Diversity and social cohesion

Diversity has increasingly emerged as the core focus of many studies concerning factors impacting on social cohesion. Various scholars have concluded that diversity is detrimental to cohesion. Most of this research, however, draws generalisations based upon quantitative data and fails to account for the impact of inequality, segregation and discrimination, and their interconnectedness to diversity. This research provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of the perceptions of inhabitants of a diverse Toronto neighbourhood regarding formal and informal interactions, common values and attachment. The findings suggest that the internalisation of gendered and class-based racism by inhabitants plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions and interactions

Introduction

On May 23, 2007, 15 year old Jordan Manners was shot and killed in a hallway inside the C. W. Jeffreys high school in the Jane‑Finch neighbourhood of Toronto. Four days later, two 17-year-old male suspects, who lived in the same neighbourhood, were arrested and charged with first-degree murder. In the aftermath of this shooting, Jane‑Finch appeared in virtually every Canadian news outlet. Despite a lack of insight into the motives of the accused males whose identities were protected due to the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the media heavily framed the shooting as having roots in the very nature of Toronto’s racialized poor inner-suburbs (O’Grady, Parnaby, and Schikschneit, 2010). The neighbourhood of Jane‑Finch in north-west Toronto has since gained considerable publicity for its high crime rate and concentrated poverty. Today Jane‑Finch is considered one of the most stigmatised neighbourhoods in Canada, heavily associated with guns, gangs and racial divide (Richardson, 2008). A post-war modernist estate accommodating a predominantly poor racialized population, Jane‑Finch is by no means the first of its kind to receive such negative and mixed coverage by the media. A 2010 study of deprived communities in Glasgow documented a high recognition of the existence of negative external reputations among residents in peripheral housing estates (GoWell, 2010). In 1999, a study of 500 Danish estates, contended that the concentration of ethnic minorities in an area was among the most important factors in explaining poor external reputation (Skifter-Andersen, 1999). Similarly, in a study focusing on housing estates in Utrecht, Permentier et al. (2011) found that ethnic composition and average income strongly influenced the perceived neighbourhood reputation. The same study concluded that distance to the city centre was negatively associated with neighbouthood reputation, i.e. the farther the neighbourhood from the centre, the worse its external ‘image’. The framing of Jordan Manners’ death by the media is llustrative of essentialised and stereotypical representations of poor, ethnic-minority communities. As stressed by O’Grady et al. (2010) “the ‘cause’ of the shooting was framed in a fashion that was suggestive of social and/or cultural inferiority (single-parent families, unwed mothers, welfare dependency, a high concentration of subsidized housing, etc.) […] A dysfunctional local community was seen as ostensibly the root cause of Jordan Manners’ death”. The negative reputation of Jane‑Finch is established and sustained along not only the axis of race and class, but also gender, since single mothers are the ones commonly blamed for the stigmatisation and criminalisation of the area since they are seen as “the producers of unruly youth.” (Narain, 2012: 80). Narain (2012) underscores that Toronto’s lower-income neighbourhoods are often ‘racialized’, a categorization which is attributed not just to the concentration of visible minority households, but also the lack of social, economic and political resources in these areas (Teelucksingh, 2007). However, while Toronto’s racialised poor communities have become social locations of fear and othering (Narain, 2012), celebration of diversity has become a popular theme in Toronto’s policy and image making, such that many policy documents have proclaimed diversity as the city’s biggest strength. But why is it that some communities are celebrated for their diversity, while others are criminalised and stigmatised? Like many other countries across Western Europe and North America, Canada has experienced considerable economic restructuring in the past decades, which has rendered the market a more prominent actor in social regulation of Canadian cities. Various studies over the years have shown that economic restructuring has intensified the processes of racialization and feminization in the labour market, leading to increased economic, social and political inequality. Racialized groups, immigrants, refugees and women have particularly suffered the consequences of restructuring. As well, many Canadian urban centres have experienced considerable polarisation along the lines of income and race (Galabuzi, 2005; Galabuzi, 2001; Jackson, 2001; Yalnyzian, 1998). Ethnic minority residents and