Diversity,inequality and urban change

Diversity in contemporary urban policy and research

Diversity is a powerful, and yet abstract, ideal for urban development and planning, as best illustrated in Iris Marion Young’s seminal texts on the non-oppressive city and global justice (Young, 1990, 2000, 2006). Urban policies may promote physical (a mix of building types, land uses and architectural styles), cultural (ethnic and racial residential mixing) or social diversity (social class and housing tenure mix), but it is not always the case that one form of diversity can sustain another (Fainstein, 2005).

In many European cities diversity policies have been introduced with the aim of increasing ethnic and social mixing in neighbourhoods in order to advance the integration of ethnic minorities and accommodate the arrival of new migrants. Nonetheless, recent evidence suggests that increasing ethnic diversity can be coincident with increasing levels of poverty and deprivation. Gaps emerge between policy rhetoric and the effects of housing policies aimed at the dispersion of ethnic minorities. Housing diversification and mixed tenure, mobility programmes and quotas in housing allocation have limited success as they fail to address structural sources of inequality (see Bolt (2009) for a review of several European cities). The policy focus on the promotion of mixed neighbourhoods as a panacea for social cohesion should be treated cautiously as integration pathways depend both on the changing demography of migration and on the reactions of the institutions and the population of the receiving society (for the UK see Bretherton and Pleace, 2011; for a discussion of European trends see Bolt, Ozuekren and Phillips, 2010; Simpson and Peach, 2009).

In effect, in the context of politico-economic transformations, cultural and social differences intersect and, in the process, produce new landscapes of urban inequality. This is most evident today when austerity and the economic crisis exercise pressure on community relations and foster the growth of racist attitudes, as, for example, has been reported in at least two cities of this special issue: in London (during the disturbing events in the summer of 2011) and in Athens (incidents of racist violence have dramatically increased since 2009).

Acknowledging that diversity develops through complex pathways in different contexts, the main purpose of this special issue is to bring together empirical evidence on the processes and policies generating ethnic and social residential mixing in European cities and to critically assess their impact on the living conditions and development prospects of deprived populations and areas. Linking the complex relationship between diversity and inequality with processes of urban change, this special issue aims to give a new twist to the older research on racial and ethnic segregation, much of which was narrowly concerned with the measurement of segregation or with ghettoization and the marginalization of immigrants. It also aims to advance a critical stance towards conceptualizations of diversity that are associated with anxieties and fears of disorder.

At the level of policy, public concern over safety, ethnic and religious conflict and crime have found a expression in the shift from ‘multicultural’ to ‘assimilative’ local or community interventions (for the UK see Clark and Garner 2010; Crowley and Hickman, 2008; Grillo, 2007; for an international discussion see Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010). Theoretical support for this shift can be found in the argument advanced by Putmam (2007) that ethnic diversity hinders the creation of social capital. However, Putnam’s argument does not find empirical support in the European context, and is severely circumscribed when it is considered that social trust is undermined by the effects of material inequality rather than ethnic differences (for a large European survey see Hooghe et al., 2009; for the UK see Becares et al., 2011; and for a critical review see Cheong et al., 2007).

On the other hand, there has been substantial growth in the literature on transnational social spaces forcing changes in immigration regimes and facilitating citizenship at multiple geographical scales (Castles, 2005; Faist, 2009; Kivisto, 2003; Morris, 2002; Leitner and Ehrkamp, 2006; Sassen, 2005; Soysal, 2000). In many European cities ‘diversity’ replaced the discourse of ‘multiculturalism’ (Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010). This replacement is rather ambiguous as it retains key elements of the multicultural approach but dismisses its collective basis by recognizing diversity only as an individual trait (Faist, 2009; Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010). Recent research contests the generalized retreat of multiculturalism in cities and explores the effects of experimentation with novel ideas and policies (Faist, 2009; Uitermark et al., 2005; Vertovec, 2010). It remains a key research and policy question as to how remedies to pitfalls of the old multicultural approach, such as reification of cultural identities and consolidation of ethnic elites, will not undermine valuable forms of participation and will not mask assimilationist demands (Back et al., 2002).

