Table 1 - uploaded by Ranji Devadason
Content may be subject to copyright.
Source publication
Cosmopolitanism has been described as the cultural habitus of globalisation. It is therefore, albeit defined somewhat loosely, often associated with ethnically diverse, global cities. This paper considers the extent to which London engenders cosmopolitan values amongst its residents. It draws on survey data from the LOCAL MULTIDEM study of minoriti...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... British post-colonial minorities have had the time to develop the organisational infrastructure, institutional links and local knowledge which facilitate access to the political community; hence differences between these ethnic groups were expected to stem from their distinct tra- jectories of settlement, rather than be caused by the disruption caused by migration (this is discussed further later). Having said this, the sample is diverse in terms of the migration profiles of the groups since a high proportion of the Indian respondents are recent migrants and hence do not have British citizenship or permanent residence; whereas the Caribbean and Bangladeshi groups include higher pro- portions of British citizens, amongst whom a significant proportion are British-born (see Table 1). Table 1 shows the significant socioeco- nomic differences between the three minor- ity groups. ...
Context 2
... said this, the sample is diverse in terms of the migration profiles of the groups since a high proportion of the Indian respondents are recent migrants and hence do not have British citizenship or permanent residence; whereas the Caribbean and Bangladeshi groups include higher pro- portions of British citizens, amongst whom a significant proportion are British-born (see Table 1). Table 1 shows the significant socioeco- nomic differences between the three minor- ity groups. Indians are highly educated and are much more likely to be in paid employment and to occupy professional and managerial jobs than the two other minorities. ...
Context 3
... Caribbean and Bangladeshi groups have lower levels of participation in the labour market than Indians and their White coun- terparts, and lower levels of participation in tertiary education (see Table 1), socioeconomic disadvantage may-in part-explain variation in the ways in which these groups experience the places where they live. Multiple regression analysis was carried out to examine the extent to which these factors, as well as age and gender, influence the outcomes of the initial analysis. ...
Context 4
... that non-citizens (hence recent migrants) are excluded from this analysis, the marked difference between Bangladeshi and Indian residents' sense of belonging is somewhat counter-intuitive. This variance may-in part-be explained by the divergent educational and employ- ment profiles of the two groups (see Table 1). If residents' narratives based on individual choice, consumption and lifestyle concerns have become morally legitimate in the gen- trifying neighbourhoods of north London, which as noted are expanding, then those who are unable to appropriate the discourse of elective belonging-namely, Bangladeshis who were born and bred there-do not in Savage et al.'s (2004, p. 12) terms "appropri- ate" their residential space as a "marker of home". ...
Context 5
... Caribbean Londoners' willingness to move from both country and city exceeds that of Indians and Bangladeshis, yet comparison of the British-born generation across these groups suggests that Caribbean horizons of future mobility are limited within the country relative to the Indians. British-born Caribbean geographical imaginaries-in comparison with those of British-born Indians-sug- gest a rootedness which is equivalent to that of White Britons (see Appendix, Table A1). Drawing on Kotkin's characterisation of 'strong diaspora' , the Caribbean disadvanta- geous occupational profile and lower propen- sity to acquire advanced qualifications limit their potential to benefit from the changes associated with globalisation. ...
Citations
... Multiple researches have focused on the perception of ethnic communities, which ultimately shape their living experience in the cities (Devadason, 2010;Wang et al., 2020). Devadason (2010) highlighted that ethnic divisions often structure the experience of living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. ...
... Multiple researches have focused on the perception of ethnic communities, which ultimately shape their living experience in the cities (Devadason, 2010;Wang et al., 2020). Devadason (2010) highlighted that ethnic divisions often structure the experience of living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. People who experience multifaceted exclusion frequently find themselves in impoverished, unpleasant living conditions, and segregation from mainstream customs and habits (Wang et al., 2020). ...
The challenges faced by ethnic migrants in urban areas highlight the importance of gaining a comprehensive understanding of their perception. This research investigates the adaptive capacities of ethnic migrants, extending the analysis beyond the first generation to explain how these communities navigate challenges in the post-COVID era. The study examines the dynamics of ethnic migration, exploring intercultural interactions and the evolving experiences of successive migrant generations using sentiment analysis techniques. The study analyzes textual data from in-depth semi-structured interviews to understand their experiences in city and sentiments about the host community. Sentiment analysis, often known as opinion mining, is used in this research to determine the emotional undertone of the third and fourth-generation Chinese and Anglo-Indian residents living in Kolkata, India. The study contributes to evidence-based strategies by identifying positive and negative sentiments associated with ethnic migrants. Results show that the frequency and polarity of the words used during the interviews significantly explain their association with the host community and their sense of belongingness. The findings of this research are significant in indicating the vitality of these communities in the city.
