Meaningful intercultural contact: how different places pave the way for learning to live together in diversity

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on the geographies of encounter in contexts of diversity. Through in-depth interviews, we explore what meaning people attach to intercultural contact and how different places influence this contact. Drawing on public pedagogy theory, we show how people consider intercultural contact as a moment of intersubjective learning, and distinguish three different learning processes: qualification, socialization and subjectification. On the basis of interviews with people with and without a migrant background, we also reveal how intercultural contact can be experienced very differently by both parties involved. Analysing how place affects the nature and meaning of intercultural contact, we argue how places not only differ in the opportunities for intercultural contact they offer (depending on selectivity of access), but also in the kind of interpersonal interaction they stimulate. Our interviews reveal how the nature of such interaction, in the end, influences the kind of learning processes that can take place. We distinguish private spaces, public spaces, semi-public spaces and institutional spaces as different arenas for intercultural contact and intercultural learning.