Ethnography, Diversity and Urban Space

Across Europe, multiculturalism as a public policy has been declared ‘dead’ but, everyday multiculture is alive and well. This book explores how people live with diversity in contemporary cities and towns across Europe. Drawing on ethnographic studies ranging from London’s inner city and residential suburbs to English provincial towns, from a working-class neighbourhood in Nuremberg to the streets of Naples, Turin and Milan, chapters explore how diversity is experienced in everyday lives, and what new forms of local belonging emerge when local places are so closely connected to so many distant elsewheres. The book discusses the sensory experiences of diversity in urban street markets, the ethos of mixing in a super-diverse neighbourhood, contestations over the right to the provincial city, diverse histories and experiences of residential geographies, memories of belonging, and the ethics and politics of representation on an inner city estate. It weaves together ethnographic case studies with contemporary social and cultural theory from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, cultural studies, and migration studies about urban space, migration, transnationalism and everyday multiculture.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.

Mette Louise Berg is a lecturer in the anthropology of migration at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK.

Ben Gidley is a researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, UK.

Nando Sigona is a lecturer and Birmingham fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity, and the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK.