Settling in a Super-Diverse Context: Recent Migrants’ Experiences of Conviviality

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the experiences of settlement among recent migrants in a super-diverse London Borough. Drawing on theories of cosmopolitanism and the notion of civility, it illustrates how the demographic super-diversity of an area, and the fact that diversity has become commonplace among local residents, facilitates newcomers’ settlement process. Not only do newcomers quickly develop a sense of belonging on the grounds of ‘not sticking out’ because of their visible or audible difference, but they also find it easier to meet people because so many people have come from elsewhere. The article develops the notion of ‘microspaces of conviviality’ where newcomers can form relations with other residents on the grounds of shared interests, educational backgrounds and sometimes shared languages. It describes these places as anchor points where more sustained and enduring relations can be formed, but also shows that only a limited number of newcomers and long-term residents actually use such spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrant settlement
• belonging
• cosmopolitanism
• super-diversity
• civility
• conviviality
• urban diversity
• London

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Susanne Wessendorf is a Social Anthropologist and has been doing research on migration, transnationalism and diversity for more than 10 years. She is currently a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham, UK. Previously based at Oxford University and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, her work has investigated the interrelationship of transnationalism and integration among the second-generation, and more recently, social relations in a super-diverse urban context.

Notes

1. See Glick Schiller and Çağlar (2016, p. 5) for a criticism of neighbourhood studies.

2. The number of the total population is taken from the ONS 2013 Mid-Year Estimates. The remaining numbers are taken from the 2011 census.

3. Hackney Today is a fortnightly newspaper published by Hackney Council and circulated to 108,000 households in Hackney.

4. See also van Leeuwen’s (2010) notion of side-by-side citizenship.

5. An exception to this are ESOL Classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages), where migrants of various backgrounds meet.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Marie Curie Actions – Intra-European Fellowships (IEF) [grant number 621945], and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.