Migration-driven diversity means European cities are becoming increasingly superdiverse. Some European neighbourhoods have become places where newcomers arrive from across the world, speaking many different languages, from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and with diverse religious beliefs and practices, while living alongside long-established migrant and white European populations. This book focuses on what this increasing population diversity means for how people and local health and welfare service providers seek to address everyday health concerns – from minor and chronic conditions to acute and urgent problems. Using an innovative mixed-method approach crossing multiple disciplines and drawing together rich qualitative and robust quantitative data, this book offers unique insight into the complex and intricate actions, which often vary over space and time, implemented by both residents and care providers from eight superdiverse localities in four European countries, each with different health and welfare traditions. The book introduces the concept of welfare bricolage, using it as a mechanism to explore the structures and rationales underpinning need and actions, and how resources are connected across welfare regimes and borders and within locales. The book illustrates how, in the face of increasingly marketised, cash-strapped, restrictive and institutionally racist welfare states and healthcare regimes, individuals and service providers strive to address need. By focusing on welfare regimes, migration histories, everyday actions and resources within neighbourhoods, Exploring Welfare Bricolage in Europe’s Superdiverse Neighbourhoods offers a unique insight into what people and providers actually do when faced with health concerns. The book highlights the role of structure and agency and moves beyond conventional approaches that focus on specific groups or sectors to research health and welfare by looking at whole populations and entire welfare ecosystems. The book’s theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions will be of use to scholars, practitioners and policymakers interested in welfare, healthcare, diversity and migration.

This book provides a multi-disciplinary investigation of family reunification laws, policies and practices across the European Union. Family reunification – the possibility for family members to (re)unite in a country where one of them is residing – has been high on the political agenda. Building on original empirical research with families and practitioners as well as in-depth doctrinal analyses, the book explores the fragmentation of legal rules, the gaps between formal regulations and practices, and their consequences for families across borders. Different contributions in the volume point to the growing inequalities among and within applicant families, based on residence status, gender, location, citizenship and socio-economic resources, due to the family reunification regimes currently in place.The book enhances interdisciplinary dialogue by providing clear insights into the specific contribution of migration law, private international law and social scientific analyses to the study of family reunification. The book is aimed at researchers working on the topic of family reunification, as well as students of law and socio-legal studies and practitioners in the field of migration.

Welfare states face profound challenges. Widening economic and social inequalities have been intensified by austerity politics, sharpened by the rise in ethno-nationalism and exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, recent decades have seen a resurgence of social justice activism at both the local and the transnational level. Yet the transformative power of feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial/decolonial thinking has become relatively marginal to core social policy theory, while other critical approaches – around disability, sexuality, migration, age and the environment – have found recognition only selectively. This book provides a much needed new analysis of this complex landscape, drawing together critical approaches in social policy with intersectionality and political economy. Fiona Williams contextualizes contemporary social policies not only in the global crisis of finance capitalism but also in the interconnected global crises of care, ecology and racialized borders. These shape and are shaped at national scale by the intersecting dynamics of family, nation, work and nature. Through critical assessment of these realities, the book probes the ethical, prefigurative and transformative possibilities for a future welfare commons. This significant intervention will animate social policy thinking, teaching and research. It will be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the complexities of social policy for the years ahead.

This book uses the concept of "arrival spaces" to examine the relationship between migration processes, social infrastructures, and the transformation of urban spaces in Europe since the mid-19th century. Case studies cover cities from London to Palermo and from Antwerp to St. Petersburg, including both metropolises and small towns. The chapters examine the emergence of settlement patterns, the functioning of arrival infrastructures, and the public representations of neighborhoods which have been shaped by internal or international migrations. By understanding these neighborhoods as spaces of arrival and as infrastructural hubs, this volume offers a new perspective on the profound impact of migration on European cities in modern and contemporary history. This volume makes a valuable contribution to both migration research and urban history and will be of interest to researchers and students studying the relationship between cities and migration in Europe’s past and present.

