Fractured Transitions? Identity, diaspora and disadvantage among young Somali people in wales

Cardiff hosts one of the largest Somali communities in Britain. The community is entwined with Cardiff's maritime history, following settlement of Somali merchant seaman from the late 19th century. The project will critically engage with geographical writing on 'encounters' (Valentine 2008; Wilson 2016). This body of work reveals how micro-spatial contact can facilitate 'meaningful' encounters across axes of difference, generating or reinforcing particular political and ethical subjectivities. However, little credence is given to who or what constitutes a 'meaningful' encounter (Ruez 2017). Moreover, this literature is silent over how power asymmetries structure encounters, notably the racialized entanglements that produce the spaces in which encounters occur. Similarly, its dependence upon methodological interventions focused at the microscale results in narratives that assert while leaving unexamined the power of encounters to transform wider socio-spatial relations (e.g. Wilson 2011).