How could super-diversity be of benefit for organisations?

Introduction

Today, there are many areas where a multitude of individuals from widely varying cultural backgrounds live and work together. There are a few urban areas where over the years many and repeated waves of immigrants joined the community and created small pockets of cosmopolitical societies (see. HALL 2015, Wessendorf 2010). To explain this situation Vertovec (2006) coined the term ‘super-diverse’. There are many benefits to living and participating in such a cosmopolitical context. The arising challenge is if multicultural policy solutions are able to adequately address the situation of such super-diverse communities. Furthermore, it is not just a question of the people living in such super-diverse contexts, there is also a question of how organisations can successfully operate in such super-diverse contexts and what they can learn from this successful intercultural mix.

The challenges lie mainly with academia, governance and policy-making who are so far not very familiar with this new notion of super-diversity. To recognise and examine these challenges and benefits, it is my primary focus to cast light upon the meaning of super-diversity and the strategies that people adopt to ensure peaceful social relations in such places when they interact or engage in daily life. I also look at the challenges that super-diversity brings to policy-making and how organisations can adapt to super-diversity. 

What is super-diversity?

Vertovec (2007:1024) explains that super-diversity is “distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants who have arrived over the last decade”. Lofland mentions that “civility toward diversity” is one of the principles of effective face-to-face interaction which “emerges more from indifference to diversity than from any appreciation of it” (Lofland 2017:33). Today’s understanding of diversity was shaped thirty years ago by the notion of multicultural diversity. However, it has now evolved both in Great Britain as well as some other parts of the western world, and Vertovec (2007) considers that we are now in an era of super-diversity. The term not merely refers to the variation of different ethnic groups but includes a broader perspective, acknowledging and recognising the complex and multifaceted patterns in migrations (Meissner & Vertovec 2015). In a super-diverse society, also referred to as ‘hyperdiversity’ (Spoonley 2014), diversity of ethnicity, religions, social status, variations of legal and economic statuses are normalised. In such societies, people have different types and levels of social interactions in commonplace diversity. The phenomenon of “commonplace diversity” refers to a place where ethnicity, religions, languages, social and economic status perceived as a regular part of social life and these parts are not the factors to differentiate community members from one another (Wessendorf 2010:8).

Benefits

Living in a super-diverse environment brings different challenges and benefits for its members and society. The benefits of super-diversity are the skills which enrich the social relations between its members. Super-diversity in combination with constant and willing social interaction and negotiation brings invaluable skills of intercultural competence. Super-diversity can be the bearer of intercultural skills or cultural intelligence. However, it requires a willingness and desire to participate, and ultimately it opens a channel toward intercultural dialogue. Organisations set up in a super-diverse environment or providing services for members of super-diverse areas have advantages in comparison to those operating in homogenous environments.

Vertovec (2007) indicates that the other benefit of super-diversity is that it increases the transnational engagement of migrant communities worldwide and that causes to transform social, political and economic structures and practices. This notion nurtures openness toward other cultures. Spoonley (2014) shows the substantial increase of financial wealth by migrants in super-diverse communities. He looks at increased levels of innovation and creativity in such communities. Hall (2015) expresses that migrants shape not only the visible appearance of a city in the super-diverse environment but they also shape the “structures of economic and political power that assign their emplacement in a city” (Hall 2015:6).

Some articles (Wessendorf 2017 and Oke, Sonn & McConville 2016) indicate that members of ethnic minority communities are more inclined to live in areas where diversity is visible, and one of the reasons is the fear of racism and discrimination. Perhaps this is a way one can blend in as everybody in such a local community is different from one another. Diversity is normalised this way. New super-diverse communities are created, and new challenges for the local service providers arise. Diversity is here to stay, and the places with super-diverse populations will expand.

Challenges

Besides the increase of intercultural skills and prosperity brought by super-diversity, scholars claim that there are numerous challenges posed by super-diversity. However, fewer of these challenges are faced by the members of the society. From Wessendorf’s (2010) reading, I interpret that people of super-diversity are not intimidated by this notion of differences and easily get along and usually find solutions to overcome challenges in communication and interactions. It is perhaps a bigger challenge for service providers, policy-makers and academia as I will explain in the following section.

Goodson & Grzymala-Kazlowska (2017) argue that through the lense of super-diversity one can indeed recognise the complexity and multi-layeredness of identity. They argue that mobility poses challenges for the social researcher to examine and thoroughly understand the complexity of super-diversity. To do this satisfactory, multidimensional methodologies are required. This argument suggests that super-diversity is a challenging notion for policy-makers to develop effective policies. Another difficulty is around the topic of trust. Throughout their research, they indicate that some migrant groups did not disclose some of the behaviours toward government officials because they were concerned how and in what way the research data would be used.

