Super-Diversity in Everyday Life

Jan Willem Duyvendak, Nancy Foner, Philip Kasinitz, Jan Willem Duyvendak, Nancy Foner, Philip Kasinitz

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000024135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Presenting several in-depth studies, this book explores how super-diversity operates in every-day relations and interactions in a variety of urban settings in Western Europe and the United States.

The contributors raise a broad range of questions about the nature and effects of super-diversity. They ask if a quantitative increase in demographic diversity makes a qualitative difference in how diversity is experienced in urban neighborhoods, and what are the consequences of demographic change when people from a wide range of countries and social backgrounds live together in urban neighborhoods. The question at the core of the book is to what extent, and in what contexts, super-diversity leads to either the normalization of diversity or to added hostility towards and amongst those in different ethnic, racial, and religious groups. In cases where there is no particular ethno-racial or religious majority, are certain long-established groups able to continue to exert economic and political power, and is this continued economic and political dominance actually often facilitated by super-diversity?

With contributions from a number of European countries as well as the USA, this book will be of interest to researchers studying contemporary migration and ethnic diversity. It will also spark discussion amongst those focusing on multiculturalism in urban environments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Pioneer migrants and their social relations in super-diverse London

Susanne Wessendorf

ABSTRACT

Urban areas in Europe and beyond have seen significant changes in immigration patterns, leading to profound diversification characterized by the multiplication of people of different national origins, migration histories, religions, educational backgrounds, legal statuses and socio-economic backgrounds, a condition now commonly described as super-diversity. An important part of this super-diversity is individual migrants who do not follow established chain migrations. Little is known about processes of settlement of migrants who do not form part of larger migration movements and might not be able to draw on the support of others of the same national, ethnic, linguistic, religious and socio-economic background. This article describes patterns of settlement of such individual migrants in London. Drawing on the notion of “pioneer migration”, the article focuses on social networks, examining the kinds of social relations pioneer migrants form in the course of settlement and showing that many migrants strive to form social relations beyond co-ethnics.

Urban diversity has taken on new forms in recent years. Not only has the nature of immigration been changing globally, but over the past two decades, the demographic changes brought by immigration have accelerated. In the case of the UK, people have been arriving under various legal categories such as work schemes, economic migrants, students, asylum seekers, undocumented persons and more, and they have been coming from a range of countries of origin, doing a broader range of jobs and for more varied lengths of stay than before (Vertovec 2007). These new patterns of immigration have resulted in super-diversity, a condition of more mixed origins, ethnicities, languages, religions, work and living conditions, legal statuses, periods of stay and transnational connections than many cities have ever faced (Meissner and Vertovec 2015; Vertovec 2007).

An important part of the dynamics of super-diversity in many urban communities is the presence of many migrants who arrive individually and do not follow established chain migrations. Migration scholarship generally focuses on large migration movements. However, many initial migration movements do not involve, or even evolve into, migrations of much larger numbers of people (de Haas 2010). Little is known about processes of settlement of individual migrants who might not be able to draw on the support of people with whom they share the same national, religious, linguistic, ethnic and socio-economic background and who have preceded them in undertaking the same migration journey during a similar time period. How do these migrants settle in a super-diverse context? What kinds of networks of support do they form? Where do they get information about settlement, and how do they make friends?

This article describes patterns of settlement among a diverse group of such individual migrants, here conceptualized as pioneer migrants. The paper focuses on one crucial aspect of settlement, namely social networks, looking at the kinds of social relations pioneer migrants form upon arrival and in the course of settlement.

Social networks have long been recognized as key to understanding both migration and migrant settlement, with a large body of literature analysing their role in various stages of the migration process (Boyd 1989; Massey et al. 1998). Migration literature on early settlement generally assumes that migrants will gravitate towards co-ethnics with whom they share a language, similar cultural values and religious beliefs. In her review of the social scientific literature on transnational and local migrant networks, Moroşanu (2010) shows how this literature has been dominated by a focus on specific ethnic groups, interpreting migrant networks as ethnic networks so that “mixed networks never achieve prominence or are altogether ignored” (Moroşanu 2010, 6). This orientation has been changing in the context of work attempting to shed light on other-than-ethnic factors in shaping migrants’ social relations (Moroşanu 2013; Ryan 2011; Williams 2006), some of which draws on scholarship in urban sociology and anthropology (Blokland 2003; Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2013; Glick Schiller, Çağlar, and Guldbrandsen 2006; Wimmer 2004).

