In this talk, I will discuss the ways in which the concept of social space as developed by French sociologist/anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu can be applied to the study of emplacement among immigrants. This perspective goes beyond a transnational lens to explore ideas of visibility or invisibility in social space, social distance or nearness, and the relationship between physical/geographical space and social space. I will draw upon examples from my research on the Vietnamese diaspora.

Deborah Reed-Danahay is Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo, where she has taught since 2008. She has conducted research in France and in the United States, and is preparing a new ethnographic research project in London. She currently works on issues of mobility, citizenship, nationality, and supranationalism. Her interests also include social theory and the ethnography of personal narrative. She is the author of Education and Identity in Rural France: The Politics of Schooling (Cambridge, 1996) and Locating Bourdieu (Indiana, 2005); and coauthor of Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Vietnamese and Indian Immigrants (Stanford, 2012). She edited the collection Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social (Berg, 1997) and is co-editor of Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the United States (Rutgers, 2008). She is a recent past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe and a Fellow of Magdalene College (Cambridge, UK) and the Royal Anthropological Institute.