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

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.

The project is timely. Current policy interest in the possibilities of localism and civic society for achieving social inclusion and well-being mean that the project's potential impact is significant. One of the central ambitions of this project is to highlight ways in which contemporary policy making in the field of ethnic and cultural diversity might usefully engage with geographically embedded, local, everyday practices of multicultural encounter and social interaction, rather than starting from a dichotomy between cultural difference and community cohesion that currently tends to dominate policy debates.

There are four main aspects to the way in which the research will dialogically involve and impact with policy makers and users.

The first relates to local policy actors. We will be working closely with a local advisory group drawn from the three case study sites of Oadby, Milton Keynes and Hackney, whose members will be selected from among key individuals within policy and user networks across the public and third and community sectors. This group will operate in ways that enable and encourage an active process of knowledge exchange between the group, their networks and the research team.

The second relates to the national level. At this level we will organise interim and end-of-project workshops, aimed at engaging with wider audiences drawn from public policy and third sector organisations. As well as allowing us to report on emergent findings, again the purpose will be to facilitate knowledge exchange, encouraging and enabling participants to suggest ways in which the project might fruitfully be developed. They will be an opportunity for dialogue, rather than exposition. We will also ensure that work in progress is reported to a range of other workshops and seminars during the course of the project as well as preparing interim policy briefs. This process will culminate in a major international workshop towards the end of the project, where a wide audience from across the policy/academic divide will be invited to engage with the work that is emerging from the project.

The third is centrally expressed in the project's research design. This recognises the need for an iterative, active and reflexive engagement with key stakeholders in order to feed in findings, discuss meanings, and 'test' interpretations and policy implications. Interviews with policy actors will include dialogue about the project's findings. The issues arising from the fieldwork will be discussed in a more detailed way with these actors right from the start and throughout the project. This iterative approach is not an optional extra but something that is closely integrated as an essential element in the project.

The fourth relates to the possibility and necessity of wider public engagement. We will be utilising various media to open up discussion around the project, including a project web-site (for the support of which dedicated resource has been identified), the use of a blog, pod casts through i-Tunes University and through radio programmes such as Radio 4's Thinking Allowed. A detailed communications strategy will be drawn up in the final year of the project with the help of the Open University's communications department.

For the academic impact of the research see Academic Beneficiaries section.