Sociology
Superdiversity and the Reshaping of Urban Social Integration
Quick fact
In London, over 300 languages are spoken by schoolchildren, and about a third of the population was born abroad—yet the real novelty is the combination of nationalities, legal statuses, religions, and even immigration pathways (e.g., refugee, student, work visa) that defy simple categorization as 'immigrant' or 'minority'.
Why this is interesting
Cities like London and Toronto are now home to over 300 spoken languages—but that's only the beginning. When ethnographer Steven Vertovec looked closer, he saw a complexity that made 'multiculturalism' seem old-fashioned. What happens when diversity becomes so layered that the old labels no longer fit?
Read the full explanation
Understanding Superdiversity and the Reshaping of Urban Social Integration
Imagine a city district where a single street hosts a mosque, a Sikh temple, and a Pentecostal church; where families from Somalia, Romania, and Vietnam live side by side; where some residents hold dual citizenship, others are asylum-seekers, and others are second-generation with mixed-heritage backgrounds. This is not just 'more diversity'—it's a new kind of diversity. The term 'superdiversity' was coined by sociologist Steven Vertovec in 2007 to describe what happens when the sheer number of categories multiplies and, crucially, they start to overlap and interact. It's like moving from a simple LEGO set with a few block shapes to a box with thousands of unique pieces—you can't build the same structures. Superdiversity means that the old model of integration—the idea that newcomers should blend into a dominant culture—stops working. There is no single 'dominant culture' to blend into. Instead, people create new patterns of living together. They mix in schools, workplaces, and public spaces, but they also retain distinct identities. Integration becomes less about assimilation and more about negotiating shared rules while preserving differences. Researchers and policymakers have to pay attention to many dimensions at once: migration status (refugee vs. labor migrant), gender, age, religion, education, and connections across borders. This makes every story unique.
A deeper explanation
The underlying mechanism that makes superdiversity distinct is the intersectionality of differences. It's not simply that there are more nationalities; it's that the variables that used to define a person—country of origin, language, legal status—now combine in so many ways that no single category can predict a person's life chances. For example, a Nigerian doctor on a work visa faces different obstacles than a Nigerian refugee, and a second-generation woman from a Pakistani family navigates a different set of identity pressures than her cousin who just arrived. This interaction creates new forms of social stratification and complexity. Traditional social integration theories, developed in the 20th century, assumed that immigrants shared similar backgrounds and would eventually resemble the majority population, following a linear path to assimilation. Superdiversity breaks that assumption. Integration now must account for not only the receiving society's culture but the mosaic of newcomers' cultures, their transnational ties, and their variable rights. In practice, this has driven a shift from national 'integration' policies to local, pragmatic solutions—like, for example, city governments providing services in multiple languages and offering legal aid regardless of status. The result is a redefinition of social cohesion: instead of a melting pot, cities become 'glocal' mosaics where cohesion emerges from daily workable arrangements—shared public spaces, overlapping networks, and a recognition of common urban identity. This matters because it challenges our very idea of a 'national' society: if cities are superdiverse, then social solidarity must be built at a more local, inclusive scale, and it must be flexible enough to accommodate both change and persistent difference.