... Emotional attachment to community can be construed as neighborhood or placebased belonging -a construct that is predicated on the physical and symbolic appropriation of space (Devadason, 2010;Finney & Jivraj, 2013). That is, the meaningfulness of neighborhoods is socially constructed (Flynn & Mathias, 2020). ...
This mixed method, sequential explanatory study explored the relationship between community-level ethnic and racial composition and belongingness outcomes among young adults with lived adolescent experience in foster care. Little is known about how conditions of foster placement neighborhoods might facilitate a sense of belonging, potentially moderating detrimental effects on youths’ social support networks common to out-of-home (OOH) placement. This research aimed to examine whether, and how, community-level and ecological factors contribute to belongingness among 118 young adults with lived adolescent experience in care (age 16+). The study includes three methodologically integrated but distinct phases, including OLS and logistic regression, reflexive thematic analysis, and joint displays to identify meta inferences from both qualitative and quantitative data sources. Overall, the study finds that, among this sample, placement conditions and geographic community features that promote belongingness for some, can hamper it for others. Study results also suggest that adolescents in OOH care may be most able to find belongingness in settings where they can be assured of emotional support, physical safety, and unconditional acceptance. To better support youth in OOH care as they navigate normative tasks of adolescent development, policy makers and program officials need to evaluate how caregiving contexts and community settings can facilitate, rather than suppress, youths’ need for autonomous self-expression to promote connection and well-being.
... The recognition that a cosmopolitan place may encompass and include a diverse populace is tempered by the actual lived experience of its inhabitants. Furthermore, Devadason's (2010) acknowledgement of how "cosmopolitanism is not something which can be inferred from diversity in itself" (p.2960) is thus indicative of the personal component as experienced within a place that also attends to how places are neither automatically cosmopolitan, nor that the inclusion of diverse communities within a place is either pre-requisite or inevitable. ...
Tales of the city: a critical exploration of children’s place-related identity with reference to London. - Christopher Stephen Michael Hussey My thesis explores children’s relationships with place, focusing on London as a site of place identity. London is renowned for being a multicultural ‘melting pot’ and inclusive space, and a desirable place around which to orientate one’s identity. Thus, the research considers the participants’ expressions of identity in relation to the city of London as both a real place lived and experienced by those residing within the city and as represented through literature. The study offers a space for the participating children to reflect on their respective place identities, engaging with the concept of the ‘London imaginary’ that encapsulates the city as represented through word and illustration, in relation to their lives and as portrayed in selected media. My research adopts a mixed methods case study approach that investigates two schools in Maida Vale, London, with participants of 9-11 years of age in Upper Key Stage 2. The study utilises a three-part model as part of a creative methodology to address the complexities of expression when dealing with concepts that are often perceived to be abstract, as in the case of place and identity. After an initial mind-mapping activity, the research involves children exploring maps of their locality and planning a shared walk to show areas of significance in their lives. The shared walk offers the participants an opportunity to photograph and pictorially represent places for discussion through a form of photo elicitation. Finally, the children’s responses to selected London-based picturebook texts allow for a holistic reflection on how children perceive and express their identities in relation to the city of London, as real and represented. This multimodal interdisciplinary research examines the children’s perspectives in the context of their current city of residence, addressing the implications for their identity construction, and suggesting avenues for future research.
... While earlier studies have examined how particular urban places facilitate cross-ethnic relationships (Çağlar & Glick Schiller, 2018;Devadason, 2010;Povrzanović Frykman, 2016;Radice, 2010;Sanderock, 2009), the literature on the relations between radical left activists with citizenship and precarious migrants remains scarce (Cappiali, 2018;Steinhilper, 2018). This paper thus contributes to the understanding of how activism as a form of urban activity generates new relationships and alliances, generating a solidarity-based ethnic diversity in the city. ...
