Strangers and Strangership.

Over a century ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel observed that the figure of the stranger is characterised by a peculiar mixture of physical proximity and social distance. In both social science and popular media, the stranger tends to be treated as equivalent to the immigrant or the unknown Other. This paper takes some of the ideas that the stranger concept generates and pushes them outwards by using Simmel's observation as a springboard to develop the relational concept of strangership. Where the study of strangers focuses on the specific traits of individuals and groups, the concept of strangership focuses instead on the characteristics of relationships between strangers. Three conditions for the emergence and/or presence of strangership are described. In the spirit of contemporary theoretical work that seeks to connect the special position of the stranger to inequality, the paper concludes by proposing the concept of strangership as a way to foreground the relational character of life lived amongst strangers in ways that can thicken how we think about both solidarity and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]