In the Introduction to this book (Chapter 1), we argue that the concept of super-diversity captures a number of ongoing diversity-related societal transformations, but also has its limitations. The chapters in this volume each in their own way improve our understanding of living with super-diversity in deprived and mixed neighbourhoods. They aim to contribute to the literature on super-diverse urban neighbourhoods in two important ways. First, overly generic, pessimistic and one-sided narratives on the failure of multiculturalism are nuanced by focusing on the myriad ways in which citizens actively and creatively regulate, live and deal with super-diversity in the concrete urban places in which their life unfolds. Second, we aim to show how ethno-cultural differences matter for social inequality and vice versa by explicitly focusing on the intricate relationship between ethno-cultural diversity and social inequality. In this concluding chapter we briefly reflect on the main insights that we can draw from the contributions on these two topics, and end with some directions for future research.

Living with super-diversity

The scholarly literature on living with super-diversity offers a welcome antidote to overly pessimistic accounts on the ‘failure of multiculturalism’ and the return of concerns with ‘national civic culture’ (Zapata-Barrero, 2017) and even assimilation (Brubaker, 2001) in academic as well as public debates. As explained in the Introduction to this book, much of this countervailing literature can be loosely categorised under the concept of ‘conviviality’, although there is a range of rather similar terms in circulation such as ‘everyday multiculturalism’ (Wise, 2009), ‘commonplace diversity’ (Wessendorf, 2013) and ‘urban multiculture’ (after Gilroy's distinction between multiculturalism and multiculture; see Gilroy, 2004; Jones et al, 2015). Instead of focusing on conflict and rupture in interethnic relations, conviviality refers to human modes of togetherness in diversity (Nowicka and Vertovec, 2014). As Nowicka and Vertovec argue, conviviality privileges individuality and individual agency over the multiculturalist concern with the collective identification and agency of ethnic groups. Following Gilroy, they question whether belonging to a particular ethnic group necessarily results in ‘discontinuities in experience’ and grave difficulties in communicating with others. According to Nowicka and Vertovec, then: ‘for many authors, it [conviviality] offers a new vocabulary to speak of a collective without referring to fixed categories of ethnicity’ (2014, p 347).