"Over the past three decades, there has been a global sea-change in the nature of international migration. In myriad places around the world this kind of deep shift has had significant impacts on the local configurations and dynamics of diversity. Old and new immigration sites across the world have experienced rapid and increasing movements of people from more varied national, ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. These movements have emerged along with a diversification of migration channels and legal statuses and, more broadly, greater societal attention towards identity politics Worldwide, in concurrent but differing ways, these migration-driven trends are deeply transforming societies in complex ways spanning social, demographic, cultural, economic and political structures. Now across a range of disciplines and literatures, such complex transformation processes and patterns are summarized by the concept of superdiversity (Vertovec 2007). As the world emerged from the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we saw Western democracies promoting the universalisation of liberal democracy and its values (Fukuyama 1992). The consolidation of the international human rights regime, with human rights becoming the 'lingua franca of global moral thought' (Ignatieff 2001: 53), was part of this process (Douzinas 2007). That move provided the ideological scaffolding for neoliberal economic globalisation which relied on enhanced international circulation and interdependence of capitals, goods, services, and supply chains. With goods and services, also human mobility grew, and with increased material and more recently digital connectivity, new destinations and routes became appealing, available, and affordable (IOM 2021). Meanwhile, the 'end of history' and the consolidation of the post-Cold War geopolitical order didn't come peacefully and triggered a series of regional and international conflicts that in turn led to a growth of international and internal displacement globally, a trend that is now increasingly fuelled by climate change and environment degradation acting as key factor in migration dynamics (Black et al 2011). International migration is both an effect and a driver of these developments. It crucially contributes to establish and consolidate transnational networks and diasporic communities, while at the same time it is a key contributor to the diversification of host societies. In myriad settings around the world, there are people with more varied ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, and legal status characteristics than ever before - each set of characteristics intersecting differently with others as well as with age, gender, and class. As a result, "the world is much more diverse on multiple dimensions and at many levels, typified by the salience of differences and their dynamic intersections" (Jones and Dovidio 2018: 45). Contemporary immigration societies have become increasingly diverse, layered, and unequal. Indeed, 'the processes of neoliberal globalization have gradually loosened labour protections, restructured the welfare system, delocalized state borders, and led to widening inequalities' (Gonzales and Sigona 2017: 3), putting pressure on the connection between state, territory and residents, transforming traditional notions of sovereignty and citizenship, while also giving rise to a host of new non-state actors operating transnationally (Sassen 2006; Castles 2001). As evidenced by its ubiquity across the social sciences, superdiversity is one of the most prominent contemporary concepts advancing current understanding of international migration and its social implications. The numerous social scientific debates, approaches and methodologies that have been developed in light of superdiversity speak to each other but have not yet been brought together in a single volume. This handbook fills this gap in the literature, offering students, educators, researchers and practitioners a much sought-after compendium of central advances made in studying complex social transformations in light of superdiversity. The chapters take stock of some of the advances in the field and lay out the importance of engaging with complex social transformations in light of migration-driven change. In this introduction we frame the discussions that follow by first elaborating the notion of complex social transformations and its resulting complexities, then providing an overview of how we structured the book and the types of chapters you will find in the different sections of this handbook. "--

