Superdiversity explores processes of diversification and the complex,
emergent social configurations that now supersede prior forms of
diversity in societies around the world. Migration plays a key role in
these processes, bringing changes not just in social, cultural,
religious, and linguistic phenomena, but also in the ways that these
phenomena combine with others like gender, age, and legal status.
The concept of superdiversity has been adopted by scholars across the
social sciences in order to address a variety of forms, modes, and
outcomes of diversification. Central to this field is the relationship
between social categorization and social organization, including
stratification and inequality. Increasingly complex categories of social
"difference" have significant impacts across scales, from entire
societies to individual identities. While diversification is often met
with simplifying stereotypes, threat narratives, and expressions of
antagonism, superdiversity encourages a perspective on difference as
comprising multiple social processes, flexible collective meanings, and
overlapping personal and group identities. A superdiversity approach
encourages the re-evaluation and recognition of social categories as
multidimensional, unfixed, and porous as opposed to views based on
hardened, one-dimensional thinking about groups. Diversification and
increasing social complexity are bound to continue, if not intensify, in
light of climate change. This will have profound impacts on the nature
of global migration, social relations, and inequalities.
Superdiversity presents a convincing case for recognizing new social
formations created by changing migration patterns and calls for a
re-thinking of public policy and social scientific approaches to social
difference. This introduction to the multidisciplinary concept of
superdiversity will be of considerable interest to students and
researchers in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences.
The Open Access version of this book, available at
www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
