Mobile encounters and meeting places in motion

The aim of this chapter is to present the urban bus as a meeting place and a social arena for complex spatial negotiation of differences. It is based on ethnographic work carried out in Copenhagen as a part of a wider research project on Paradoxical Spaces: Encountering the Other in public space, which explores how cultural difference is experienced, practiced and negotiated in public space. Theoretically the chapter locates itself on the one hand in contemporary thoughts, seeing public transport not only as a moving device but also as a social arena, which challenges classical understandings of place management. On the other hand, it sees the bus simultaneously as a public space, which is at once composite, contradictory and heterogeneous, and as a meeting place involving a particular ‘throwntogetherness’ that is bodily performed and emotionally charged. The chapter explores the different modes of encounters in the everyday practice of bus travel. The modes of encounters analysed are bodily and outspoken meetings between passengers, meetings with the socio-materiality of the bus and meetings with the drivers as both co-riders and gatekeepers.