‘Where are you?’: (Auto)ethnography of elite passage and (non)-placeness at London Heathrow Airport

Abstract

Led by the question of where an international airport is placed within the aeromobile experience of kinetic elites, the author took on the role of a Business Class passenger to empirically reflect on the issues of placeness and non-placeness while routinely passing through one of the world’s busiest airports. The author gradually reveals the unique sense of place individual terminals hold, the familiar at-homeness of frequently used passages, the dwelling-in-motion within virtual infrastructures of habit, the ostensible segregation of ‘upper class’ passengers, the multiple placemaking efforts and the importance of specific aeromobile practices in the place-related perception of airports. Applying the concepts of place and mobility jointly in their mutual interconnectedness, this (auto)ethnography points to the hybridity of airport perception within the elite passenger experience, which goes beyond the usual binary of a traditional place and a detached non-place.