Five European cities are discussed in this issue: London, Berlin, Athens, Barcelona and Oporto. The five cities represent different contexts and are often discussed in the international literature as characteristic examples of wider typologies, urban development trajectories and planning models. Articles in this issue address two main themes. First, they consider the role of transnational migration in producing new relational spaces and mediating inequalities – how migrant settlements and networks contribute to shaping wider processes of urban change, including both inner city transformations and suburban and outer diversification (see Kalandides and Vaiou, 2012 on Berlin and Athens; Kandylis et al., 2012 on Athens; Rebelo, 2012 on Oporto). Second, the articles consider the varied successes and failures of urban governance in resolving tensions among diversity, social cohesion and economic development (as Sepulveda and Syrett, 2012 illustrate in the case of London), and scrutinize discourse and practice discrepancies in urban regeneration (as in the case of Barcelona reported by Arbaci and Telpeda, 2012).

In this introduction I illustrate some theoretical threads that connect the cities and examples in this issue to cities that appear in influential research in urban studies, and highlight their intellectual heritage. Rather than providing a rigid comparative framework this introduction attempts to illuminate how theoretical formulations can be reshaped by reflecting upon common and contrasting themes and experiences in different contexts. Said’s (1983, 1994) suggestion that theories and schools of thought travel as people do seems applicable to explore how urban theories travelled across distant places. It would not be paradoxical to draw a parallel between the migration of people, their origin and settlement in new locations and the travelling of ideas concerning the processes and effects of human migration in urban life. I briefly present how the shaping of assimilative, politico-economic and multicultural approaches in the USA and Europe is related to turning points in the history of urban studies, and hence to distinctive city trajectories and representations.

Providing a full account of the process of theory transference is not possible here, but it is worthwhile highlighting some of its key aspects. First, I discuss some common themes and sources among a selective group of ground-breaking texts in urban theory, which often are not especially explicit owing to the tendency to focus on distinct and paradigmatic cities. For example, the evolution of distinctive assimilative and multicultural approaches in cities such as Chicago or Los Angeles cannot be accurately traced without considering how the French and German sociological tradition was adapted to the American context. Second, I discuss the transformation of ‘urban ecology’ and ‘dual city’ models in the USA and Europe to illustrate that the criticism of dominant representations of diversity is a vital part of the production of urban knowledge. Third, I draw attention to how theoretical interconnections between cities as diverse as London, Berlin, Athens, Barcelona and Oporto primarily concern representations of everyday inequalities and mundane solidarities, which can contribute to the relational framing of the migration experience and multicultural life.

Theorizing diversity and change in North American cities

Diversity and urban change were central themes in the urban sociology of the Chicago School. However, the treatment of diversity in the founding texts of the Chicago School was not related to social inequality but was instead related to the question of social order and disorder inspired by the European sociological tradition, and particularly by the work of Simmel and Durkheim.

Two powerful metaphors are frequently cited from Robert Park, but they are often interpreted separately and outside of their textual context, without mentioning that they appear on the same page in the Introduction to the Science of Sociology. The first is the metaphor of the ‘city mosaic’ according to which diversity at the metropolitan level is related to the pattern and the processes of segregation: ‘The processes of segregation establish moral distances which make the city a mosaic of little worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate’ (Park, 1921: 182). What is noteworthy is that the overall pattern of diversity comprises ‘little worlds’ and adjacent areas which are separate from each other. Moreover, ecological determinism prevailed in the initial explanations of Park and colleagues, and processes such as invasion, succession and competition were used to describe how immigrant colonies, ghettos and the black belt shaped the concentric pattern of urban development (Park et al., 1925/1984).

Yet, Park also used the ‘melting pot’ metaphor to suggest that assimilation was the antidote for segregation: ‘Great cities have always been the melting pots of races and of cultures. Out of the vivid and subtle interactions of which they have been the centres, there have come the newer breeds and the newer social types’ (Park, 1921: 182). The melting pot metaphor has often been misunderstood by criticisms of Park, which erased his own ambiguities and presented assimilation as the formation of likeness (Alba and Nee, 1997). On the contrary, Park’s conception of social organization was opposed to homogeneity. To him, assimilation is the process of forming a ‘corporate character’ that can contribute to solidarity and coordinated action, which ensure unity to the state and to every other type of social group (Park, 1914, 1921, 1938). Thus conceived, assimilation echoes the Durkhemian notion of organic solidarity and collective consciousness.