Spoonley (2014), in the challenge of super-diversity, argues that it can pose a problem toward civic culture and shared values. Gaining citizenship of a country means being a member and accepting membership in the national community. Wessendorf (2010) mentions that the previous literature (Phillips 2006), has mainly focused on ethnicity, race and religions and how these differences have an impact on social relations. However, even though the primary focus of social relations are ethnicity and race, other variables such as social-economic and legal status as well as the history of migration have an impact.

Countries like Australia, which build their understanding of diversity around multicultural policies, are very much trapped in focusing on gathering data in regards to ethnicity and race, without considering other factors of diversity impacting on a person’s health or well-being. Vertovec (2007) argues that even within groups of same country of origin, one can witness different immigration status in super-diverse societies. This notion highlights that “ethnicity-focused approaches” alone are insufficient to tackle individual migrant challenges, and multicultural policies are not equipped to provide solutions (Vertovec 2007:1039). Considering the above argument, health services and other service providers must learn to be able to cater their services at a satisfactory level to the individual needs.

Also, Phillimore (2015) argues that one of the challenges which health organisations face is to understand the need of its clientele, shaped by the diversity of new arrivals, their mobility and some with a complex immigration history. In her literature, she criticises that some of the multiculturalism policy failures have caused irreversible results. She examines maternity services and voices that the increasing fatality rate of infants in super-diverse areas is an alarm bell to malfunctioning multicultural policies.

Strategies

People living in super-diverse contexts are faced with particular challenges and they have developed a number of mechanisms to cope. One basic attitude is an openness to the notion of people perceived as ‘different.’ Lofland mentions that “civility toward diversity” is one of the principles of effective face-to-face interaction which “emerges more from indifference to diversity than from any appreciation of it” (Lofland 2017:33).

To function effectively in commonplace diversity is to be able to facilitate cross-cultural communication skills in everyday life. These skills that Wessendorf (2010:8) refers to as “corner-shop cosmopolitanism”, are about developing social skills with intercultural components. Examples are stallholders willing to interact interculturally with different customers in a culturally intelligent manner toward customers from various ethnic, race, age or social statuses (Wessendorf 2010). This includes the willingness to communicate with limited language abilities. These intercultural skills become internalised and play a significant role in everyday life.

A second aspect is that all these interactions and intercultural communications happen in a low-key way, but somewhat organically and are actively developed by the community members. This shows the difference between multiculturalism and super-diversity in which people like those in Hackney have a “very down-to-earth approach” (Wessendorf 2010:31). Conradson & Latham (2005:229) refer to the ordinary exchange of intercultural engagement as ‘middling’, and that is a frequent reoccurrence in what we experience in Footscray (Oke, Sonn & McConville 2016), Hackney (Wessendorf 2010) and Rye Lane (Hall 2015). The character of how community members communicate is emergent and adapting to the individual needs one encounters.

We recognise that there are numerous benefits resulting from super-diversity. But how can organisations which work in the super-diverse areas and provide services for super-diverse communities benefit from this new kind of diversity and how challenging is this for them? Vertovec (2007) vividly explains the challenges that super-diversity poses in the community and public service delivery.

Maybe the first question we need to ask, is: does multiculturism provide a suitable approach in dealing with super-diversity? In the view of multiculturalism, it is vital being appreciative of differences and celebrating these differences. This runs counter the idea of “indifference to diversity” as championed by Lofland (2007:33). In my view, multiculturalism encourages collaborators of an organisation to look out for differences between them and their clientele and celebrate those differences. To benefit from the achievements of super-diversity, organisations might become more appreciative of diversity when that is normalised through being indifferent. In a super-diverse society, there is no written policy on how one should conduct social interactions with others, and perhaps when we add a how to guide or best practices guide, as we see in multicultural policies (Australian Government Department of Social Services 2018), we create barriers to the natural dialogue and intercultural interaction between the representatives of an organisation and its clientele. 

There is also another issue to be considered. Vertovec (2005:1048) claims that for policy-makers and practitioners to consider diversity as a whole and practice inclusiveness, it is vital that they do not address ethnicity just as a fixed and non-dynamic entity, but they should “take account of new immigrants plurality of affiliations.” These affiliations contain “multiple identifications”, and only some of them are related to ethnicity. As mentioned by McMahon (2018), the lack of understanding by the government of super-diversity and their minimum engagement with the community cause the development of policies which do not provide sufficient benefit for community members. Organisations are required to change their practices in a constantly changing environment, which is reflected in super-diversity. Yesterday’s policies cannot assist with current development and practices. Vertovec (2005) argues that community organisations and public services are the primary areas where super-diversity has an impact.

