ABSTRACT
DANIEL HIEBERT is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. ADDRESS: University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver V6T 1Z2, Canada. Website: blogs.ubc.ca/dhiebert. Email: daniel.hiebert@ubc.ca
Introduction
What understandings might ethnography yield for urban ‘super-diversity’; for Vertovec’s (2007) encapsulation of the evermore-varied differentiations of migrant identity, connection and stratification within a fluid world? On a kilometre stretch of street on Rye Lane in Peckham, South London, 199 formal units of retail are tightly packed adjacent to one another, forming a dense, linear assemblage of economic and cultural diversity. The majority of these units are occupied by independent proprietors, aligning among them over twenty countries of origin: Afghanistan, England, Eritrea, Ghana, India, Ireland, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Pakistan, Kashmir, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Yemen. The high concentration of diverse countries of origin among the proprietors on this
single street is accompanied by remarkable intercultural proficiencies. Almost a third of the proprietors on Rye Lane are able to converse in four languages or more (Hall 2013). Interactions on the street are more than simply lingual, and one in four of the independent shops have been subdivided and sublet into smaller shops, where proprietors from across the globe, each arriving on the street in different migratory rhythms, share space, risk and prospect. Conventional retail economies mix with emerging ones. Rudimentary agreements, including who locks up at night and how toilets are shared, are arranged alongside mercantile ambitions for how retail activities are best co-located. Exchange, a more apt description of these shared, agile practices than ‘community cohesion’ (Home Office 2001), occurs within and across affiliations of ethnicity and origin.
