Spatial Diversity in the Global City

“Set in the global city of Tokyo, this book zooms in on the complexities and paradoxes in the way transnational professionals engage in space-making. By carefully differentiating between social spaces – from the comfort zones of the foreigner ghetto to the contact zones in local society – it yields fascinating insights on the spatial and temporal aspects of urban diversification.” —Brenda Yeoh, Raffles Professor in Social Sciences, National University of Singapore “For a city of its size and global importance, Tokyo is strangely under-researched. All the more welcome therefore is this volume that sits on the interface of urban and migration studies. Sakura Yamamura casts expert light on the lives of transnational professionals in Tokyo, how they interact with the city and how the city shapes them, offering on the way telling insights on the nature of diversification and convergence in global cities.” —Paul Waley, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK This book, at the nexus of migration and urban studies, sheds new light on a long-neglected group of transmigrants and the global city of Tokyo. Using extensive empirical material on transnational migrants from above and below, it locates and better specifies spatial diversification in Tokyo and beyond. By incorporating transnational spaces into urban diversity discourses, it extends the superdiversity debate to a socio-spatial dimension and examines the configuration and processes of diversity and diversification in global cities from a socio-spatial perspective. Unique in its theoretical focus on the spatial aspect of superdiversity, the book delivers rare empirical insights into the daily socio-spatial practices of transnational financial professionals and other transmigrants. This social geographical study reveals the complex interplay between global mobility and urban transformation. It will be of particular interest to urban and migration scholars in fields such as urban sociology, social geography, and urban anthropology, offering deep engagement with debates on urban diversity and transnational spaces. Sakura Yamamura is Professor in Human Geography at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany and Senior Research Partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany.