Living Multiculture: the new geographies of ethnic diversity and the changing formations of multiculture in England

该项目提出了两个关键问题。首先，人们如何生活在复杂的文化差异中，并在日常生活中管理日益增长的文化多样性；其次，地点和地方在其中扮演着什么角色。越来越分散和多样化的多元文化人口的证据，以及当前对社区和地方的政策关切意味着，现在是研究这一问题的决定性时刻。一些黑人和少数族裔(BME)人口的社会经济流动性变得更加确定，来自欧洲内外的移民模式仍在继续。这种情况的综合影响意味着，在21世纪，曾经单一文化的地方变得更加多元文化，更高水平的种族多样性正在改变曾经与特定BME群体联系在一起的地方。公共和私营部门对劳动力的需求、不断变化的移民政策以及BME集团的抱负和抱负，推动了这些新的地理位置和复杂的多元文化构成。尽管这些社会和地理变化以及复杂性，但“种族关系”和“多元文化”这两个术语更多地与“隔离”、“危机”和“分裂”联系在一起。考虑到备受瞩目的公开辩论、媒体报道和凝聚力导向的政策背景主要基于2007年伦敦衰落的后工业化城市地区和事件的经验，这并不令人意外。然而，政策界和学术研究对不同种族人群以友好或友好的方式生活和互动的方式也越来越感兴趣。探索和解释这种“能力”的动态和局限性--以及它与具有悠久和短暂文化多样性历史的地区的关系--是这项研究的核心。正是在多元文化分散的背景下，这一空间要求被强调，因为对郊区、大城镇和小城市的研究较少，这些城市很少或根本没有多元文化和/或种族紧张的历史。该项目的核心目标是促进对多元文化的新的社会和空间理解，并提供适当的政策回应。它在三个比较案例研究领域采用了创新的方法，这些领域提供了了解英国多元文化新地理的不同窗口：米尔顿·凯恩斯-一个新的多元化城市；莱斯特郡郊区奥德比-通过搬迁BME社区的富裕成员和伦敦哈克尼区-通过正在进行的移民和士绅化，经历了新的高度多样化。这种方法是创新的，因为它工作在心理治疗技术和社会科学方法的界面上，这两种方法都是理解人与人之间非正式的、有时是积极的、有时不是的互动所必需的。这种方法结合了一对一的半结构化访谈、重复的深入讨论小组和参与者观察。这些方法的结合使研究团队能够观察、体验和询问支撑多元文化生活的社会关系、欢乐交流和接触的类型，并收集三个案例研究地区一系列田野工作地点的不同形式的数据。这些地点将包括进修学院、休闲组织、节日公众活动和公园。除了对日常生活中的多元文化进行调查外，该项目还将通过半结构化访谈和咨询小组会议，与正式参与案例研究领域多元文化和社会凝聚力管理的主要利益攸关方合作。当地利益攸关方将在每个阶段参与研究，讨论和测试研究结果，并将在提供适当政策回应方面发挥积极作用。

The project asks two key questions. First, how do people live complex cultural difference and manage increasing cultural diversity in their everyday lives and second, what role does place and locality play in this. Evidence of increasingly dispersed and diverse multicultural populations and current policy concerns with community and locality mean that this is a decisive moment to study this issue. Socio- economic mobility among some black and minority ethnic (BME) populations has become more established and migration patterns from inside and outside Europe have continued. The combined impact of this has meant that in the 21st century once monocultural places have become more multicultural and greater levels of ethnic diversity are changing places once associated with particular BME groups. Demands for labour across public and private sectors, changing migration policies, and aspirations and ambitions of BME groups have driven these new geographies and complex compositions of multiculture. Despite these social and geographic changes and complexities the terms 'ethnic relations' and 'multiculture' are more often associated with 'segregation', 'crisis' and 'division'. This is not surprising given high profile public debates, media reporting and a cohesion orientated policy context based largely on the experiences of declining, post-industrial urban areas and events in London in 2007. Yet there is also growing interest in both policy circles and academic research as to the ways in which ethnically diverse populations live and interact in convivial or amicable 'rubbing along together' ways. Exploring and explaining the dynamics and limits of this 'competency' - and its relationship to places which have long and short histories of cultural diversity - is at the heart of the research. It is in a context of dispersing multiculture that this spatial requirement is emphasised given less research has been done on suburbs, large towns and small cities with little or no histories of multiculture and/or ethnic tension.The project's core aims are to contribute both to new social and spatial understandings of multiculture and to inform appropriate policy responses. It employs an innovative methodology in three comparative case study areas chosen for the different windows they offer onto the new geographies of multiculture in Britain: Milton Keynes - a newly diverse city; the Leicestershire suburb of Oadby - newly diverse through the relocation of affluent members of BME communities and the London Borough of Hackney -experiencing newly intense levels of diversity via on-going migrations and gentrification. The methodology is innovative because it works at the interface of psychotherapeutic techniques and social science methods, which are both necessary to understand the informal, sometimes positive, sometimes not, interactions between people in places. This methodological approach combines one-to-one semi-structured interviews, repeat in-depth discussion groups and participant observation. The combination of these methods allows the research team to observe, experience and ask about the types of social relations, convivial exchanges and encounters that underpin lived multiculture and to collect different forms of data across a range of fieldwork sites in the three case study areas. These sites will include further education colleges, leisure organisations, festive public events and public parks. Alongside the investigations of everyday, lived multiculture, the project will work with key stakeholders formally involved in the management of multiculture and social cohesion in the case study areas through semi-structured interviews and advisory group meetings. Local stakeholders will be involved in the research at every stage to discuss and 'test' findings and will play an active role in informing appropriate policy responses.