Mobilocality

ABSTRACT

Based on the ethnographic research and in-depth interviews in Flushing, Queens, New York City, this paper proposes the concept of mobilocality. Mobilocality provides a conceptual framework to examine the urban ethnic communities through the lens of mobility from a multi-scalar perspective. Mobilocality is formed by the paradox of transnational mobility and local immobility that are simultaneously embedded in everyday life of (im)migrants. It is through mobilocality where individual is ethnic, ethnic is transnational, transnational is urban. This article also suggests a placed and contextual understanding of mobility by illustrating the interrelationships among the four spatialities: mobility, place, scale and distance. The making of mobilocality is an outcome of the dialectal process among these spatialities, which involves not only spatial-temporal dimensions, but also social and cultural context. Transnationalism is far from a celebration of cosmopolitanism and diversity. Rather, it is a divergent process that generates heterogeneity and boundaries, a product of time-space distortion instead of time-space compression.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnationalism
• mobility
• place
• ethnic enclave
• Chinese (im)migrants

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank all the participants in the research. She is deeply indebted to Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon, Dr. Wei Li, and Dr. Ken Foote for reading through several drafts of this paper and providing important comments. Thanks must also go to Ted Knowles for proofreading the draft manuscript. Finally, the author is grateful to the anonymous referees and the Editor Dr. Keven Ward who provided constructive critics and comments to make this paper a better work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The mobility paradigm expanded the meaning of mobility that embraces both physical and social mobility. Mobility is humanistic, contextual and emplaced. Therefore, this article defines mobile resources in a broad term, mobile resources include infrastructures that enhance both social and physical mobility, both vertical and horizontal mobility. They also facilitate the movement of people, information and financial capital. The mobile resources provided by the Chinese community is considered as ethnic mobile resources. Therefore, job centers, banks, media, and family hotels are all considered as the mobile resources.

2. I shared with her my own experience of encountering my elementary school teacher, my neighbor in my hometown and my father’s friend during my fieldtrip in Flushing.