5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The role of multi-ethnicity in cities has been explored on examples of, mostly Western European, cities that have, since the twentieth century, become more ethnically diverse (see e.g. Vertovec 2007; Kymlicka 1996; Valentine 2008; Sartori 2002; Antonsich and Matejskova 2015). The term post-multiculturalism has been used but only to mean a new phase in the development of already highly multicultural cities (Vertovec 2010). In this session, we invite contributions from scholars who research the role of bygone or diminished ethnic diversity in cities that used to be very cosmopolitan and multiethnic but, for different reasons, lost their diversity. We are thinking here of cities such as Rabat, Alexandria, Thessaloniki, or many of the cities of Central and Eastern Europe that were once truly diverse and with time became nearly mono-ethnic. We are interested in the legacies of past cosmopolitanism and in the ways today’s activists, public intellectuals and normal citizens try to remember (or forget) their cities’ multiethnic histories. We are also interested in long-lasting frequencies of (ethnic) change and in the meanings of old diversities for new migrants. Finally, we welcome papers that focus on the intersection of different diversities and memories, past and present.