MIG@NET, Transnational digital networks, migration and gender Deliverable 11: “Migrant digitalities and Germinal social movements in three arrival cities: Mobile commons transforming the urban questions?”
During the fieldwork visits we can observe many Asian migrants gathered around sitting, relaxing away from the buzzing atmosphere or entering the kiosk by the corner where they buy So-Easy cards having a small chit chat with the cashier. Vietnamese women have set up their products on cloth on the ground. I see vegetables, medicine, hats and clothes. Customers stand on top and are browsing through the clothes. When they select something to try on, they go to the back, behind the stall per se and an ‘assistant’ would lift a sheet of white cloth, like a bed sheet, and surround the customer with it while standing, with another assistant holding the other side. The customer would then be engulfed in an upright tunnel of sheet and then change their clothes in there while her back would face the crowd and passersby crossing behind.
Most of the people compose of women, mainly South-East Asian, with the occasional South Asian women passing by. They comfortably sit on the grass, and group laughter reverberate across the space. There is a large number of phone use and taking pictures with their cameras. Most of them pose. I also notice a new phone being taken out of its box, as the woman plays around with it in her hands. There are men scattered in the area, some are Asian who engage with the women in a familiar set. Yet, other men are further scattered across the space, either standing on their own and to me they seem out of place. One stands by the railing, another by a tree, and another sitting by me. They take on a more performative mode observing the game and the rest of the space but not engaging with others. It is a usual site to observe man, may times old Cypriot men, trying to buy sexual services and harassing migrant women.51
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We have included one of the field notes of the researcher as appendix 1
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