Park’s conceptualization of assimilation was also an answer to the contradictions of metropolitan life identified by Simmel (1950a). For example, assimilation was seen as balancing the tensions, introduced by the expansion of the world economy and cosmopolitanism, between exacerbated differences at an individual level and superficial homogeneity at societal level (Park, 1921, 1938). Assimilation was also a way of reintegrating the ‘marginal man’ [sic], the stranger who moves between countries and wanders across diverse city worlds but without a commitment to his moral organization (Park, 1914, 1928). In his later writings, Park elaborated his understanding of an inclusive society, according to which culture and communication provide the means for the transformation of conflict to a public rivalry for recognition and enhancement of social awareness among the individual and separated components of society (Park, 1938). However, by contrasting the ‘naturalized’, ‘biotic’ competition with the ‘socializing’, ‘morally regulating’ culture, Park abandoned Simmel’s attention to the money economy and commodity culture.

It is widely understood that the Chicago School had a weak analysis of political economy and that some of its applications to housing policies in the USA had adverse effects on segregation. Including more US cities in the analysis and acknowledging the transnational dimension of migration led to revisions of the theory of spatial assimilation, which modified the assumption that social mobility proceeds alongside suburbanization, and highlighted the obstacles in status attainment among ethnic and racial minorities (e.g. Alba et al., 1999; Gans, 2007; Massey and Denton, 1993; Portes and Zhou, 1993).

The second turning point in theorizing the relationship between diversity and inequality can be traced in the articulation of the ‘global’ and the dual city thesis within a political economy perspective. New York, alongside London, became the model for analysing the polarizing effects of globalization. The key metaphor organizing the arguments for increasing social divisions in global cities has been that of ‘core and periphery’ (Fainstein, Gordon and Harloe 1992; Friedmann and Wolff, 1982; Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991; Sassen, 1991). To the advocates of the global city thesis, the periphery of global capitalism becomes present within its own metropolitan centres, as best illustrated in the following quotation: ‘The tendency toward cultural economic and political polarization in New York takes the form of a contrast between a core of professionals in advanced corporate services and a disorganized periphery fragmented by race, ethnicity, gender, occupational and industrial location and the spaces they occupy’ (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991: 402).

Much of the valid criticism of the applicability of the dual city thesis to the European context has, however, neglected the modification and nuances of its initial formulation (Samers, 2002). In relation to the articles in this special issue, the following clarifications are especially important. Sensitive to the history of European cities, Mollenkopf and Castells (1991) acknowledged that a distinction between processes of segregation and differentiation is necessary, with only the latter entailing physical distance between the residential location of social groups. Mollenkopf and Castells argued that urban restructuring involves both processes, and, actually, presents us ‘not with two cities but three: two specific spaces of metropolitan heaven and inner city hell and elsewhere the stratified differentiation of urban and suburban space’ (Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991: 407). Gentrification attracted their attention as a process of segregation reversing the existing occupation of social space. Indeed, the tensions rising from diverse encounters in gentrifying areas have always been central to politico-economic (Harvey, 1992; Smith, 1996) and critical sociological approaches (Zukin, 1987). Yet, in today’s fluid picture the dual city model cannot help to understand how new immigrants contribute to diversifying middle-class areas or revitalizing inner- and outer-city neighbourhoods. In her work, Sassen has progressively emphasized the potential for immigrant communities to transform commercial and residential spaces and to provide an organizational springboard for participation and recognition both within and outside the city core (e.g. Sassen, 1996, 2005). In that sense, the ‘presence’ of the periphery within the centre becomes a form of resistance to corporate power and a vehicle for change (Sassen, 2005).

Over the same period, the debate over the paradigmatic features of Los Angeles brought to the fore how cultural heterogeneity and economic inequality combine to produce new fragmented urban landscapes (cf. Dear, 2002; Soja, 2000; Waldinger and Bozorgmehr, 1996). The themes of restructuring and fragmentation became prominent in this literature and in exemplary fashion found expression in Soja’s metaphorical vocabulary (Soja, 2000). He argued that ‘exopolis’ represents the ‘city turned inside out’ as the suburbs become compact and outer cities develop, but also the ‘city turned outside in’, as the centre draws in its zone what was once considered ‘elsewhere’. The exopolis includes gentrified areas, black ghettos and middle-class suburbs but also sprawling communities, ethnoburbs and inner-city barrios. Moreover, in Soja’s (2000) account, fragmentation was not identical to bifurcation, and the explanation of inequality was not reduced to ethnic differences. His cautious reading of the empirical literature suggested that a ‘mono-ethnic geography’ might distort the cartographic accuracy and the theoretical interpretation of spatial differentiation. Thus, he coined the term ‘fractal city’ to capture the fragility and instability of the social geography resulting from transformations in the ethnic divisions of labour and city space.

