Superdiversity, colonialism, race and ethnicity
There was a question about the concept superdiversity that came up in Canale (2016). Here are a couple of videos that might be helpful for us to get a better sense of this concept.
How is (super)diversity changing how we belong?
Metrolingualism and superdiversity
Please watch these two videos, and leave a brief commentary as a reply to this post discussing (but not limited to) these questions:
- What is the concept’s connotation in the context of social justice issues and talking about colonialism?
- What does superdiversity mean for us as teachers?
You may also directly respond to your friends and share your thoughts by building on their commentary and add additional questions for us to think about/discuss.
If you would like to see additional sources on superdiversity, check out Jan Blommeart’s blog on superdiversity.
Dear Deniz and everyone, the main takeaway that I have is that in a context of social justice, superdiversity is something that we should embrace, and it also needs the efforts of teachers and schools.
I think for teachers, it is important to respect students’ identity and their languages and give them space to grow. In the video of Metrolingualism, I am impressed when he talked about there is no border in language and what we should do is to treat multilingualism as a gift rather than a burden. I really like his mindset that we need to make use of those resources and teachers can also learn from it.
Also, the concept of superdiversity is also associated with migrants and refugees. And it is interesting that there was an emphasis on integration and then it shifted to superdiversity, Metrolingualism. I feel that it is more accepting and inclusive.
Hi Mujun, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the videos. I had a lot of the same takeaways to these videos that you did! In particular, I really resonated with the idea raised in the second video about celebrating multilingual classrooms and seeing them as a gift. While working on my Applied Linguistics Capstone project, I was conducting some research on multilingual and multicultural classrooms and had a hard time finding articles that discussed the many benefits of these types of classrooms; I had a much easier time finding ones that focused on the challenges that may arise in them (and how one might approach these challenges). While it is important to acknowledge the potential challenges of any future situation, I see multilingual and multicultural classrooms as being so rich in terms of encouraging different perspectives and ways of thinking, and in providing students with opportunities to learn from, and interact with, those with linguistic and cultural backgrounds that differ from their own. I think, as language teachers in particular, these videos reiterate the importance of acknowledging and celebrating the diverse contexts from which our students come, and the many skills—and as the video mentioned, “resources”—each brings to the classroom.
Hi Stephanie,
If you are still looking for resources on this topic, try searching for translanguaging in multilingual classrooms. This is a relatively more recent area but you should be able to find resources related to the benefits of multilingual classrooms.
Hi June,
After watching the video, I also had similar ideas from the ones your shared above. I agree that teachers should respect student’s identity and their languages. This reminds me of an ethnic studies teacher that I worked with two years ago. Whenever students had creative projects, he would encourage them to use their native language(s) because he wanted to be inclusive of all students’ backgrounds and cultures. I thought this was a good idea because students were able to highlight a piece of their identity and connect with others who have similar backgrounds.
When the speaker talked about how superdiversity is related to immigrants and refugees, it reminded me of my experience working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Although this organization helps refugees with integrating into American society, I think they do a good job at telling refugees that their own identity is important and that they should not “reject” it in order to conform to societal expectations. This helps with superdiversity in a community because many languages will be used and heard in that community.
Hi Sharon, I love the example of the teacher asking students to use their first language in creative projects. I agree that students should be encouraged to use all their linguistic knowledge/resources in learning a new language – or in their education in general. It reminded me of an article I wrote about in Heekyeong’s SLA course last spring where the teacher was working with bilingual Spanish/English speakers and had tailored the entire curriculum to celebrate bilingual authors and role models for students, giving them a vision of how their bilingualism could be a strength.
After watching the 2 videos, I was still kind of confused by what “superdiversity” meant. This video https://youtu.be/5-AHVnHxT38 by Steven Vertovec came up as a recommendation. It’s longer but helpful (9:43). It also led me to this site https://www.mmg.mpg.de/220150/super-diversity which has an even longer video (45:00) by Steven Vertovec.
Apparently, Superdiversity has been around since 2007, yet I had never heard of it until now. To me, Superdiversity is diversity (just labeled a different name). One common theme that came up for me was that all of your multiple identities (which can also be applied to culture, language, ethnicity etc.) need to be valued by the other people, in that society, to be seen as a resource. As, teachers it’s our job to use these resources in the classroom to better help our students. However, if a teacher doesn’t see it as value, how can we change their mind?
After listening to the 1st Steven Vertovec video, I shared, he makes a point that people will believe their own perceptions rather than the information, out of fear, which then leads to more racial biases. So, I guess one question I have is, how can we use “Superdiversity” to help other people be more accepting of migration and diversification?
