Everyday life patterns and social segregation of expatriate women in globalizing Asian cities: cases of Shanghai and Seoul

Abstract

Shanghai's 'planned' and Seoul's 'evolved' expatriate communities represent contrasting approaches to housing the highly skilled professionals and their families. The study shows how the two distinctive environments produce different spatial patterns in everyday life, and also how they affect the social segregation of the expatriate women in the two cities. Shanghai's gated compound entails an introverted, self-contained lifestyle with little contact with the local people. Seoul's naturally evolved community is integrated with local neighborhoods leading to the wider range of daily destinations and more everyday contact with local people. Although the inter-expat social relations appear stronger within Shanghai's walled residential areas, the daily interaction with host city locals is more pronounced in Seoul's mixed foreign quarters. The study suggests that, among expats and locals, residential form which allows small-scale, everyday routine social interactions may be more conducive to building a sense of community in increasingly globalizing Asian urban centers.

The Geographies of Expatriates’ Cultural Venues in Globalizing Shanghai: A Geo-Information Approach Applied to Social Media Data Platform

“…This is further confirmed by our data, which suggest that the main contributor to the district's aggregation values is the cultural venues that align with the distribution of international residential compounds. The spatial aggregation of cultural venues in Pudong also coincides with the Lujiazui CBD and Jinqiao technical areas, which are the major foreign residential areas and locations of international financial and high-tech companies [64]. In Minhang, the venues are mainly located in the northeast with a large presence of foreign residential compounds, sports clubs, and high-end international hotel chains [33].…”

The influx of high-income foreign nationals and the housing market in a developing country: a case study of Suzhou Industrial Park, China

“…Expatriates, working in a developing country, tend to stay in the short-term due to corporate human resources management strategies. They, therefore, want to secure safe and comfortable living environments instead of being mixed with the locals (Chang and Kim, 2016). In the eyes of housing developers, affluent foreign nationals supported by MNCs are sources for the development of more profitable housing types.…”

“…Housing investment by foreign nationals accounted for less than 1% in Seoul's total housing transactions in 2010, but skilled foreign nationals chose affluent parts of Seoul (Kim et al, 2015). In Chinese large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, expatriate families have formed ethnic enclaves with strengthened security, high quality amenities, and foreigner-friendly retail shops mostly in gated communities (Chang and Kim, 2016, Wu and Webber, 2004, Breitung, 2012. Their weak engagement in home ownership might be attributable to lack of long-term commitments to the host city (Kim et al, 2015), lack of ethnic connections (Kim, 2017a), their risk-aversion behaviour (Conner et al, 1999), limited access to financial means such as mortgage loans, and/or lack of accumulated capital (Rogers and Koh, 2017).…”

Spatial capital, cultural consumption and expatriate neighbourhoods in Hanoi, Vietnam

“…This privileged group generally accompanies family members (i.e., full‐time mother and/or school‐aged children attending international schools). Because of their privilege, visa or work‐permit barriers, and local language limitations, accompanying spouses and children are generally within home and neighbourhood bound staying connected with the same ethnic group (Chang and Kim, 2016). While expatriate workers are career‐oriented (Kim, 2020), the full‐time mothers play a role of the route to social life (Ryan and Mulholland, 2014).…”

“…At the residential scale, a typical set of characteristics usually defines what is a good neighbourhood for transnational expatriates. Attractive neighbourhoods tend to include central locations in the city with an ‘urban vibe’ (Beckers and Boschman, 2019), the redevelopment of working‐class brownfield sites into high‐end housing (Cook, 2010), proximity to metro stations and parks (Maslova and Chiodelli, 2018), and higher‐rental expatriate neighbourhoods populated by gated condominiums with their own amenities, and with international schools close by (Wu and Webber, 2004; Chang and Kim, 2016; Sander, 2016). Furthermore, gated communities have been emerging as a new ‘meta‐geographical form’ in dramatically globalising cities where transnational elites reproduce their global lifestyle and organise their consumption (Pow, 2011).…”