Approaching the proxemia of whiteness: representations and experiences among non-white population in Madrid

Abstract

As an emerging field in Latin America and Spain, critical studies of whiteness delve into its historical construction. However, few studies have focused on whiteness as a layer of everyday experience for the non-white population. Thus, in order to analyze the ways in which the representation of whiteness and its materiality is part of the everyday experience of non-white people in Madrid, this article traces a connection between recent contributions from socio- anthropological sensory studies, postcolonial studies of whiteness and accounts of the experience of non-white people living in peripheral districts such as Carabanchel, Villaverde, Usera, Tetuán and Lavapiés. This mapping will allow us to conclude that, for non-white people in Madrid, whiteness presents itself as a parameter for institutional functioning, a perceptual schema that informs social action which goes beyond the physical presence of white bodies and as a stratum of experience can facilitate or limit various types of movement: circulation through institutions, social class mobility and the displacement of bodies in space.