10 - Living with diversity or living with difference? International perspectives on everyday perceptions of the social composition of diverse neighbourhoods

Summary

Introduction

Living with social differences and all the encounters, conflicts and transgressions this entails is a constituent part of urban living (see, for example, Amin, 2002; Massey, 2005). With increasing regional and global migration, the level and complexity of social differences seems to have reached a new height, as has been highlighted by work claiming that urban societies have become super- or hyper-diversified (Vertovec 2007; Tasan-Kok et al, 2014). Identities have become more fluid and urban social compositions more complex. The experience of living in large cities and metropolises constitutes the background of a new emphasis on engaging with difference from a diversity perspective.

If this quality is new, does it generate a new normality of living together? Is any notion of this multiplicity of social characteristics present in how people see and judge the social composition of their neighbourhood? Drawing from qualitative interviews with inhabitants in three European cities – Athens, Paris and Leipzig – we aim to understand how people live with diversity in less privileged neighbourhoods. Empirically, we examine how people describe the social groups in their area along two guiding questions:

• 1. What categories or combinations do inhabitants use to construct social groupings and their relation to place?

• 2. Which normative assessments about a group's presence in the neighbourhood are accepted and which are contested?

We employ a social differences perspective inspired by intersectionality theory to interpret these data and to understand how inhabitants of such increasingly heterogeneous neighbourhoods perceive, describe and judge their social environment. We show that in all three cities inhabitants’ perceptions are replete with stereotypes of intersecting social group identities. Distinctions first and foremost lie at the intersection of characteristics (like income, ethnicity, age and gender), which serve as the basis for expressions of closeness, distance and stigmatisation. In our view, the intersectionality approach offers a strong starting point for their analysis, although it gives less consideration to the variety of differences such as orientations, values or the duration of residence in a neighbourhood.

Social difference from a conceptual perspective

Terms and concepts addressing social heterogeneity

In theories on social inequalities various paradigms have been employed to make sense of social heterogeneity. Heterogeneity – as opposed to homogeneity – is a descriptive term conveying that there are differences between people.