Diversity and superdiversity in between policy and academia: a critical reading (original) (raw)
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Social Sciences, 2021
This article aims to examine the ambiguous connections between immigration, diversity politics, and white supremacy in twenty-first century France by considering them both theoretically and empirically. It offers to elucidate the ways in which the recent growth and expansion of the diversity framework in Europe and France have gone hand in hand with the unfolding of particularly repressive migration policies, hostility towards migrants, and outright institutional racism. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal data on corporate diversity policies, based on semi-structured interviews (n = 86), the article also relies on secondary data analysis from other policy domains (migration, education, urban development), favoring a comparative lens. First, I engage with some major trends of the recent reinvention of diversity at the EU level, underscoring the ambiguous effects of Europeanizing antiracism and non-discrimination in a reverse sequence; second, I critically revisit the ways in which this European reinvention, combined with the legal universalization of equal opportunity, has given rise to the articulation of “white diversity” concepts. I then explore their even more problematic nexus with governing migration. Finally, I call for a critical scrutiny of how universalized and thoroughly individualized notions of diversification may emerge as instrumental in upholding hegemonic whiteness, in the fields of race relations as well as international migration.
White Diversity: Paradoxes of Deracializing Antidiscrimination
This article questions the theoretical and epistemic assumptions around the emergence of the concept of (super-)diversity, hailed in a growing body of academic literature as marking a "diversity turn". In a second part, it highlights the issues raised by the organizational applications of the diversity paradigm in three main policy domains: migration, urban planning, and antidiscrimination. Finally, emphasizing the development of white-centered diversity conceptions, particularly in the European and French contexts, it invites a closer look at the intertwining of scholarly and practical elaborations of the diversity frame by considering knowledge as practice.
Interrogating the Histories and Futures of “Diversity”
Public Culture
On October 16 and 17, 2017, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, we brought together scholars from around the world to collectively investigate the concept, history, and administration of the global discourse and practice of "diversity." In particular, we were interested in how the US Supreme Court decisions in Regents of University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger had ultimately led public universities in the United States to shift away from the original intent of affirmative action, which worked to redress historical inequality, and toward the concept of "diversity." 1 We were struck by the ways that university-led diversity initiatives have shaped our everyday lives and by the extent to which we have been called to manage them. It is not, we argued, that diversity is new-it was already there, as a form of "integration," at least since the 1970s (see Dresch 1995)-but that affirmative action and other legal forms of broader social redress are in many places either no longer in effect or in rapid decline. We were interested in scrutinizing how, as a consequence of this shift, inclusion has come to be theorized through diversity as an approach that systematically denies access to minoritized populations (including indigenous people, in nation-states and in the world more generally), regardless of actual demographic status. While the number of minoritized populations in the United States is moving toward the status of becoming a demographic majority, the logic of diversity assumes that they will remain in the minority at key sites
Editorial Discourses of diversity (Introduction to special issue "Discourses of diversity")
What do discourses of diversity achieve and what do they stand for? 1 This has become a central question in critical scholarship examining the recent drive for diversity in areas such as education , corporate organizations, and marketing as well as in national and supranational governmental institutions (e.g. as in In addition to acknowledging the perseverance of normalizing and stigmatizing discourses of difference, scholars have been particularly intrigued by how calls for diversity are articulated within the state management of racial progress and social inclusion (e.g. Berrey, 2015; Blommaert and Verschueren, 1998; Flores, forthcoming). Studies have also raised questions on ways in which diversity discourses become entrenched with processes of economic development and dispossession (see e.g. Heller and McElhinny, forthcoming; Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes, 2013). This special issue on " Discourses of Diversity " 2 is anchored within and inspired by feminist, antiracist, and neo-Marxist scholarship on the (symbolic) politics of diversity. It should be read as a collection of empirical analyses problematizing how and why discourses of diversity are articulated within the management of social (dis)order, economic development, and the governance of (in)equality. While research on language and diversity has recently turned its focus to studying the effects of globalization on language and communication (articles in this issue are interested in the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways diversity gets roped into the state and economic apparatus. The particular questions include: What do corporate, political actors and institutions accomplish when advocating for diversity? And: What projects does diversity serve and what social effects do such projects have? The authors of the studies also explore how, why, and with which consequences discourses of diversity are sometimes endorsed, sometimes contested, and sometimes even resisted within the spaces and settings documented as well as by other audiences and publics addressed or affected by these discourses. In sum, the articles represent a critical questioning of both the larger sociohistorical conditions and the ideological formations (Bauman and Briggs, 2003; Gal and Woolard, 2001; Williams, 1977) in which diversity and its multiple meanings are anchored. The authors furthermore discuss the ways in which changing, contested, or conflicting meanings of diversity are articulated within processes of societal transformation and resistance as well as within larger dynamics of inequality and subalternity.
There is a growing interest in how the concept of diversity management is reinterpreted as it travels across different national contexts. Nevertheless, very little is known regarding cross-national comparisons of this concept in Europe. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this paper explores the construction of diversity discourses in the context of the UK, France and Germany. We use Lombardo et al.’s (2009) discursive politics approach in order to investigate the ways in which the meaning of diversity is shrunk, bent and stretched. We demonstrate that the concept of diversity is contextual, contested and temporal rather that having a universal fixed meaning. Temporarily fixed definitions and frames of diversity are path dependent and shaped by the regulatory context. Therefore, unique national histories and the context of regulation are key determinants of the ways in which the concept of diversity management is redefined as it crosses national and regional borders.
"UK, France and Germany, European Journal of Industrial Relations. There is a growing interest in how the concept of diversity management is reinterpreted as it travels across different national contexts. Nevertheless, very little is known regarding cross-national comparisons of this concept in Europe. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this paper explores the construction of diversity discourses in the context of the UK, France and Germany. We use Lombardo et al.’s (2009) discursive politics approach in order to investigate the ways in which the meaning of diversity is shrunk, bent and stretched. We demonstrate that the concept of diversity is contextual, contested and temporal rather that having a universal fixed meaning. Temporarily fixed definitions and frames of diversity are path dependent and shaped by the regulatory context. Therefore, unique national histories and the context of regulation are key determinants of the ways in which the concept of diversity management is redefined as it crosses national and regional borders. ."
“Diversity” and the Social Imaginary
European Journal of Sociology, 2012
''Diversity'' is the focus of a wide-ranging corpus of normative discourses, institutional structures, policies and practices in business, public sector agencies, the military, universities and professions. Here, a brief account of the rise and diffusion of the term is provided. It now addresses a wide variety of social differences, while at least six distinct facets or goals of diversity policy can be discerned. Ambiguity, multivocality and banality are key characteristics of diversity discourse, but these function to strengthen, rather than weaken, the spread and acceptance of the notion. In many settings the commitment to diversity is mainstreamed, expected, and even taken-for-granted. Diversity discourse is related to ongoing processes of social diversification, but its diffusion is not driven by these processes. Overall, despite its many imprecisions, the impacts of the diversity corpus entail a transformation, or at least refinement, of the social imaginary.