Mapping the Multiple Contexts of Racial Isolation: The Case of Long Street, Cape Town

This article explores the idea that racial segregation is a process operating across a range of scales of social life. The focus is upon the way segregation unfolds and is (re)produced at what can be termed the `micro-ecological' scale—that is, in the everyday, interpersonal interactions between people in informal settings. To illustrate this argument, a case study is presented of relations in the night-time economy of Long Street, Cape Town. It is shown how such relations comprise micro-ecological practices of contact and isolation that occur at levels of resolution seldom captured by segregation research.