This paper examines relations between radical left activists with citizenship and migrants in precarious conditions. It is based on ethno-graphic fieldwork conducted in 2013-2016 in the city of Malmö, an important site of pro-migrant and anti-racist activism in Sweden. Examples discussed in the paper concern the prevalence of highly educated women among the activists, the engagement of LGBTQ activists, and the fact that many activists themselves have migrant backgrounds. The alliances, friendships, and alternative structures they forge are analyzed with regard to two groups of precarious migrants in Malmö: the so-called undocumented migrants; and the Roma migrants from southeastern Europe. The paper shows how radical activism contributes to a solidarity-based ethnic diversity in the city that opposes the growing anti-immigrant stance in Sweden on the national level.
... In urban settings, in particular, cosmopolitan aspirations and encounters provide rich empirical grounds for such inquiry (Moroşanu 2013(Moroşanu , 2018Skrbis and Woodward 2013;Glick Schiller and Irving 2015;Pratsinakis et al. 2017). Everyday urban encounters are phenomena that engender a distinctly cosmopolitan habitus (Datta 2009;Devadason 2010;Müller 2011;Povrzanović-Frykman 2016;Radice 2015). The context of a global city and cosmopolitan experiences in London emerge as one of the key motivations for migrants from all over the world (Jones 2013; see also King et al. 2016King et al. , 2018 on European and Baltic migrants in London). ...
In this paper I analyse the cosmopolitan aspirations of highly skilled Latvian migrants residing in London. In particular, I explore the nuanced modalities of ethnicity and ‘Eastern Europeanness’ and how these inform everyday encounters with people from different ethnicities and races, and when meeting co-ethnics in a global city. These encounters are illustrated with data, drawn from 18 in-depth interviews with Latvian graduates in London. I argue that such encounters are shaped and informed by the post-Soviet heritage, emerging understandings of inter-racial encounters, hegemonic discourses of ‘East’ and ‘West’, all embedded in specific power relations.
KEYWORDS: Cosmopolitan encounters, skilled migration, Eastern Europe, Latvia, London
Aija Lulle (2020) Cosmopolitan Encounters: Highly Skilled Latvians in London Problematise Ethnicity and ‘Eastern Europeanness’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2020.1806800
... Our vagabonds experience the city as a space characterized by low-paid work, insecurity, confinement, and poor living conditions (see also , Amin 2006). We concur with Devadason (2010) and Werbner (1999) that the study of cosmopolitanism has privileged transnational elites, and that cosmopolitan ethics must also incorporate the voices of the marginalized (cf. Thompson and Tambyah 1999). ...
This study examines the cultural experiences of subaltern migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. It draws upon the French pragmatic sociology with attention to convention theory to cast in sharp relief different interpretations of worth that influence subaltern migrants or vagabonds as Zygmunt Bauman has labelled them. This study shows that vagabonds use different regimes of worth and justification to resist domination and to shape their cultural encounters with host and home cultures. It explains how existing acculturation research lacks insights about worth and regimes of justification that hinder it from fully understanding the role of domination and cultural experiences of subalterns.
... 84 · año 39 · enero-junio de 2018 como el de las migraciones internacionales, pero también el turismo y las relaciones internacionales, la relevancia de las representaciones es también objeto de interés. Los individuos que viven, experimentan e interactúan con individuos, sociedades y espacios de otros ámbitos socioculturales lo hacen con una representación previa que media aquella interacción (Zúñiga, 1992;Goycoechea y Ramírez, 2002;García y Verdú, 2008;Devadason, 2010). ...
It is analyzed the sociopsychological dimension of the migration processes in relation to the (re)production of spatial and social representations about the place of destination before and after arriving there. That objective was achieved through a qualitative methodology: it was applied a semi-structured interview to immigrants from Spain and Italy living in Mexico. Data was interpreted through the theoretical approach of sociopsycological distances (cognitive, affective, and mental distances). Differing from the initial hypothesis, findings show that for some informants migration implied a redefinition of the representations according to the new experienced reality (a reduction of the distances); however, for others, the previous ones remained and even were bolstered (a permanence of the distances).
... Considering the rapid increasing of ethnic diversity and social mixture of cities, it is essential to pay attention to the ways different residents and social groups experience the city, and foster their sense of belonging (Devadason 2010;Savage, Bagnall & Longhurst 2005). Making sense of place in relation to landscape is different in various cultures, and it depends on use, association, meaning, and the functions that the landscape provides. ...
