Knowing How to Get Around: Place, Migration, and Communication

Abstract

In this article, we follow a lead in Roger Silverstone's work by engaging critically with the writings of human geographers who have drawn on phenomenology in their attempts to understand environmental perception and senses of place. A distinctive feature of the approach that these geographers developed was its focus on the ordinary doings and feelings involved in place-making. We highlight a series of concepts that are found in their writings and we apply those key concepts in a discussion of some qualitative empirical research on trans-European migration. Our project has been concerned with the practices and experiences of contemporary migrants, including their routine uses of communication technologies in everyday living. With reference to data from lengthy conversational interviews, we pay particular attention to matters of dwelling or habitation, and to these migrants' knowing how to get around—as well as their being out of place—in physical and media environments.

Notes

1. This article is based on an invited plenary presentation to the 2009 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Conference at the University of Bradford.

2. We are grateful to all of the interviewees for their participation in this project, and also to the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland for its financial support. A further discussion of the methodology and findings will appear in Moores and Metykova (in press).

3. Collections of work in this area include those edited by King and Wood (2001), Karim (2003), and Bailey, Georgiou, and Harindranath (2007). For another example of research that focuses on the period immediately following migration, see O'Neill (2007) on asylum seekers and refugee groups.

4. It is interesting to compare this identification made by Petra and her flatmates—as recently arrived migrants—with the responses of some established “London Turks” when watching live “television from Turkey” (see Aksoy & Robins, 2003). These viewers in London found that they could not watch Turkish news “from the inside,” because the “conditions no longer exist for feeling at home” (Aksoy & Robins, 2003, p. 103) in that environment.

5. In addition, medium theorists have long regarded media as “environmental.” For a classic—if eccentric—statement of this approach, see McLuhan and Fiore (1967).

6. The key points of reference there are Merleau-Ponty (1962), Bachelard (1969), and Heidegger (1971).

7. See Crossley (2001, pp. 122–123), who applies Merleau-Ponty's account of embodied knowledge to the example of his own use of a computer keyboard. See also Nunes (2006, p. 41) on bodily acts of mouse-maneuvering and double-clicking, and Tomlinson (2007, pp. 107–110) for further reflections on keyboard use, the hands, and sense of touch.

8. For a discussion of such understandings, in which the work of Massey, Urry, and others is considered, see Moores (2008). Central arguments here have to do with the increased permeability of localities in the contemporary era, and with the local-global articulations that figure in formations of place today.

9. It is worth emphasizing, too, that the human geographers who initially developed this perspective during the 1970s continue to publish. For example, see Mels (2004) for a collection of essays on place with contributions from Relph, Tuan, and Seamon.

10. See Wylie (2007) for a helpful commentary on non-representational theory, Ingold's “dwelling perspective,” and the connections with existential-phenomenological philosophy. A detailed comparison between the writings of, say, Thrift and Seamon is beyond the scope of this article. However, we want to note our surprise that Thrift ( 1996,2007) does not refer to Seamon's “geography of the lifeworld,” given their shared concerns with the everyday, embodiment, and affect.

11. Our argument relates to a long-standing principle, operating not only in phenomenology but also in ethnomethodology, that everyday order can best be studied when this order gets disrupted in some way. For a classic example, see the breaching experiments conducted by Garfinkel (1984).

12. Taylor (2006, pp. 202–203) includes Merleau-Pontyand Heidegger—alongside Wittgenstein (1953)—in his “small list of twentieth-century philosophers who have helped us emerge … from the grip of modern rationalism,” since they developed “an understanding of the agent as engaged, as embedded in … a ‘world’ of involvements, ultimately … as embodied.” In Merleau-Ponty's work, for example: “Perception is not mental representation … but skillful bodily orientation and negotiation in given circumstances. To perceive is … to know and find your way around … to inhabit a world” (Carman, 2008, p. 19).