ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with a consideration of the spatial in debates about migration, difference and settlement; it discusses the meanings of multiculture and the ways in which it can be understood as situated, shaped by relations of place and space. The chapter then considers the ways in which the project draws on comparative approaches before it outlines the organisation and structure of the book. The starting point of 'living multiculture' reflects both the ways in which people routinely manage difference and the ways in which cultural difference evolves and develops dynamically, shaping, converging and changing all cultures. The rapidly changing nature and geographies of multiculture in England have come about through a constellation of factors, globalisation, migration trends, migration dispersal, EU agreements, social mobility, demographic structural change, labour market demands. The distinctive urban planning of Milton Keynes and its 'newness' as a city space was a recurring observation in the Milton Keynes participants' often ambivalent descriptions of the city.
