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Ethnic and Racial Studies

Volume 30, Issue 6, 2007

Special Issue:   ‘New Directions in the Anthropology of Migration and Multiculturalism’

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Abstract

Diversity in Britain is not what it used to be. Some thirty years of government policies, social service practices and public perceptions have been framed by a particular understanding of immigration and multicultural diversity. That is, Britain's immigrant and ethnic minority population has conventionally been characterized by large, well-organized African-Caribbean and South Asian communities of citizens originally from Commonwealth countries or formerly colonial territories. Policy frameworks and public understanding – and, indeed, many areas of social science – have not caught up with recently emergent demographic and social patterns. Britain can now be characterized by ‘super-diversity,’ a notion intended to underline a level and kind of complexity surpassing anything the country has previously experienced. Such a condition is distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade. Outlined here, new patterns of super-diversity pose significant challenges for both policy and research.

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  • Citation information:
  • Published online: 25 Sep 2007

Author notes

  • Steven Vertovec -

    Steven Vertovec is Professor of Transnational Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Director of the ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)

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Interview with Ethnic and Racial Studies guest Editor, Malcolm James on the Special Issue – ‘New racisms, new racial subjects?’


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