Living in super-diversity can be tiring, as one of the interviewees mentioned: “nothing is a given” (Wessendorf 2010:21). That would apply to organisations as well. Due to the considerable variety of clients of an organisation, staff require constant adjustment to new encounters, and they are likely to encounter diversity fatigue. However, in a super-diversity context, one does not expect to know the do’s and don’ts of an intercultural social interaction entirely and intercultural dialogue takes away the tiredness such encounters.

It follows that in regards to intercultural competency skills, it requires a specific effort to gain such skills (Wessendorf 2010). This learning is not only helpful to have, but it is a necessity to navigate interculturally among individuals from different groups. If we take that as a necessity notion in a super-diverse society, and learning happens organically, how often are members of an organisation making a conscious effort to gain such skills? However, often enough, in Australian health organisations for example (through my years of observation as a cross-cultural trainer), cultural competency training plays a vital role in delivering services and in some cases, these types of training are considered a compulsory part of race/discrimination training. However, in comparison to the willingness that Wessendorf (2010) shows, how often would these mandatory training, imposed by multicultural policies, genuinely serve their purpose? The staff of these organisations could merely learn through the interactions with community members and increase knowledge of intercultural engagement. Gaining these skills in my view is different from acquiring cross-cultural skills via multiculturalism.

Amin (2002) indicates that at micro-public places such as the workplace, sports clubs or schools, ‘prosaic negotiations’ are compulsory and constant, however, ‘habitual contact’ by itself does not guarantee a cultural exchange or engagement (Amin 2002:969). Therefore, organisations have a key role to construct intercultural dialogue in informal settings in super-diverse areas. This social and intercultural dialogue could happen via settings such as playgroups, book clubs or as any other low-key social interaction. Organisations, by providing such interactions, go beyond habitual formal contact and facilitate another layer of intercultural and social interactions between their staff and the broader communities. This notion is in line with what Landry and Wood (2012:105) refer to as “zones of encounter” and I suggest that this also constitutes a natural form of learning for organisations. Wessendorf (2010) argues that the simple act of regular togetherness of people from different backgrounds can facilitate more positive intercultural encounters and enhance the sense of belonging.

Conclusion

I intended to show that super-diversity has benefits such as the development of intercultural skills which assist members of super-diverse communities to live in harmony with each other (Wessendorf 2010) and also, that it is a source of increasing transnational connections and economic status for the society.

The question in this article is how could super-diversity be benefit for organisations? My response to this question is that it will depend on how and from what perspective organisations look at super-diversity. From my readings (Vertovec 2007) and (Vertovec, & Wessendorf 2010), I agree that one of the difficulties that organisations are facing is trying to solve the new issue with old and stale solutions of multicultural policies. More and more commonplaces are becoming diverse and multifaceted, and organisations cannot solve the super-diversity challenge with a multiculturalism solution. Looking at differences only alienates ethnic communities and individuals from one another. That by itself is creating otherness. Merely focusing on ethnicity or country of origin is narrowing the focus. As Vetrovec explains, this “provides a misleading, one-dimensional appreciation of contemporary diversity” (Vertovec 2007:1025). Multicultural policies have experienced criticism as they emphasise “cultural differences of immigrants and not creating cohesive, unified communities”(McMahon 2015:192).

Super-diversity can benefit members of organisations with further intercultural dialogues skills, however compulsory training or rigid how-to guides imposed by multicultural policies in countries like Australia, can have a contradictory effect and negate their benefit. From my experience as a trainer, I know that there are members of organisations which suffer diversity fatigue syndrome (my unacademic phrase!). To ensure that what we learn from super-diverse contexts has a positive impact, we must look into replacing our concepts of multiculturalism with those of interculturalism.

It is essential to go beyond just analysing multi-ethnicity in a super-diverse society, when an organisation provides public services, and include different aspects of diversity, such as age, religion, social and economic status when considering the suitable delivery of care for any individual (Wessendorf 2010). In multiculturalism, we commonly refer to groups, in super-diversity we need to refer to individuals (Vertovec 2006). For the organisation to understand the diversity of their clientele, they require understanding additional variables side-by-side with ethnicity and origin. Only then they can comprehend the complexity of super-diversity and adequately respond in such contexts.

And finally, in reference to the argument that Meer and Modood (2012) present in the debate in support of multiculturalism, I argue that interculturalism can provide the long-missing dialogue between ethnic minorities and the majority and the notion of super-diversity will not jeopardise the vision of interculturalism. Super-diversity and interculturalism complement each other, and interculturalism should initiate and continue the dialogue between members of different ethnic communities, other variables of super-diversity and the service providers and/or policy-makers. In summary, organisations and NGOs can best benefit from super-diversity if they replace the ideology of multicultural policies with interculturalism.

References

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