XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

117

What Now for Urban Multiculture in the Era of Brexit-Trump?

RC05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity (host committee)

Language: English

Urban neighbourhoods across the world have seen increasingly diversified patterns of immigration leading to a condition also described as ‘super-diversity’, where people of many different national backgrounds, legal statuses, educational and class backgrounds, and other such categories of differentiation live along side each other. Studies have shown the co-existence of both tensions and conviviality between people of different backgrounds in such neighbourhoods. Political events such as the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum in the UK, and the divisive public discourse which formed part of both campaigns, have led to fears of increasing xenophobia and racism, with a shocking increase in reported hate crimes, for example in the case of the UK and US, and reverberations globally with an increase in reported incidents in Australia, and parts of Europe. This panel asks how times like these impact on how people live together on the local level, in neighbourhood spaces such as schools, libraries, shops, and playgrounds. Can ‘conviviality’ as a negotiated local consensus of living together peacefully ever hold up against the exclusionary public discourses of the new right? Do these exclusionary discourses give rise to new forms of solidarity on the local level or strengthen already existing patterns of conviviality?  Or do they contribute to an increase in local tensions and everyday racism? Rather than discussing these questions on a theoretical or philosophical level, this panel invites papers which address these questions with empirical material from a ‘bottom up’ perspective, drawing on research within urban neighbourhoods.