ABSTRACT
This chapter looks more critically at how the idea of 'superdiversity' has caught up in the field of language studies, particularly sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, and what it brings, does, reveals – or obscures – in this context. The chapter examines more critically some of the conceptual, methodological, and political challenges raised by the use of term 'superdiversity' for language studies and for conceptualizing the complexity of what happens in the 'contact zones' between migrants and host communities. Issues linked to migration, mobility, or language contact have moreover been at the core of the sociolinguistic project since its early endeavors. 'Superdiversity' therefore resonates with the position of a privileged elite of white researchers, guilty of a certain 'social romanticism' risking to obscure the social conditions enforcing mobility, at least on the African continent, and covering up issues of great social division and injustice.