These debates have retained an ‘American’ orientation by comparing Los Angeles with Chicago. It has often been neglected that the readings and journeys of the protagonists of the Los Angeles School reached back to Foucault, Lefebvre and Benjamin, and Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam. A critical multiculturalism, associated with Los Angeles, challenged the established tradition of assimilation research by insisting on how flexible forms of accumulation emerged from the interplay of neo-liberal strategies and cultural differences. It has also contributed to showing the vitality of material and imaginary spaces for recovering the identity of marginalized populations and for sustaining political alliances within heterogeneous communities.

Theorizing diversity and change in European cities

London is a prototypical global city of diversity. Its history has been integrally connected to imperialism and trade, with the River Thames as the vein of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. Three distinctive perspectives in theorizing the relationship between diversity and inequality stem from London’s transformation into a global city. The first is a critical multicultural perspective shaped by the emergence of British cultural studies during the 1970s. The second is a politico-economic analysis of housing and labour market inequalities, which offered a basis for the discussion of polarization within global cities. The third is centred on the issue of ‘superdiversity’ and the challenges of understanding space in relational terms. All three perspectives emerged as a theoretical response to ethnic and social tensions and connected to wider discussions of citizenship and deficiencies in immigration and urban policies in the UK. ¹ Within recent work there is consistent dialogue among the three perspectives, despite epistemological or ideological differences among them (e.g. Hall, 2006; Massey, 2007; Wills et al., 2010).

The origins of the critical multicultural approach can be traced to Birmingham and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (Keith, 2009). Whilst much of the early work in this tradition was fertilized by the intellectual atmosphere of the CCCS, original research on urban youth and working-class subcultures and policing was conducted in east London (Hall et al., 1978; Hall and Jefferson, 1993). Framing the experiences and resistances to racialized disadvantage within a broader ideological critique of capitalism, this work distinguished itself from the US concerns about urban disorder. Subsequent work (e.g. Back, 1997; Gilroy, 2006; Hall, 2006; Keith, 2005; Massey, 2007) on London underscored the paradoxical cohabitation of multiculturalism and racism, as well as tensions between the corporate or consumer-driven cosmopolitanism of the elites and the vernacular cosmopolitanism of migrants. A novel understanding of multiculturalism has contributed to challenging the ideological shaping of anxieties related to segregation and the lack of cohesion (cf. Amin, 2002, 2006). Moreover, critical research continues to ask old questions in the context of new institutional arrangements: Are structural inequalities addressed through the agenda of community cohesion? How can activism enhance participation? Should participation be limited to the civil sphere or should it be expanded into the political realm? (e.g. Cheong et al., 2007; Massey, 2007; Wills et al., 2010).

Sassen’s initial formulation about polarization in London has been questioned by subsequent research. Hamnett (1996) stressed the importance of the welfare state in modifying the effects of economic restructuring and argued that social stratification in London is characterized by the growth of middle-class strata and professionalization. However, the relaxed management of migration flows and labour deregulation resulted in sharp divisions within migrant and working-class communities (Wills et al., 2009, 2010). According to evidence from the 1990s, the privatization of the housing system had a complex effect on residential segregation, which was not captured by the discourse about ‘white flight’ from inner London. A growing trend involving ethnic minority suburbanization was associated with improved access to home ownership, whilst an increase in the social and private rented housing of ethnic minorities in inner London ran parallel to the growth of white home ownership (Hamnett and Butler, 2010). Inequalities in inner London have been associated with state-led gentrification and a failure to deliver the promises that policies of mixed communities entailed (Atkinson, 2008; Lees, 2008; Lees and Ley, 2008). As a result, poor living conditions affect the dignity of members of working-class communities, either mixed or ethnically homogeneous, and fuel racial and social tensions (Hickman et al., 2008; Wills et al., 2010).

