Arrival cities and the mobility of concepts

Abstract

The status of any arrival city is far from stable, being continuously reworked by state policy, geopolitics, economic fluctuations or localised events that rupture or destabilise what came before. The diversifications and differential inclusions that are examined in this special issue attest to the complexities of arrival cities, where the very nature of ‘arrival’ is open to interpretation and subject to diverse temporal experiences and migration regimes. By approaching the concept of ‘arrival city’ as a heuristic and moving between the literal and figurative realms of mobility, I draw out some of the core contributions of Migrant-led Diversification and Differential Inclusion in Arrival Cities Across Asia-Pacific. This includes: the notion of arrival; temporal geographies and the experience of transience and non-linearity; and the geographies of intimacy and encounter.