Hi Yanci,
I understand the confusion between diversity and superdiversity. I will try to elaborate further here. Sometimes my colleagues refer to MIIS/Monterey as multicultural and I just don’t agree because Monterey/MIIS – despite the diversity – is still pretty white. Yes, there’s diversity but it’s not foregrounded, it’s not really something as an institution we strive on. Honestly, other than the international food festival (which is a great example of the tourist approach), what else is happening to celebrate and build upon diversity?
Superdiversity to me is hearing many languages and many cultures ALL AT THE SAME TIME and not one being the dominant. The best example for this – for me – is Times Square. You walk between 40th and 50th streets and hear all sorts of languages. The video similarly gave the example of London. So maybe in simpler terms superdiversity is high density diversity, if that makes sense?
Thank you for this explanation, Deniz! It really clarifies the concept for me. It makes me think about how when I walk around different neighborhoods, shop at different stores, or eat in various restaurants in San Francisco, Daly City, and Oakland, I can hear Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Samoan, German, French, Italian, and many other languages besides English on a daily basis, whereas in a place like Wyoming, I actively and very intentionally have to seek out spaces in which people speak a language other than English.
Hi everyone. In the context of social justice, over the years I have slowly been coming to realize that the person = country = culture = language way of generalizing and organizing our world is problematic while also being taken for granted as the obvious way to do it. From elementary school to high school we were made to engage with cultures at a country level (or sometimes in the case of Africa, a continent-wide level, yikes). When I went to Japan I began to really notice how people are organized into tidy groups by country there. People would ask me, “How is the weather in your country?” or “how do people in your country celebrate/do ____?” as if the US were a small, homogeneous place. I think it’s much easier for Americans to accept that a person’s nationality is only one component of one’s identity, while in Japan there are still deeply rooted assumptions that Japanese people all look a certain way, act a certain way, and speak Japanese — if you don’t meet all of those criteria, your Japanese-ness is in question. Perhaps multinational people like Rui Hachimura and Naomi Osaka have opened some people’s eyes, but there is still a huge lack of awareness about diversity and complex identities in Japan. For example, I taught English at a college-prep high school for five years, and in that whole time span, there was only one student with a non-Japanese name (Vietnamese heritage, Japanese speaker). This is unfortunate and shows the barriers for people who don’t meet the “Japanese” criteria, and I’m sure that lower-level schools are more diverse.
In terms of colonialism, I think many immigrants come to metropoles of (former) colonial superpowers because it is these places that sucked up all of the resources and power through their colonial projects, and so it is in these places where the best educational/job opportunities are. So there are people from all around the world coming to colonial metropoles like the UK and the US. However, the colonial dynamic is reproduced in the Metropole because there is a lot of pressure for immigrants to assimilate and coopt the dominant language, culture, etc. to be included in the power structure.
For us as teachers, this means that we should not assume a person’s linguistic abilities/cultural practices by their name or heritage. We need to get to know our students as individuals without making them feel singled out for being “different.” We also need to talk about diversity and multiculturalism in the classroom while going deeper than a “flags, foods, and festivals” treatment. We need to show students that country borders are artificial and don’t capture the complexity of our world. And we need to treat students’ additional languages/cultural practices as assets, not deficits.
Zoya, I feel like you nailed the relationship to colonialism here, and I really appreciate how your comments tied together immigration and colonial megacities (like London in the videos). I think I took the concept of superdiversity as a suggestion that the reproduction of colonial practices in some of these cities is changing (educators and others are, either by choice or by nature of their increasingly diverse student populations, adopting strategies and practices that celebrate linguistic and cultural difference as strengths rather than liabilities). I am wondering how teachers in rural areas can bring some of this change to their students – in some ways I see the superdiversity of major cities like London or NYC in stark contrast to the increasingly homogenous (not in reality but the self-concept of homogenous) culture of rural communities.
Zoya and Mollie, these are such great points!
Zoya, I love your point about getting to know our students and seeking to not other them intentionally or unintentionally via the highlighting of “difference”. This is a really important skill to develop because we want to simultaneously recognize that differences exist (i.e., not subscribing to colorblindness), but not make that reality a point of division (i.e., othering or exoticizing).
Mollie, I made a comment above related to your comment, and I think this is really important for all of us to consider. While most of us will probably be working in or near major metropolitan areas in the future, it is important to think about the rural context, the particular needs of language learners in these specific settings, and the challenges they and we might face. You are totally right about the sometimes erroneous assumption of cultural, racial, or religious homogeneity in rural areas, but the issues are different out here in “the boonies” than they are in major urban centers, and, as educators, we should think about the needs of students in all different contexts.
I’ve watched both videos twice now and read Deniz’ reply to Yanci, and I’m still very confused about what the difference between superdiversity and diversity is. Is it the next stage in diversity? Is it something that can only be achieved by countries that once colonized? Is it a majority English speaking issue? The man in the first video said that he noticed this in England, where the majority of native English speakers were Afro-European, and the majority of white students were Polish-European and therefore not, in a sense, native speakers of English, forcing him to rethink what diversity means. But I’m still confused as to what he was trying to get at there.