Emphasis on the transnational dimension of contemporary migration stressed the spatial complexity associated with superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007). Widespread migrant diversity was infamously mapped in The Guardian’s publication ‘London: the world in one city’ (Benedictus, 2005). Yet, new patterns of segregation could not fit the models of spatial polarization or spatial fragmentation; nor did they conform to the dominant discourse on parallel lives (Peach, 2009). A significant factor contributing to this complexity is the overlapping of diverse communities in terms of ethnicity, gender, religion, citizenship status, employment and housing. Moreover, the idea of transnationality constitutes a shift towards a relational, dynamic and agonistic understanding of urban space as powerfully signified by the metaphors of the ‘meeting point’ or the ‘arena’ (cf. Amin, 2002, 2006; Massey, 2007). As Doreen Massey (2007: 89), in her commentary on London’s future, has put it, ‘Urban Space is relational, not a mosaic of simply juxtaposed differences. This place, as many places, has to be conceptualized not as simple diversity, but as a meeting place of jostling, potentially conflicting, trajectories’.

Syrett and Sepulveda (2012) take up the theme of superdiversity to reflect upon its challenges for urban governance. By examining the varied responses across London boroughs, they contest the argument about the generalized retreat of multiculturalism and verify the significance of different local trajectories in policy making. They reveal that superdiversity concerns not simply the fragmentation of the city into a multitude of ethnic communities, but also many multiethnic localities. Hence, emphasis on ‘single-identity’ organizations or activities, which were common to older types of multiculturalism, becomes a limitation in addressing inequality, and transcultural links become necessary for the local legitimacy of policies. Broad coalitions, such as London Citizens and the ‘Strangers into Citizens’ campaign, brought together diverse communities with a shared interest in improving living conditions in London’s deprived areas. Syrett and Sepulveda’s (2012) discussion explores the need to develop governance practices across spatial scales in distinct fields like the management of labour flows, wage relations, employment conditions and training.

The figure of the ‘stranger’ is an analytical category underlying Syrett and Sepulveda’s (2012) typology of urban economic policies in London, and it is worth discussing the implications of this argument. Following Simmel (1950b), the stranger is not a wanderer (‘who comes today and goes tomorrow’), as is implied in ‘Guestworker’ policies, but rather someone who is here to stay (‘who comes today and stays tomorrow’), as implied in pluralist and integrationist policies. Moreover, the stranger’s ‘membership’ of a group is the means to reflect upon existing habits in an ‘objective’ way. It allows ‘mediation’ between different positions and enhances the understanding of what is ‘familiar’ by its juxtaposition to what appears as strange (Simmel, 1950b). Thus, pluralist policies can recognize, better than assimilationist or integrationist ones, the inherent quality of ‘strangeness’ in any collective formation and avoid the dangers of idealizing community, as scholars including Sennett (1977) and Young (2000) aptly illustrated.

The second case discussed in this special issue, Berlin, has a historical trajectory which has also been emblematic, and even a tragic illustration, of the ways in which different ethnic cultures and populations experience and contribute to wider politico-economic transformation in the urban context. Significant moments in this trajectory have given rise to theorizations of diversity, which were then taken up, reused and reformulated in different contexts. Simmel’s (1950b) discussion of the ‘stranger’ in the metropolitan context remains seminal, as does Benjamin’s ‘Berlin chronicle’ (Benjamin, 1979a). The concept of the ‘stranger’ has travelled far, across to the other side of the Atlantic via Robert Park and Louis Wirth. Yet, transformations of the concept in the USA have related the ‘stranger’ to marginality and anomie. Berlin’s distinctive cultural heritage, grass-roots activism and ethnic diversity have been considered as potential for its development in post-unification policies despite dominant visions of its transformation to a global city (Cochrane, 2006; Haussermann and Colomb, 2003; Latham, 2006). City initiatives to address racist tension and promote integration, as well as accounts of Turkish migrants in Berlin, have been central to the advancement of arguments about forms of ‘post-national citizenship’ and multiculturalism (e.g. Soysal, 1994; Vertovec, 1996).

