White, middle-class South Africans moving through Cape Town: mobile encounters with strangers

Abstract

Drawing on photo-elicitation interviews with 60 middle-class, white residents of two privileged suburbs of Cape Town, this paper focuses on the particularities and the potential effects of mobile encounters with strangers. Starting from discourses about different means of transportation, it is demonstrated, first, that middle-class, white South Africans prefer cars over public transit not only for safety reasons or matters of practicality but also to circumvent interactions with those whom they consider to be strangers. Yet, based on the ambiguous and ambivalent sensations of fear, shame, guilt, sympathy, apathy and anxiety provoked by glances and glimpses of strangers on drives through the city, it is clarified that particular forms of visual encounter which develop onthe-go can stimulate privileged residents of a very unequal city to develop new engagements with strangers. By analyzing how unfocused interactions through the windshield add up to focused interactions at home and at work, it is shown, more specifically, how different types of encounters at different places complement each other to encourage middle-class, white residents to see the humanity of those whom they had considered to be strange or dangerous before.

Conceptualizing Mobility Inequality: Mobility and Accessibility for the Marginalized

“…Racialized mobility (Sheller 2015) describes how sociocultural stereotypes embedded in racial segregation produce no-go zones for certain ethnicities. In the United States and South Africa, black and low-income neighborhoods are often perceived as deprived and dangerous zones to be avoided (Culwick et al 2015;Preston and McLafferty 2016;Schuermans 2017;Sheller 2015).…”

“…In South Africa, whites travel mainly in the city center while Africans remain on the periphery as a result of apartheid policies (Culwick et al 2015). White middle-class South Africans opt to use cars and avoid public transport due to their fear of interaction with impoverished blacks as they associate with crime (Schuermans 2017). In the Middle East, the avoidance of public transport by Emirati students plays into negative racial stereotypes of non-Emirati, low-income workers using buses (Qamhaieh and Chakravarty 2017).…”

“…The recent COVID-19 pandemic has seen a widening of the mobility inequality gap between those with and those without access to private motorized vehicles (International Energy Agency 2020; International Transport Forum 2020) as traveling beyond walking or cycling distances is now limited or avoided at the risk of transmission. More permanent examples include segregated zones within a city produced by racialized mobility (Schuermans 2017;Sheller 2015) and gendered mobility (Hanson 2010;Ding, Loukaitou-Sideris, and Agrawal 2020), whereby difficulties to travel to a specific location are experienced disproportionately by certain groups. Often, mobility inequality results in unequal access through spatial mismatches between low-income neighborhoods and employment opportunities (Blumenberg 2004;Blumenberg and Manville 2004;Grengs 2010).…”

Re-working encounter: the role of reflexivity in managing difference

“…The outcome of this contact is intertwined with power and privilege, and inflected by feelings of threat, competition, vulnerability, resentment and guilt (e.g. Anthias, 2001;Drew, 2011;Gilligan, Shannon, & Curry, 2007;Karner & Parker, 2011;Pagani, Robustelli, & Martinelli, 2011;Schuermans, 2017;Smollan, 2006).These responses are no less evident in young people encountering difference, managing positions of inequality and experiencing conditions of change (Nayak, 2010;Simonsen & Koefoed, 2015;Visser, Bolt, & van Kempen, 2015).…”

“…Processes of change and contact with difference may even increase reflexive capabilities according to Nowicka (2015).This capacity for plasticity can be demonstrated in the development and deployment of adaptive competencies in order to manage difference and to get along with others, including the imaginative ability to empathise (Bennett, Cochrane, Mohan, & Neal, 2016;Butcher, 2011;Schuermans, 2017). As noted in the following narratives, cultural knowledge and action that informs the nature and outcomes of encounter with others can be a dynamic, mutable set of procedures and understandings.…”