ABSTRACT

In an increasingly ethnically diverse society, debates about migration, community, cultural difference and social interaction have never been more pressing.

Drawing on the findings from a two-year, qualitative Economic and Social Research Council funded study of different locations across England, Lived Experiences of Multiculture uses interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the ways in which complex urban populations experience, negotiate, accommodate and resist cultural difference as they share a range of everyday social resources and public spaces. The authors present novel ways of re-thinking and developing concepts such as multiculture, community and conviviality, whilst also repositioning debates which focus on conflict models for understanding cultural differences.

Amidst highly charged arguments over the social relations of belonging and the meanings of local and national identities, this timely volume will appeal to advanced undergraduate students and graduate students interested in fields such as Race and Ethnicity Studies, Sociology, Urban Studies, Human Geography and Migration Studies.

chapter 1|21 pages

Spatialising multiculture

Changing formations of urban diversity and the difference a place makes

chapter 2|17 pages

The increasingly ordinary and increasingly complex nature of ethnic diversity

Conviviality, community and why the micro matters

chapter 3|18 pages

Researching difference

Differentiated populations, lives and places 1

chapter 4|17 pages

Multiculture and public parks

Social practice and attachment in urban green space 1

chapter 5|16 pages

Multiculture and public parks

Corporate cafés, multiculture and everyday social life 1

chapter 8|18 pages

Multiculture and policy imaginations

Engaging with the informal social world

chapter 9|10 pages

Conclusions

Precarious multiculture