), Godela Weiss-Sussex (IMLR, University of London), Britta C. Jung (Maynooth University), Emma Crowley (University of Bristol), Mary Mazzilli (University of Essex)

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Blog post ‘Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood’, by Britta C. Jung, Gad Schaffer, Stephan Ehrig, 3 Feb 2023

Acknowledgements
Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood: An Introduction Stephan Ehrig, Britta C. Jung and Gad Schaffer
Challenging Accusations of Separatism: Transnational Neighbourhood and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Insa Sané’s Comédie urbaine (2006–2017) Christina Horvath
SECTION I VIRTUAL NEIGHBOURHOODS
“We will be ephemeral”: Encounter, Community and Unsettled Cosmopolitanism in Senthuran Varatharajah’s Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen (2016) Maria Roca Lizarazu
All Saints Catholic Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC: From Religious Space to Transnational Territory of Multiterritorial Mexican Immigrants Emilio Maceda Rodríguez
Networking and Representing the Transnational Neighbourhood Online: The Linguistic Landscapes of Latin Americans in London’s Seven Sisters Naomi Wells
SECTION II OVERLAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS
The Translocalisation of Place: Sectarian Neighbourhoods, Boundaries and Transgressive Practices in Anna Burns’ Belfast Anne Fuchs
The Quiet Unification of a Divided City: Jerusalem’s Train-Track Park Gad Schaffer
Ruins and Representation: Remembering Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City Daniela Bohórquez Sheinin
The Materiality of the Wall(s): Mural Art and Counterspace Appropriation in El Paso’s Chihuahuita and El Segundo Barrio Anna Marta Marini
SECTION III NEGOTIATING STRANGENESS AND MOBILE NEIGHBOURHOODS
Transnational Neighbourhoods in Barbara Honigmann’s Das überirdische Licht (2008) and Chronik meiner Straße (2016) Godela Weiss-Sussex
Territories of Otherness: Genoa’s Prè Neighbourhood as a Deviant Terrain and Exotic Counterspace in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s La Superba (2013) Britta C. Jung
“Your Allah can’t see you here”: Moscow’s Subterranean Spaces and Dissimulated Life in Svetlana Alexievich’s Vremya sekond khend (2013) Emma Crowley
Transnational Neighbourhood and Theatrical Practices: The Concept of Home, Negotiating Strangeness and Familiarity, and the Experience of Migrant Communities in North Essex Mary Mazzilli
About the Authors

Stephan Ehrig

Stephan Ehrig is Lecturer in German at the University of Glasgow.

Britta C. Jung

Britta C. Jung is Lecturer in German at Maynooth University.

Gad Schaffer

Gad Schaffer is Lecturer in Geography at Tel-Hai Academic College.