ABSTRACT
This short chapter explains how Productive Diversity as a policy rubric came into being. It draws on interview data with one of the architects of the concept to offer a unique understanding of the thinking and the policy actors involved. The idea was not created in a knowledge vacuum and was also influenced by concepts from research literature The chapter thus provides a background to the field of multicultural research, and its twinning with migration. It suggests that diversity theory could benefit from reconsidering ethnoculture and minority status in relation to the global division of labour and non-labour and the market economy.
