This event looked at how new diversities and (im)mobilities are lived in the contemporary urban space of the ‘world’ city. The discussion was directed through a presentation of two key ethnographies, both of which are based in London, and engage with the accelerated diversification of the city through the lens of everyday life.

Susanne Wessendorf’s book Commonplace Diversity: Social relations in a super-diverse context (2014), explores how the ‘diversification of diversity, also described as “super-diversity”’ impacts local life in the London Borough of Hackney.

In her book, Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in mobility (2015), Emma Jackson delves into the occupied spaces and traversed routes of young homeless people who converge in a day centre in central London. Together, these important accounts expose new views of discrimination and conviviality, in the context of an increasing unequal and diverse city.

(Supported by an ESRC project on Super-diverse Streets: Economies and spaces of urban migration in UK Cities’,  ES/L009560/1)