Kalandides and Vaiou (2012) undertake the challenge to compare Berlin with Athens. This comparison is not paradoxical, if one considers that Simmel and Benjamin used the sharp contrast between Berlin and Mediterranean cities to reflect upon the metropolitan experience of modernity. Porosity, as described by Benjamin and Lacis in Naples (Benjamin and Lacis, 1979), pre-dates the cultural conviviality and openness described by contemporary authors on multicultural cities (cf. Amin, 2006, 2008; Amin and Thrift, 2002; Sennett, 2005, 2010). There is scarcely such a forcible comment on how urban change becomes a complex process of human agency conditioned by inequality than that by Benjamin and Lacis, as follows:

Porosity results … above all from the passion of improvisation, which demands that space and opportunity be at any price preserved…. Even the most wretched pauper is sovereign in the dim, dual awareness of participating, in all his destitution, in one the pictures of Neapolitan street life that will never return, and of enjoying in all his poverty the leisure to follow the great panorama.

(Benjamin and Lacis, 1979: 170)

For Benjamin, consciousness could rise by the contrast of destitution and leisure. Porosity signified the interplay of commodity culture with spontaneity in everyday life. Indeed, the panorama of Naples anticipates the phantasmagoria of commodities, which Benjamin later discovered in Paris and explored further in the Arcades project (Benjamin, 1999). However, in Naples city trade retained the qualities of the popular festival and the fairy tale, as the entertainment industry of wish-fulfilling images and alienation was not yet formed. Also, unlike Benjamin’s own experiences of the bourgeois life in Berlin (Benjamin, 1979a, 1979b) porosity in Naples entailed dispersion and co-mingling of private life and collective matters: ‘To exist, for the Northern European the most private of affairs, is here, a collective matter’ (Benjamin and Lacis, 1979: 171).

However, Kalandides and Vaiou (2012) take a different analytical strand. They choose to emphasize similarities rather than differences between Athens and Berlin. Within the realm of everyday life and neighbouring they reveal a set of similarities between the two cities and emphasize the interplay of institutional workings with informal arrangements in order to convey multiple references of belonging. To that end, they mainly revert to the work of Lefebvre (1995) and his conception of ‘the right to the city’ to understand membership and participation in terms of inhabitance. They mainly use the voices of migrants who are under-represented in policy making, and who retain an ambivalent official status or remain undocumented. Of course, there are differences concerning how urban policies and the granting of citizenship structure the rights of immigrants and opportunities for participation in policy making in Germany and Greece. From their paper it is evident that German policies are more generous to migrants and are more decentralized and open to diversity than Greek policy formations. Yet, Kalandides and Vaiou (2012) highlight how de facto citizenship (Sassen, 2005) results from sociality and neighbouring practices. The neighbourhood includes public spaces such as the square, the school or the playground, but it is also full of thresholds and openings such as gardens, kiosks and the fronts of retail shops. Indeed, the depiction of neighbourhoods in the accounts of migrants and natives reported by Kalandides and Vaiou (2012) conveys the experience of porosity that Benjamin so much admired. It also bears a strong resemblance to the variety of multicultural sites of interaction, such as micro publics‚ contact zones‚ and transversal spaces, which appear in recent ethnographic studies (e.g. Amin, 2002; Wessendorf, 2011; Wise and Velayutham, 2009).

However, porous spaces are not simply ‘sites of encounter’ between different social classes and ethnic and racial groups residing in spatial proximity to each other and moving across the permeable borders of neighbourhoods. It should be stressed that porosity results from the varied spatial reach of diasporic networks and translocal ties connecting the settlements of immigrants to the cities, towns and villages of their origin. Consequently, the rhythms of everyday life and conviviality, which so impressed Benjamin and Lacis (1979) and Lefevbre (2004), have also been shaped by long-distance connections of Mediterranean cities to regions outside their immediate location. Acknowledging the diversity of the Mediterranean, its hazy external boundaries and the complex relationships between its subdivisions, a number of scholars ² have contributed to advancing a critical approach to urban studies. It is worthwhile recapitulating three aspects and providing some examples from the relevant literature.

First, cities of the European south have historically experienced low levels of social segregation because of the diffusion of manufacturing within urban districts, the persistence of informal housing and employment practices, extensive systems of family support and the formation of a distinct working-class culture (Allen et al., 2004; Leontidou, 1990; Mingione, 1983, 1995).

Second, with the end of the Cold War, metropolitan centres in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece have become major destinations for migrants from eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East (King, 2001; King et al., 2000; Mingione, 1999). Positioning themselves within the international debate on ‘globalization’ and ‘parallel lives’, researchers from the European south have documented the concomitant rise of social polarization and desegregation (Arapoglou and Sayas, 2009; Arbaci and Malheiros, 2009; Malheiros, 2002; Maloutas, 2007, 2012; Mingione, 2009). The complexity of southern European cities cannot be captured by the notion of the dual city, but exemplifies the tensions between the logic of globalizing market forces and the logic of sociality, including both particularistic and universalistic claims of belonging (Mingione, 2009).