I think no matter what, though, for us as teachers, diversity or superdiversity means we need to get to know our students and to celebrate what makes them, them. We need to allow them to use their knowledge to make connections, rather than just ignore the fact that they speak a whole language with connections to the TL. We should work with their cultures, rather than against their cultures, and accept that they might have more than one that they’re living with.
Hi Sarah, your comments highlight a lot of things I was left thinking about after I watched the videos. Your question about the superdiversity being the next stage of diversity reminds me of the waves analogy often used in discussing feminism (I am not at all insinuating that this is what you were getting at, but the idea of stages/waves made a connection for me). A problem I have with the waves analogy is that it insinuates that there is a lull in activity, like ocean waves, but in reality feminist activism (and I suppose diversity?) never stops. A problem I can see, though, is that much like feminism, diversity looks different for everyone. Even if superdiversity is high density diversity, that will look different to everyone based on the population density of their context.
I completely agree with you in that we need to support our students to use their own cultures, languages, and backgrounds to make connections with the TL, even and perhaps most especially, when those connections do not resonate with our own experiences.
It is interesting that both of these videos are connected to (created by?) Erasmus. During the couple times I have lived in Europe, I have encountered a lot of Erasmus students, and it always amazed me at the number of languages mixing and mingling in those circles. In my opinion, there is no greater feeling than being with a group of people that can mix languages in the same conversation. Some of my most memorable conversations have been in a mix of English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, etc. Everyone has varying levels of comprehension depending on what language is being spoken, but it is such a stimulating feeling.
These videos are really interesting to me and I would like to dig in more. I LOVE the idea of students giving “expert” presentations on their native languages, and sharing with their peers. I can understand the critique of ESL classrooms being separate, and I definitely agree that the most important language learning for young students occurs in natural situations between peers. That being said, I would like to debate the pros and cons of students having a framework of support in their ESL classroom, and a community of peers that they can relate to. While it seems true that students can in theory understand math and science without as much language, I think that is easier said than done.
I would love to spend more time in the U.K. to experience what is going on in terms of superdiversity there. I think some of it is probably revolutionary, but some of it probably remains incredibly painful and stuck in past patterns. I remember having conversations in Italy with refugees who did not feel welcomed, and with Italians who did not want refugees in their towns. The racial/linguistic climate of Europe is really fascinating, and sometimes it can be helpful to explore the challenges other societies face of inclusivity and equity before using it as a mirror to examine similar problems in the U.S.
Katie, I really appreciated your comment about the pros and cons of superdiversity in the ESL classroom. I found myself wondering what it means for us as language teachers and how I would want to learn all the students’ languages in order to be a part of that support network. I think there are ways these classroom set-ups can work without that monumental task, but I wonder what that requires of us as teachers – translators? having other students engage as interpreters? I would love to hear other thoughts and/or strategies. I think this also speaks to the need for teachers who identify with some or all of the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of their students.
Hi everyone, I originally posted a question about “superdiversity” because I had never heard the term before, but I now conceptualize it as “diversity + complexity” not just in terms of race/ethnicity (which is usually what first comes to mind when I think about “diversity”) but also socioeconomic status and ways of belonging/reality. I really appreciated Yanci’s comments and Deniz’s response because they clarified the definition for me. It makes me question how we can truly claim any kind of “diversity” anywhere in a U.S. context… even a place like MIIS (which is from my perspective a “best case” and the most diverse school I’ve been to) is still dominated by the white perspective. It feels a little hopeless, and wrong. Also, Dr. Sigona’s comment that “race and nationality were no longer aligned” regarding the influence of immigration on the British national consciousness stood out to me. I think this really sums up a huge in the U.S., which is people who place too much value on the alignment of race and nationality. It makes me question if it is/was ever okay for these two things to be aligned at all.
Hi Kira, I really resonate with your comment about the alignment of race and nationality in the U.S.! When I was in undergrad, we looked at the U.S. Census and how it categorizes individuals who identify as Middle Eastern/North African; They are included in the ‘White’ category on the census, but these individuals often cite that they do not experience white privilege. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants reported a desire to identify as White in order to avoid anti-Ottoman and anti-Asian sentiments and laws, but of course times and contexts change. All of this to say, I wonder to what extent American foreign policy dictates the way American society perceives race and nationality.
Dear Kira and Sydney, thank you both for bringing it up. I am also thinking about race/ethnicity and nationality. It makes me think of Hakka people in Taiwan and Hakka people in Fujian (mainland China). Also, Taiwanese people consider themselves as Taiwanese/ethnic Chinese, it is also related to way of belonging/reality (of course, there are also political reasons: de-sinicization)
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