The research on which this article is based did not focus on migrants from a specific country of origin, but on a broad range of countries of origin and migrants with various educational backgrounds, legal statuses, religions and other social characteristics. The research participants had migrated individually and lacked social capital when arriving, and had arrived within the last ten years. The aim of the research was to move away from the assumption that country of origin or ethnicity are the main factors shaping settlement, also critiqued as methodological nationalism (Fox and Jones 2013; Glick Schiller, Çağlar, and Guldbrandsen 2006; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Looking at the role of other-than-ethnic factors in migrant settlement enables us to analyse whether, when, how and why ethnicity or national origin can become salient or not (Brubaker 2004; Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2013; Wessendorf 2013; Wimmer 2004). Approaching the field without assuming specific sociological categories to be more relevant than others could also be described as a super-diversity lens which does not assume ethnicity and nationality to be the determining factors in migrant settlement (but see Aptekar, this issue). Pioneer settlement in twenty-first century London is considerably different to the settlement of migrants after the Second World War when migrants came from a smaller number of (mostly post-colonial) countries of origin, often shared common histories and aspirations, and settled in areas characterized by much less previous immigration than current super-diverse neighbourhoods.

This article draws on Bourdieu’s differentiation between economic, cultural and social capital to illustrate variations in settlement patterns. Economic capital refers to economic resources and assets, while social capital refers to the resources gained from “durable networks of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition” (Bourdieu 1986, 248). Social capital is thus defined by its “ability to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks” (Portes 1998, 6). Cultural capital consists of a person’s collection of knowledge and skills, including formal education (also referred to as institutionalized cultural capital or human capital), IT literacy, as well as, in the case of migrants, knowledge of the majority language (Bourdieu 1986). It also includes knowledge of the local habitus in terms of taste, dress, style, etc. (Bourdieu 1990). Cultural capital proved to be crucial in regards to the research participants’ social network formation. As I will discuss below, one of the characteristics of pioneer migrants is that they often have higher cultural capital than those who follow established migration patterns. In fact, eighteen out of the twenty-three pioneer migrants who participated in the research had high cultural capital when arriving in London, including knowledge of English and IT skills, institutionalized forms of capital such as higher education, as well as knowledge of the local habitus in terms of taste, dress, style, etc. (Bourdieu 1986). This enabled them to form social relations with people of similar educational backgrounds. Elsewhere, I have shown how high cultural capital also made a difference in the kinds of social relations and social capital undocumented migrants and asylum seekers build during initial settlement (Wessendorf 2017). Among the study participants presented here, high cultural capital seemed to facilitate the formation of social networks beyond their “ethnic group”, whereas the (minority of) research participants with low cultural capital more heavily relied on co-ethnic and religious social networks upon arrival. Even if only in small numbers, the pioneers with limited education or knowledge of English tended to cluster together and form stronger ethnic ties. Both historical research on immigrant settlement as well as more recent research have shown that during the early stages of settlement, such co-ethnic networks can be crucial in accessing resources and information (Cheung and Phillimore 2013). The co-ethnic social networks of the research participants with low cultural capital might thus be related to their newcomer status. Over time, and with increased knowledge of English, they might well build networks beyond co-ethnics. In fact, a range of studies indicates that migrants with lower cultural capital build alliances across ethnic differences, in neighbourhoods, workplaces, religious sites and political associations (e.g. Hudson, Phillips, and Ray 2009; Lamont and Aksartova 2002; Moroşanu 2013; Werbner 1999).

The article is based on qualitative research in East London from 2014 to 2015, including twenty-three in-depth interviews as well as four focus groups with recent migrants, and eighteen interviews with people working in the migrant sector such as English teachers and social workers, altogether involving a total of sixty-nine respondents. Respondents (including those who participated in focus groups) came from thirty-one countries of origin including Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Argentina, Chile and Southern Azerbaijan. Sixteen of the twenty-three interviewees were female and research participants’ ages ranged from twenty-three to forty-seven. At the time of writing this article, a comparative study was undertaken in Birmingham, with twenty-five research participants. Preliminary results reflect patterns of settlement and social network formation similar to those found in East London. This paper, however, only draws on the interviews with the London research participants. Research participants were found through personal social networks formed during previous fieldwork in the area (Wessendorf 2014), snowball sampling, through religious and voluntary organizations, English classes and serendipitous encounters, for example on playgrounds. Interviews were conducted in English, French, Italian and Spanish, transcribed and coded in NVivo. The author lived in the area where research was conducted and, on some occasions, had the opportunity to see research participants beyond a one-off interview, thus extending her knowledge about their life-worlds. East London could be described as a typical immigrant reception area, with a long-standing history of immigrant succession, especially since the Second World War (Butcher 2017; Butler and Hamnett 2011; Neal et al. 2015; Wessendorf 2014).