Third, the orientalist portrayal of southern European cities, particularly those on the eastern Mediterranean coast, conceals much of their internal inequalities and claims for democratic change (Hadjimichalis, 1994, 2004; Hadjimichalis and Vaiou, 2004; Leontidou, 1996, 2010). The depoliticized management of the recent economic crisis adds a new blaming tone to the colonialist discourses of European elites about the indolence, hedonism and irresponsibility of southern Europeans, and thus undermines the possibility of inclusive citizenship (Hadjimichalis, 2011). Yet the blaming tone actually reactivates nationalist ideologies and xenophobic discourses and exacerbates social tensions at the local level. However, research into the everyday life of Mediterranean cities reveals aspects of practical cosmopolitanism, solidarity and attempts to create local institutions for participation of immigrants that stereotypical representations tend to ignore (e.g. Garcia, 2006; Horta 2006; Leontidou, 2010; Perro, 2011; Riccio and Russo, 2011; Santos and Nunes, 2004; Vaiou and Stratigaki, 2008). This stream of research draws on convergent conceptualizations of everyday life in the work of Lefevbre (2003, 2004) and Gramsci (1996) and, respectively, diverts from Durkhemian notions of culture, which were influential to the Chicago School and assimilation theories. According to this perspective, integration stems from the practising of citizenship and the claiming of rights by grass-roots organizations struggling from below to change urban policies and structures of participation.

Certainly, there are differences between cities, owing to their specific location in circuits of international migration and capital, their development trajectory and relation to national history, and their internal dynamics. Such factors are explored in the articles on Athens, Barcelona and Oporto in this issue.

The article by Kandylis et al. (2012), for example, focuses on the contextual factors that shape a new socio-spatial hierarchy in Athens. They use quantitative techniques, familiar in the literature on segregation, but they are primarily concerned with showing how demographic and socio-economic variables interact to produce a stratification of the immigrant population, which is reflected in the residential distribution of different immigrant groups. Their findings confirm that social inequalities in southern European cities are not spatially manifested in extreme forms of segregation and widespread marginality because employment opportunities and affordable housing are available in socially mixed areas. In discussing contextual factors of socio- spatial differentiation in Athens they highlight how the availability of high-density housing in central locations gave shape to a distinctive form of ‘vertical segregation’ and effectively reinforced socio-ethnic mixing. Yet, they are also able to locate deprived industrial areas within the urban fabric and on the periphery of the city where migrants from the Indian peninsula settle in extremely precarious working and housing conditions.

In Spain, during the post-Franco period, and particularly since the 1980s, Barcelona has become an arena for debating contested plans and visions of urban redevelopment and city upgrading in global hierarchies (Amelang, 2007; Delgado, 2007; McDonogh, 1999; Monclus, 2011). Arbaci and Tapada-Berteli (2012) scrutinize the ‘urban renaissance’ rhetoric on diversity and sustainability that the Barcelona model represents. They examine the effects of urban renewal programmes in the Raval, Santa Caterina and Sant Pere neighbourhoods within a wider historical and geographical framework. They use longitudinal data to show the fine-grained processes occurring in the city centre in the last two decades and conclude that renewal programmes failed to tackle the main sources of deprivation. Instead, these programmes have increased socio-spatial polarization. More specifically, Arbaci and Tapada-Bertelli reveal the inability of micro interventions involving demolitions and redesigns of public spaces and housing renovations, motivated by the logic of ‘beautification’, to control large-scale dynamics related to the mobility of people and real estate capital. Their findings highlight the replacement within the intervention zones of long-term vulnerable residents by a largely western foreign population and younger middle-income groups, as well as the rise of micro pockets of marginality and wealth in adjacent areas. Interestingly, they describe a multi-faceted process of state-led gentrification including the attraction of north-west European gentrifiers, changes in the location pattern of newly arrived immigrants and relocations of the most vulnerable immigrants to deprived areas.

