Talking around super-diversity

Abstract

The concept of super-diversity has been widely evoked–sometimes in highly misleading ways. Based on a survey of 325 publications across multiple disciplines, this special issue endword piece presents a typology of ways of understanding super-diversity. This includes addressing super-diversity as: a contemporary synonym of diversity, a backdrop for a study, a call for methodological reassessment, a way of simply talking about more ethnicity, a multidimensional reconfiguration of social forms, a call to move beyond ethnicity, and a device for drawing attention to new social complexities. Indeed, I believe the latter–the search for better ways to describe and analyze new social patterns, forms and identities arising from migration-driven diversification–is perhaps the most driving reason for expanding interests and uses, however varied, surrounding the concept of super-diversity.