Coming to Terms With Superdiversity : The Case of Rotterdam

This open access book discusses Rotterdam as clear example of a superdiverse city that is only reluctantly coming to terms with this new reality. Rotterdam, as is true for many post-industrial cities, has seen a considerable backlash against migration and diversity: the populist party Leefbaar Rotterdam of the late Pim Fortuyn is already for many years the largest party in the city. At the same time Rotterdam has become a majority minority city where the people of Dutch descent have become a numerical minority themselves. The book explores how Rotterdam is coming to terms with superdiversity, by an analysis of its migration history of the city, the composition of the migrant population and the Dutch working class population, local politics and by a comparison with Amsterdam and other cities. As such it contributes to a better understanding not just of how and why super-diverse cities emerge but also how and why the reaction to a super-diverse reality can be so different.

By focusing on different aspects of superdiversity, coming from different angles and various disciplinary backgrounds, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in migration, policy sciences, urban studies and urban sociology, as well as policymakers and the broader public.

Peter Scholten is associate professor Public Policy & Politics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is coordinator of the interdepartmental research cluster on the Governance of Migration and Integration. His research focuses on issues of intercultural governance, multi-level governance and knowledge & public policy. Also, he is co-editor in chief of the journal Comparative Migration Studies. Peter also partners in various research projects, including AMICALL and IMPACIM (COMPAS Oxford), PROSINT (ICMPD) and FP7 project UniteEurope. In addition, Peter is fellow of the Montesquieu Institute and member of the board of the Center for History of Migrants and associate researcher at the Center for Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS), at Oxford University. Peter is also coordinator of the IMISCOE research cluster on ‘Research-policy dialogues on migration and integration in Europe, member of the Immigration Research Group of the Council for European Studies (CES) and senior-member of theNetherlands Institute for Government (NIG).