The research participants had various legal statuses, ranging from EU citizenship to work visas, asylum seekers and refugees. What became clear is that legal status determined all other aspects of settlement, although it is not, I should note, a focus in this article. UK asylum dispersal policies mean that asylum seekers are housed in places not of their choice (Hynes and Sales 2010), and asylum seekers are not allowed to work. The six asylum seekers and undocumented migrants in the study were by far the most disadvantaged among the research participants due to their legal status. I address the impact of, among other things, the prohibition to work and resulting social isolation elsewhere (Wessendorf 2017).

I begin by providing a short overview of the literature on pioneer migration, considering how it relates to super-diversity in terms of differentiation within groups as well as the formation of social networks which go beyond co-ethnics. I link this literature with scholarly discourses concerning cohesion and social capital, which often assume that migrants draw on bonding social capital with co-ethnics. The empirical section describes how initial social contacts are often with co-ethnics, but that most research participants soon developed different kinds of networks with people who shared similar interests or the same language, although they were not necessarily from the same country or region of origin. I discuss the reasons for this lack of interest in co-ethnic social networks, ranging from political tensions to gender differences and issues of social control.

Pioneer migrants and social networks

Bertin from Spain arrived in London some ten years ago, aged 22. He knew no one. He came with his girlfriend, and they first stayed in a hostel in central London. Although he had high cultural capital in terms of his education and previous work in the film industry in Spain, he was forced to start from scratch in London because of his limited knowledge of English. He spent the first weeks walking around central London, handing out his CV in cafes and bars. By chance, he bumped into a Spanish-speaking woman in a cinema, who gave him the telephone number of an acquaintance who was renting a room in North East London. Despite finding housing, Bertin and his girlfriend did not manage to get work and establish themselves in London, and after only a few months moved to Dublin, where a friend of his girlfriend’s cousin was living. They obtained accommodation through this contact and found work with a builder through an advertisement on Gumtree, a website advertising accommodation, employment and goods. After about ten months in Dublin, their English had improved and they had saved enough money to return to London and try again. This time, Bertin managed to find (badly paid) work in the film industry, and slowly worked his way up the ladder. Today, Bertin is well established in the film industry as a digital composer, although it took him ten years to get to this position. In the meantime, he also helped about fifteen friends from Spain settle in London, providing them with initial accommodation and information about jobs, housing and other practicalities.

Bertin is a true pioneer, starting off with no contacts in London. But he slowly established himself both professionally and socially, to the point that when Spain faced a severe economic crisis, he was able to help friends follow in his footsteps. He thus turned from a pioneer to a gatekeeper.

What makes Bertin a pioneer migrant? Bertin was pioneering in that he migrated as an individual and not as part of a group, and he did not follow an established path of migration. He also exemplifies that migration at the initial or pioneer stage is an innovative process. Pioneer migrants have been recognized as taking higher risks than subsequent migrants; they are often entrepreneurial, relatively well off and better educated than later migrants (Browning and Feindt 1969; de Haas 2010; MacDonald and MacDonald 1964; Petersen 1958). This was confirmed in the project represented here, where three-quarters of the research participants came with high cultural capital, even if many had limited financial resources on arrival.

Migration scholars have identified different stages of migration processes to describe how migration from a sending to a destination country changes and becomes established over time (Lindstrom and López Ramírez 2010). Migration has been, for example, divided into three periods: the initial or pioneer stage, the early adopter or group migration stage and the mature or mass migration stage (Jones 1998; Petersen 1958). An established flow of people, goods, services and information between two places or a set of places has also been described as a migration system which emerges as a result of initial pioneer migration coupled with feedback mechanisms consisting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: super-diversity in everyday life
• 1 Pioneer migrants and their social relations in super-diverse London
• 2 Coming of age in multi-ethnic America: young adults’ experiences with diversity
• 3 Super-diversity as a methodological lens: re-centring power and inequality
• 4 A discourse of displacement: super-diversity, urban citizenship, and the politics of autochthony in Amsterdam
• 5 “We have to teach them diversity”: on demographic transformations and lived reality in an Amsterdam working-class neighbourhood
• 6 What about the mainstream? Assimilation in super-diverse times
• 7 Talking around super-diversity
• Index