ABSTRACT
VAL COLIC-PEISKER is Associate Professor in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). ADDRESS: Centre for Urban Research (15.4.18), School of GUSS, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia. Email: val.colic-peisker@rmit.edu.au
SHANTHI ROBERTSON is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney. ADDRESS: Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia. Email: s.robertson@uws.edu.au
Introduction
The context in which people experience local community in the UK is framed by ever-changing global dimensions of migration. While migration to and ethnic diversity in the UK is centuries old, the increasing complexity of contemporary migration trends and the ethnic make-up of communities in the local context require dynamic and open approaches to issues of identity and diversity. The term ‘superdiversity’ is used to emphasize that diversity cannot be seen ‘solely or predominantly in terms of ethnicity or country of origin’ and to recognize the ‘dynamic interplay of variables’ within country of origin (Vertovec 2007, 3), as well as the greater number of ethnicities and countries of origin of people living in the UK and concomitant complexities of needs, demographics and circumstances. Indeed, the range of legal statuses found in any single UK locality in a given ethnic or national group, from British citizens to undocumented migrants, ‘underscores the point that simple ethnicity-focused approaches to understanding and engaging various minority “communities” in Britain… are inadequate and often inappropriate for dealing with individual immigrants’ needs’ (Vertovec 2007, 17).
