Being together: everyday geographies and the quiet politics of belonging

A number of inter-related issues since the turn of the 21st century have resonated through domestic and foreign policies across the world: ongoing violences and the war on/of terror, various urban ‘racial disturbances’, economic austerity and an increasing hostility to immigrants across Europe. In the UK, this has resulted in both more repressive policies on immigration, and the acceleration of efforts to bring different communities together (Askins and Pain 2011). Among the latter, ‘community cohesion’ has become a central theme for social policy, outlined as the attempt to build communities with a ‘common vision and a sense of belonging’, in which diversity is valued, there are similar life opportunities for all, and positive relationships between people from different backgrounds within neighbourhoods (DCLG 2007). Given that this era is dominated by increasingly diverse migration (ONS 2013), heterogeneity and intercultural encounter is arguably more routine, raising speculation as to whether better appreciation and understanding of difference can move us towards a more ‘cosmospolitan’ society (eg. Simonsen 2008; Valentine 2008). However, such ‘superdiversity’ also has the potential to increase conflict between selves/others, namely, in the UK, between majority white and minority and migrant communities of colour. Back (2007) argues that ‘the immigration line’ has replaced ‘the color line’ as humanity’s key challenge in the 21st century

(Re)negotiations:towards a transformative geopolitics of fear and otherness

No abstract availabl

Sustainable Waste Management Project: Newcastle City Council Recycling Centres

No abstract available

Sustainable Waste Management Project: Home composting promotion in Newcastle

No abstract available

COP15 and beyond: Politics, protest and climate justice

No abstract available

Sustainable Waste Management Project: Haverton Hill Furniture Reuse Scheme

No abstract available

Us and us: agonism, non-violence and the relational spaces of civic activism

This paper is a brief reflection on our involvement with the Civic Geographies exhibition and session at the 2012 RGS-IBG conference, and what this has to say to conceiving ‘civic geographies’. Our contribution to the exhibition comprised a ‘PEACE CAMP THOUGHT TREE’, specifically linked to an ‘academic seminar blockade’ (ASB) we were convening the following day at Faslane Peace Camp (see http://www.faslane365.org/faslane_peace_camp), in northwest Scotland

Fuller geographies and the care-ful co-production of transgressive pedagogies, or 'Who Cares?'

No abstract available