1st Edition

Place, Diversity and Solidarity

    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    196 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    In many countries, particularly in the Global North, established forms of solidarity within communities are said to be challenged by the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of the population. Against the backdrop of renewed geopolitical tensions – which inflate and exploit ethno-cultural, rather than political-economic cleavages – concerns are raised that ethnic and cultural diversity challenge both the formal mechanisms of redistribution and informal acts of charity, reciprocity and support which underpin common notions of community.

    This book focuses on the innovative forms of solidarity that develop around the joint appropriation and the envisaged common future of specific places. Drawing on examples from schools, streets, community centres, workplaces, churches, housing projects and sporting projects, it provides an alternative research agenda from the 'loss of community' narrative. It reflects on the different spatiotemporal frames in which solidarities are nurtured, the connections forged between solidarity and citizenship, and the role of interventions by professionals to nurture solidarity in diversity.

    This timely and original work will be essential reading for those working in human geography, sociology, ethnic studies, social work, urban studies, political studies and cultural studies.

    1. Beyond social capital: place, diversity and solidarity

    Stijn Oosterlynck, Nick Schuermans & Maarten Loopmans

     

    2. Mundane mutualities: Solidarity and strangership in everyday urban life

    Mervyn Horgan

     

    3. Learning to cope with superdiversity: place-based solidarities at a (pre-)primary Catholic school in Leuven, Belgium

    Nick Schuermans & Pascal Debruyne

     

    4. Building Coalitions: Solidarities, friendships, and tackling inequality

    Helen F. Wilson

     

    5. Self-building in northern Italy: Housing and place-based solidarities among strangers

    Michela Semprebon & Martina Valsesia

     

    6. Challenging the figure of the ‘migrant entrepreneur’. Place-based solidarities in the Romanian arrival infrastructure in Brussels.

    Bruno Meeus

     

    7. The spatial solidarity of intentional neighbouring

    Andy Walter, Katherine Hankins & Samuel Nowak

     

    8. Football for solidarity: Bridging gaps between the Baka and the Bantu in East Cameroon

    Harrison Esam Awuh & Floor Elisabeth Spijkers

     

    9. Domesticating, festivalising and contesting space: Spatial acts of citizenship in a super-diverse neighbourhood in Amsterdam

    Mandy de Wilde

     

    10. Afterword: Solidarities, conjunctures, encounters

    David Featherstone

    Biography

    Stijn Oosterlynck is Associate Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

    Nick Schuermans is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre on Inequalities, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City of the University of Antwerp and a teaching associate at the geography department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

    Maarten Loopmans is Associate Professor at the Division of Geography at KU Leuven, Belgium.