Super-diversity and the art of living in ethnically concentrated urban areas

Abstract

This article discusses how local diversity is being experienced by Somali immigrants who have previously lived in the Netherlands and are now residing in London. It explores the various challenges and potential advantages of living in homogenous urban areas within a super-diverse city and focuses on three situations: (1) when homogeneity is functional and leads to living in parallel worlds; (2) when homogeneity creates social reproduction, even when located in a super-diverse city; and (3) when people manage to oscillate between both worlds – i.e. between homogenous urban areas and the potential offered by a super-diverse city. The article argues that migrants trace different pathways in the context of super-diversity. They have the ability to operate at different scales – the locale and the cosmopolitan super-diverse metropolis. However, the most vulnerable people have more difficulty in accessing and benefiting directly from the potential offered by super-diversity.

Keywords:

• ethnic enclave
• urban area
• integration
• super-diversity
• Somalis
• London

Acknowledgements

This research could not have been carried out without the funding received from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013), grant agreement no. PIEF-GA-2008–219,485 and from the Somali people who were willing to share their stories with us. Thanks to the three anonymous Identities reviewers, the associated editor as well as John Solomos for their important and constructive comments. They gave us valuable suggestions for references and on how to improve our paper. Thanks to the contributors, discussants and other participants in the conference that took place at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford that preceded this article.

Notes

1. We borrow this title from Peach’s (1996) paper ‘Good segregation, bad segregation’.

2. In this paper, we use the term ethnic concentration to discuss our empirical data. We do not use the term segregation because of the negative connotation and avoid the term self-segregation because we feel that it ignores the structural causes of ethnic concentration.

3. For a discussion on this concept, see Berg and Sigona (2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Milena Chimienti

MILENA CHIMIENTI is Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland/HES-SO

Ilse van Liempt

ILSE VAN LIEMPT is Assistant Professor in the department of Urban Geography at Utrecht University