SPACES OF RE-ROUTING: Strategic Hybrid Ethnic Space as Method

This chapter rethinks the conception and racialization of ethnic minority space and examines how such spaces can be rearticulated as positive agents in shaping contemporary intercultural cities and thus serve a project of resistance and decolonizing imperial legacies. It proposes “strategic hybrid ethnic space” as a method and conceptual tool. This space contests “race” and the racialization of spaces and peoples and proposes instead a form of hybrid cosmopolitanism based on “spaces of re-routing” in which multiple identities and belongings may be formed and recognized. These spaces might be theorized as positive and active forces in inspiring society to embrace cosmopolitanism, imagining flexible citizenship, and contributing to projects of healing and decolonization. The chapter draws on previous work by the author in examining the “Chinese spaces” of Chinatown and cemeteries in Kuala Lumpur and Chinatown in London through which racialized and bounded ethnic Chinese space is reframed into a shared public space so as to reinscribe ethnic minority spaces into the narrative of postcolonial intercultural cities, challenge conceptions of the city that sideline ethnic minority groups, and examine the role of “strategic hybrid ethnic space” in seeing, thinking, making, and decolonizing architecture and built spaces to facilitate a project of healing.