The case of Oporto is also illuminating as to how the complexity of contemporary southern European cities cannot fit dominant Anglo Saxon models of segregation. As Rebelo (2012) highlights, the diverse immigrant population includes a significant proportion of skilled groups and professionals who are integrated into local labour and housing markets. Rebelo proposes a methodology to study the connections between the residential and work locations of different immigrant groups in Oporto. The application of this methodology reveals diverse patterns of immigrant settlement in both the metropolitan centres and suburban areas. Despite the success of the better qualified and Portuguese-speaking immigrants, the article also notes significant social differences among immigrants from eastern Europe, Venezuela and Africa. The findings indicate the need to explore in detail how urban planning, social integration policies and grass-roots mobilizations in the Portuguese context facilitated the access of immigrant groups to jobs and affordable housing, and how these processes have mitigated the negative effects of gentrification and filtering down (Rebelo, 2010; Santos and Nunes, 2004; Sardinha, 2011).

Conclusions: theoretical reflections and policy implications

The articles in this special issue look at complex processes of social and spatial differentiation, which were neglected by the older literature on segregation and the schematic understanding of neoliberal globalization. ‘Vertical segregation’ and diffused immigrant settlements in the industrial core and periphery of Athens, micro pockets of marginality and wealth in inner-city Barcelona, and diverse immigrant settlements in Oporto each reveal how long-established urban landscapes are gradually transformed by the interplay of global and local forces and produce a new set of urban socio-spatial inequalities. The articles in this special issue highlight multiple sites for practising citizenship and for enhancing and establishing solidarities against the anxieties of disorder and the return of neo-assimilation policies.

London, Athens, Berlin, Barcelona and Oporto do not easily conform to the melting pot or the dual city metaphors. They increasingly resemble ‘meeting points’, ‘arenas’ or ‘kaleidoscopes’, as found in relational perspectives on diversity. Comparative research and theories can thus benefit from drawing on the work of Gramsci (1996), Lefebvre (1995, 2003, 2004) and Benjamin (1979a, 1979b, 1999) who viewed urban culture not as a field of disintegration, but as a terrain in which to contest inequalities and alienation in an agonistic way. In this way, comparative research can challenge north–south dichotomies and stereotypes that re-emerge in contemporary discourses on the causes of the economic crisis.

A long list of failures to deliver diversity and equality can be compiled from authors who have been focused on this dual task (Amin, 2002; Fainstein, 2010; Sandercock, 2003). Many of these failures also seem to be important for London, Barcelona, Berlin, Athens and Oporto, as has been reported in the articles of this special issue. Fainstein (2010) uses two infamous examples, the development of Battery Park City in Manhattan and the regeneration of London’s Docklands, to illustrate how market-driven diversity can result in false authenticity. Recent research on the redevelopment of London’s waterfront substantiates the theory that new urbanism projects led to indirect displacement of disadvantaged populations, undermined working-class local attachments, and produced ethnic separation at micro-spatial scales (Carmona, 2009; Davidson and Lees, 2010). According to Arbaci and Tapada-Berteli (2012), planning in Barcelona replicates these drawbacks of the ‘Urban Renaissance’ model. Ironically, the simulacrum of diversity in both London and Barcelona fails to meet the planning expectations and desires for real conviviality.

Sandercock (2003) and Amin (2002) refer to civil disturbances in the UK to show how the community cohesion discourse and racial policing contribute to the social construction of fear and the desire for security. Amin (2002) noted that territorial stigmatization cuts out the possibility for change and reinforces ‘white flight’ from inner-city areas. Subsequent research suggests that stigma afflicts refugee settlements, migrant enclaves and council housing estates in inner-city London (e.g. Herbert et al., 2008; Watt, 2006). Similar phenomena have been reported for inner-city Athens (Arapoglou et al., 2009) and Oporto (Pereira, 2007). Moreover, local competition over scarce resources and public services intensifies ethnic tensions across and within diverse communities (Amin, 2002; Hickman et al., 2008).

Equally important is the need to explore the factors that make ethnic mixing work in an egalitarian way. Research findings from the five cities suggest that emphasis should fall as much on issues of redistribution (providing affordable and good quality housing, urban infrastructures and social facilities) as on issues of recognition (building a sense of belonging, security and pride through participation of immigrants in policy making). It is within the realm of everyday life that multicultural alliances are promising today, as long as cities are increasingly interconnected and the welfare of the majority of their population continues to come under threat by austerity and neoliberal policies.