Superdiversity, or super-diversity, is a

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

term and concept often said to have been coined by sociologist

Steven Vertovec Steven Vertovec (born 2 July 1957) is an anthropologist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, based in Göttingen, Germany. He is also currently Honorary Joint Professor of Sociology and Ethnolog ...

in a 2007 article in ''Ethnic and Racial Studies'', but which he first used in a

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Definition and usage

It denotes increased diversity not only between immigrant and ethnic minority groups, but also within them. It has also been called the "diversification of diversity". Vertovec gives the example of

Somalis in the United Kingdom Somalis in the United Kingdom include British citizens and residents born in or with ancestors from Somalia. The United Kingdom (UK) is home to the largest Somali community in Europe, with an estimated 108,000 Somali-born immigrants residing i ...

, arguing that the Somali community includes British citizens,

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

and

asylum seeker An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum (i.e., international protection) in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and m ...

s, people granted exceptional leave to remain, undocumented migrants, and secondary migrants from other European states. Parveen Akhtar, a sociologist at the

University of Bradford The University of Bradford is a Public university, public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be creat ...

, argues that the UK is no longer characterized by diversity but by superdiversity: "Post-1945 you had large waves of immigration from fewer places in the world, largely from the former colonies. Now, since the 1980s, you’ve got smaller waves of immigration from a wider range of places". According to Nasar Meer, "Super-diversity has emerged both as a description of empirical phenomena (the proliferation of diversities) and as a normative claim that increased pluralism (both associated with migration as well as wider changes in our understanding of identity categories) requires social scientists and policy makers to develop approaches to register this". According to Fran Meissner and Steven Vertovec, writing in 2015, the concept of superdiversity has been the subject of "considerable attention" since Vertovec introduced it in 2005. They note that Vertovec's 2007 article in ''Ethnic and Racial Studies'' is the most

cited A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of ...

article in the history of the journal. The concept has started to influence the fields of

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...

and

linguistic anthropology Linguistic anthropology is the Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past cen ...

Criticism

Some authors are critical of the concept of superdiversity. Sinfree B. Makoni argues that the concept "contains a powerful sense of social romanticism, creating an illusion of equality in a highly asymmetrical world, particularly in contexts characterized by a search for homogenization...I find it disconcerting, to say the least, to have an open celebration of diversity in societies marked by violent xenophobia, such as South Africa". Ana Deumert argues: “The use of ‘superdiverse’ as a descriptive adjective, is a theoretical cul-de-sac, because the complexities brought about by diversity in the social world ultimately defy numerical measurement” The claims of increased migrations and diversity have been challenged by Czajka and de Haas (2014). They observe that while globally the number of migrants has increased so has the world population so the ''proportion'' of migrants has actually decreased. In the Americas migration has increased but diversity hasn't. The fact that migrations have centered on a “shrinking pool of prime destination countries” (many of them small countries in Western Europe) led them to conclude that “the idea that immigration has become more diverse may partly reveal a Eurocentric worldview” Aneta Pavlenko argues that superdiversity is an exercise in academic branding which fails as an academic term:

Researchers and research institutes

Key researchers working on superdiversity include Vertovec,

Jan Blommaert Jan Blommaert (4 November 1961 – 7 January 2021) was a Belgian sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist, Professor of Language, Culture and Globalization and Director of the Babylon Center at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He also hel ...

and Jenny Phillimore. The University of Birmingham established the Institute for Research into Superdiversity in 2013. The

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften'') is located in Göttingen, Germany. It is one of 83 institutes in the M ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

is also an important centre for superdiversity research. New Zealand's "Superdiversity Stocktake: Impact on Business, Government and on New Zealand" was launched in November 2015 and sponsored by banks, companies, the

Human Rights Commission A human rights commission, also known as a human relations commission, is a body set up to investigate, promote or protect human rights. The term may refer to international, national or subnational bodies set up for this purpose, such as nationa ...

, and the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

. A study on "Implications of Superdiversity for NZ’s Electoral Laws and Democracy" was also launched. Both projects were carried out by the Superdiversity Centre for Law, Policy and Business, which describes itself as "a multidisciplinary centre specialising in analysing the law, policy and business implications of New Zealand’s superdiversity". Its patron is Sir

Anand Satyanand Sir Anand Satyanand, (born 22 July 1944) is a former lawyer, judge and ombudsman who served as the 19th Governor-General of New Zealand from 2006 to 2011. Satyanand was chair of the Commonwealth Foundation for two 2-year terms, ending in De ...

and its chair is

Mai Chen Mai Chen is a New Zealand and Harvard educated lawyer with a professional and specialist focus in constitutional and administrative law, Waitangi tribunal and courts, human rights, white collar fraud and regulatory defence, judicial review, re ...

References

General references

* * {{cite book, last1=Budach, first1=Gabriele, last2=Saint-Georges, first2=Ingrid de, title=Superdiversity and language, date=2017, publisher=Routledge Handbooks Online, isbn=9781138801981, page=Chapter 3, doi=10.4324/9781315754512

External links