What about the mainstream? Assimilation in super-diverse times

Abstract

Super-diversity has become the conceptual touchstone for a large body of research on immigration in European societies. Evolving from the ideas sketched by Steven Vertovec in his famous 2007 essay, the concept as deployed in research has become a successor to multiculturalism. The super-diversity lens has trained attention on horizontal processes of “living together” in very diverse settings, like some urban neighbourhoods where no group holds the majority status. However, we argue here that for a fuller understanding of integration, we need the vertical dimension of social power. This dimension is manifest through the mainstream, which permeates many institutions (including local ones such as schools) and becomes visible in the cultural adjustments made by members of immigrant-origin minorities, particularly among those who aspire to social mobility. The power axis represented by the mainstream is not strictly dependent on the demographic distribution of ethnic groups, given that white natives remain very powerful even when they are a numerical minority. At the same time, the character of the mainstream may be altered to some extent by the entry of individuals with non-white minority origins. To illustrate these ideas, we offer the examples of the “culturalization of citizenship” in the Netherlands and the social locations of young people of mixed background in the US.

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