Global cities, gated communities und alltägliche Unterstützung in transnationalisierten Nachbarschaften

Abstract

During the short international visit at the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia, an explorative study will be carried out to examine the “significance of neighborhood support in gated communities”. Interviews are planned with affluent migrants (approx. 5 men/women) who are engaged in asian-canadian networks and shuttle back and forth between different places and across national boundaries – so called “transmigrants in trans-pacific life lines” (Ley 2010). Interview partners will be chosen from the age between 35 to 40 years old and should have children. Content analysis will be used to interpret the semi structured interviews and the network maps. On the one hand, the project is based on the observation that neighborhoods in big urban areas (global cities) are often declared dead. On the other hand, studies on social support have shown that people move together and are more and more dependent on social support on a daily basis. Millionaire migrants, as a group, are particularly ambivalent in regards to local and transnational networks and identities. This affects the types of neighborly support they take part in. Apart from giving insight on specific groups of immigrants, the findings on neighborhood and neighborly support in transnational contexts will help shed light on how “localism” is being shaped by the forces of globalization (Jackson 2004). And finally, the research contributes to our knowledge on how space is “newly formatted” in conjunction with processes of transnationalization (Kessl/Reutlinger 2010).