The thesis reviews different uses and appreciation of urban park landscapes by non-English-speaking immigrants, and develops an alternative predominant perspective of the Australian park landscape. It builds on theories of place, habitus, and landscape as cultural phenomena, and investigates new uses of park spaces by recent generations of immigrants to Australia. It questions the extent to which Australian public parks contribute to the sense of inclusivity, or alienation, experienced by non-English-speaking immigrant users of these spaces. The main focus is on the Iranian community of Melbourne, Australia, and their engagements with urban park spaces before and after migration in two different landscape contexts: Iran and Australia. The research explores the Iranian-Australians understanding of urban parks and their natural and cultural landscapes and includes a range of experiences of these environments in Iran and Australia (Melbourne). The approach acknowledges past studies and explores Iranian views of the interrelationship between people and the physical environment and how these contrast with Australian attitudes.<br /
... By examining and emphasizing the ontological and positional, critical attention to geographical imaginaries can disrupt tropes of flatness that erroneously homogenize ethnically and economically diverse communities (Phelps, Bunnell, and Miller 2011). From working class cosmopolitanism in urban London (Devadason 2010) to the situated moral economies of free trade food systems (Goodman 2004) to the rise of new political parties and electoral preferences (Agnew 1997), the study of geographical imaginaries reveals the textured and uneven landscapes that define and distinguish populations amidst other social, cultural, economic, and political influences. Reflecting the ways in which spatial consciousness informs both ethnic identity and social relations, Mustang's geographical imaginaries are oriented by trans-Himalayan places and shared cultural practices of the region. ...
This dissertation examines infrastructure development between Nepal and China to argue that
infrastructure is a symbol of national development imaginaries, a process and practice of state
making, and a vector for the spatial operations of geopolitical power. Starting with the
construction of a small trans-border road in Nepal’s northern district of Mustang, I examine how
a local infrastructure project has evolved into and been incorporated within larger, international
transportation networks, border regimes, trade and tax policies, and humanitarian programs. In
making this analysis, I introduce the concept of border corridors to examine how highways,
fences, bureaucracies, and aid are interwoven infrastructural components that build upon one
another in scalar and fractal ways in the production of larger infrastructure systems. Utilizing the
dialectical lenses of mobility and containment to see how infrastructure development in Mustang
constitutes new forms of border corridors, I argue that shifting configurations of trade networks
and sovereign rule have (re)shaped social relations across the region that are in turn expressed
through unique but oscillating geographical imaginaries. As fractal constructions and relational
processes that augment, redirect, and replace one another, I also show that infrastructures are not
things with definitive edges, beginnings, or endings but, rather, interdependent pieces of broader
and more complex material configurations. In order to see the state by looking at the borderlands,
I also examine infrastructures as material processes that undergird state formation and illustrate
how cultural practices and geopolitical interests converge in material and territorial ways through
the production of roads, borders, commodity circulations, and humanitarian aid. Unraveling the
entanglements of these infrastructural systems, I show how infrastructures intersect and refract
one another across trans-Himalayan spaces and, in so doing, reconfigure relationships between
states and citizens. Particularly in the context of greater Chinese interventions in South Asia and
possible future trajectories of Beijing’s One Belt One Road Initiative, I argue that infrastructure
development in Nepal presents a valuable case with which to understand the linkages between
broad international processes of South-South development and local community level
experiences with changing subject positions and social stratification.
... In such neighbourhoods, the identities associated with diversity carry relatively little meaning as citizens increasingly identify themselves with what is common to all. The differences are not significant, especially in the formation of social interaction (Devadason, 2010). These neighbourhoods that show how humankind can live in harmony can be attractive for particular groups, especially for intellectuals who see differences as enriching society. ...
This book is one of the outcomes of the DIVERCITIES project. It focuses on the question
of how to create social cohesion, social mobility and economic performance in today’s hyperdiversified cities. The project’s central hypothesis is that urban diversity is an asset; it can
inspire creativity, innovation and make cities more liveable and harmonious. To ensure a more
intelligent use of diversity’s potential, a re-thinking of public policies and governance models is
needed.
Headed by Utrecht University in the Netherlands, DIVERCITIES is a collaborative research
project comprising 14 European teams. DIVERCITIES is financed by the European
Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (Project No. 319970).
There are fourteen books in this series, one for each case study city. The cities are Antwerp,
Athens, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Leipzig, London, Milan, Paris, Rotterdam, Tallinn,
Toronto, Warsaw and Zurich.
This book is concerned with Istanbul. Most of the texts in this book are based on a number of
previously published DIVERCITIES reports.