Superdiversity explores processes of diversification and the complex, emergent social configurations that now supersede prior forms of diversity in societies around the world. Migration plays a key role in these processes, bringing changes not just in social, cultural, religious, and linguistic phenomena, but also in the ways that these phenomena combine with others like gender, age, and legal status. The concept of superdiversity has been adopted by scholars across the social sciences in order to address a variety of forms, modes, and outcomes of diversification. Central to this field is the relationship between social categorization and social organization, including stratification and inequality. Increasingly complex categories of social “difference” have significant impacts across scales, from entire societies to individual identities. While diversification is often met with simplifying stereotypes, threat narratives, and expressions of antagonism, superdiversity encourages a perspective on difference as comprising multiple social processes, flexible collective meanings, and overlapping personal and group identities. A superdiversity approach encourages the re-evaluation and recognition of social categories as multidimensional, unfixed, and porous as opposed to views based on hardened, one-dimensional thinking about groups. Diversification and increasing social complexity are bound to continue, if not intensify, in light of climate change. This will have profound impacts on the nature of global migration, social relations, and inequalities. Superdiversity presents a convincing case for recognizing new social formations created by changing migration patterns and calls for a re-thinking of public policy and social scientific approaches to social difference. This introduction to the multidisciplinary concept of superdiversity will be of considerable interest to students and researchers in a range of fields in the humanities and social sciences. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Routledge International Handbook of Transnational Studies offers a comprehensive overview of the dynamic evolution and the most recent debates in this interdisciplinary field. The collection assembles scholarship from the social sciences and the humanities that share a critical perspective extending beyond the nation-state. The contributions investigate sustained connections, events, and activities across state borders and acknowledge prevailing global power asymmetries. The handbook examines the dynamics of transnational processes across seven main themes: epistemological and methodological principles; transnational migrant practices and family remittances; mobilities and (self-)identities; social protection; organizations and social movements; culture, religion, and the arts; and architecture and urban planning. The contributors engage with theoretical developments and analyze empirical cases involving a wide array of critical contemporary topics such as expatriate voting, first- and second-generation return migration, state-sponsored cross-border marriages, access to health care, transnational social work, global religious aesthetics, transnational art corridors, literary translation, remittance-financed architecture, and transnational processes of real estate development and gentrification, among others. They display a series of cross-cutting approaches including postcolonial theory, racism, and gender, and a focus on agency, state policies and macro-structures, and transnational inequalities. This book features multidisciplinary scholars in transnational studies from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This handbook will be of interest to scholars interested in global and transnational perspectives across a wide range of disciplines. It will serve as a key resource for academics, students, and other interested audiences seeking to familiarize themselves with the study of contemporary issues that cross state borders.

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a multidisciplinary reference book that brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill health. This collection, written by an international pool of expert academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, is unique in providing theoretical and critical analyses on key health topics, considering power and broader social structures that influence health and illness outcomes. The chapters are organised in three parts. The first covers medical contexts; here, chapters provide commentary and critical analysis of the history of medicine, medicalisation, pharmaceuticalisation, services and care, medical technology, diagnosis, screening, personalised medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine. The second part covers life contexts; chapters include a range of life contexts that have implications for health, including gender, sexuality, reproduction, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, inequality, ageing, and dying. The third part covers shifting contextual domains; chapters consider contemporary areas of life that are rapidly changing, including bioethics, digital health, migration, medical travel, geography and "place", commercialisation, globalisation, and climate change. The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a key contemporary reference text for scholars, students, researchers, and professionals across disciplines, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, geography, medicine, public health, and health science.

Chen, He and Yan present a range of applications of multiple-source big data to core areas of contemporary sociology, demonstrating how a theory-guided approach to macrosociology can help to understand social change in China, especially where traditional approaches are limited by constrained and biased data. In each chapter of the book, the authors highlight an application of theory-guided macrosociology that has the potential to reinvigorate an ambitious, open-minded and bold approach to sociological research. These include social stratification, social networks, medical care, and online behaviours among many others. This research approach focuses on macro-level social process and phenomena by using quantitative models to statistically test for associations and causalities suggested by a clearly hypothesised social theory. By deploying theory-oriented macrosociology where it can best assure macro-level robustness and reliability, big data applications can be more relevant to and guided by social theory. An essential read for sociologists with an interest in quantitative and macro-scale research methods, which also provides fascinating insights into Chinese society as a demonstration of the utility of its methodology.

Introducing the notion of boredom into the academic context, Boredom and Academic Work proposes a fresh sociological perspective on boredom and academic work alike. It invites a reader to reflect on the essence of boredom and the nature of academic work from the sociological perspective. It constitutes methodological and conceptual guidance for all those interested in their own emotions both at work and outside. It also provides an original, interactional and essential definition of boredom and a novel standpoint for observing academic work, both in its systemic and practical level, and shows how the academic system influences its subjects' well-being, motivation, emotions, and practices. Covering various approaches from the qualitative methodology, linguistics, sociology of work, emotions, and higher education, and telling a story of research and teaching university staff, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas and the general academic public as well.