‘Whether you like it or not, this is the future!’ : everyday negotiations of the community’s boundary in urban space

Abstract

How are the boundary and ground of community produced and negotiated in mundane practices of interaction and language use in urban space? The article explores how claims of belonging and legitimate presence are formulated, communicated, and contested and what kind of daily collisions emerge between people in multilingual and multicultural urban contexts. By so doing, it contributes to critical scholarship that discusses connections between community-making and everyday citizenship. Empirically, we draw on data collected in the suburb of Hervanta in Tampere, Finland, where various and internally diverse social groups engage every day in dialogues and negotiate the community’s boundary. We suggest that, ultimately, these negotiations regard the norms, habits, and values upon which the idea of community is founded. The article uses Rancièrian notions of consensus and dissensus to understand tensional community dynamics in diversifying environments and to pave the way for an emergent understanding of community.