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加的文化多样性，其次，地点和地方在其中扮演什么角色。有证据表明，多文化人口日益分散和多样化，目前的政策关注社区和地方，这意味着这是一个研究这个问题的决定性时刻。一些黑人和少数民族人口的社会经济流动性更加稳固，来自欧洲内外的移徙模式继续存在。这种情况的综合影响意味着，在21世纪，曾经是单一文化的地方变得更加多元文化，更大程度的种族多样性正在改变曾经与特定的黑人和少数民族群体有关的地方。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黑人和少数民族群体的愿望和抱负，推动了这些新的地理区域和复杂的多元文化构成。尽管有这些社会和地理的变化和复杂性，术语“种族关系”和“多元文化”往往与“隔离”，“危机”和“分裂”。这并不奇怪，因为公众辩论、媒体报道和以凝聚力为导向的政策背景主要基于2007年伦敦衰退的后工业化城市地区和事件的经验。然而，政策圈和学术研究对不同种族的人口如何以欢乐或友好的“沿着”方式生活和互动也越来越感兴趣。探索和解释这种“能力”的动态和局限性--以及它与具有长期和短期文化多样性历史的地方的关系--是研究的核心。这是在分散的多元文化的背景下，这种空间的要求是强调鉴于较少的研究已经做了郊区，大城镇和小城市，很少或根本没有历史的多元文化和/或种族紧张关系。该项目的核心目标是既有助于新的社会和空间的多元文化的理解，并告知适当的政策反应。它采用了一种创新的方法，在三个比较案例研究领域选择不同的窗口，他们提供了在英国的多元文化的新的地理：米尔顿凯恩斯-一个新的多元化的城市，莱斯特郡郊区的奥德比-新的多样化通过搬迁富裕成员的BME社区和伦敦自治市的哈克尼-经历新的激烈程度的多样性，通过持续的移民和中产阶级化。这种方法是创新的，因为它在心理治疗技术和社会科学方法的界面上起作用，这两者对于理解人们在地方之间的非正式的，有时是积极的，有时不是的互动都是必要的。这种方法结合了一对一的半结构化访谈，重复深入讨论小组和参与者观察。这些方法的结合使研究小组能够观察，体验和询问支持生活多元文化的社会关系，欢乐的交流和遭遇的类型，并在三个案例研究领域的一系列实地考察地点收集不同形式的数据。这些地点将包括进修学院、康乐机构、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。地方利益攸关方将参与研究的每一阶段，讨论和“测试”研究结果，并将在通报适当的政策反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.