Ethnoscapes

Ethnoscapes is a term used in globalization studies to describe the shifting and diverse flows of people across borders and the social landscapes they produce. It is one of the five "scapes" proposed by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai to explain how global cultural orders are made and unmade. Ethnoscapes focus on the movement of persons—emigrants, immigrants, refugees, tourists, students, labor migrants, exile communities—and on how their mobility reconfigures identities, communities, and economies.

Ethnoscapes interact with other landscapes: financescapes (capital flows), mediascapes (news and images), ideoscapes (shared ideas and ideologies), and technoscapes (technologies of production and communication). The concept emphasizes not fixed ethnic categories but the social lives of mobilities, diasporic networks, and transnational ties that cross borders while reshaping local life. Researchers use ethnoscapes to analyze migration policy, urban integration, ethnic enclaves, and transnational practices such as remittances, cross-border entrepreneurship, and cross-cultural exchange.

Critiques note that focusing on mobility can underplay power, coercion, and state control, and that ethnoscapes may overlook class, gender, race, and the asymmetries of global capitalism. Nevertheless, the concept remains a useful lens for studying how the movement of people contributes to cultural economies, urban change, and transnational identities in an era of increasing mobility.