aboriginal peoples are, as stressed by Galabuzi (2005), “twice as likely to be poor as other Canadians because of the intensified economic and social and economic exploitation of these communities whose members have to endure historical racial and gender inequalities accentuated by the restructuring of the Canadian economy and more recently racial profiling. (17)” Galabuzi (2005) has used the term ‘racialisation of poverty’ to refer to the process by which poverty has become more concentrated and reproduced inter-generationally among racialized group members in cities such as Toronto. This process is manifest through “a double digit racialized income gap, higher than average unemployment, differential labour market participation, deepening and disproportionate exposure to low income, differential access to housing leading to racial segregation, disproportionate contact with the criminal Justice system, particularly for racialized youth leading to the criminalization of youth and higher health risks. (38)” The racialisation of poverty in Canadian cities further seems to follow a specific geographic pattern since increasingly, racialized people are settling in peripheral areas which are characterized by high poverty and unemployment rates, welfare dependency, and high school dropout rates, all of which are condition that reproduce poverty. Often they find themselves surrounded by others in similar circumstances in neighbourhoods that are heavily populated and segregated from the rest of society (Ibid). Racialised groups living in these geographical areas further deal with social deficits such as inadequate access to counselling services, life skills training, child care, recreation, and health care (Galabuzi, 2005; Kazemipur and Halli 2000). The racialization of poverty has further had a major impact on neighbourhood selection and access to adequate housing for new immigrants in Toronto who are much more likely than nonimmigrants to live in racially segregated neighbourhoods with high rates of poverty (Ibid). Hulchanski (2010) similarly argues that the city is falling apart into ‘three cities’, i.e. three areas with distinct income and racial characteristics, underscoring that the low-income (mainly newcomer or ethnic) neighbourhoods, located in the inner-suburbs of the city, have been consistently facing decreasing income levels since the 1980s. Despite evidence for segregation and stigmatization of racialized neighbourhoods in Toronto, diversity remains a popular catchphrase with an appealing ring both to policy makers and mainstream society. In fact, Toronto’s long-standing immigration history coupled by the introduction of the Canadian Multiculturalism policy in the 1970s have rendered diversity a prominent value for Torontonians (Ahmadi and Tasan-Kok, 2014). Diversity is largely framed as a ‘marketable asset’ in Toronto’s policy context (Boudreau et al., 2009). Kipfer and Keil (2002) underscore that diversity functions as the primary aesthetic backdrop to the city’s beautification and development plans. They further argue that the promotion of Toronto as a diverse global city is connected to the social cleansing of inner city Toronto, through racialised segregation, racial profiling and repressive policing. Diversity management in Toronto, thus, may be more preoccupied with promoting a more competitive city image than tending to the realities of racialised poverty and segregation in the city. It thus appears that while the celebration of diversity has attracted funds and services to inner city areas, stereotyping based on different categories of diversity (especially ethnicity and class) has resulted in the stigmatization and criminalization of poor peripheral neighbourhoods. Herein lies an important question: why is diversity sometimes regarded as an asset and sometimes a deficit? And is it possible to move beyond such dichotomous understanding of the notion? Answering these questions firstly requires understanding what the concept of diversity means and how it has come to be defined in theoretical and policy debates. What is diversity? Diversity in urban areas may derive from multiple factors such as behaviour, lifestyles, activities, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality profiles, entitlements and restrictions of rights, labour market experiences, and patterns of spatial distribution. Traditionally, diversity has been defined adopting different unidimensional approaches which consider diversity across a single dimension at a time (e.g. ethnicity) (Gopalda and DeRoy, 2015). A common critique of these approaches is that they fail to take account of the complexity of diversity, and the multiple and dynamic affiliations of an individual. Furthermore, unidimensional definitions of diversity may result in generalisations and stereotyping on the basis of categories such as ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class. By contrast, there have been a number of recent theoretical efforts to capture the complexity of diversity, perhaps the most notable of which is the notion of Super-diversity developed by Steven Vertovec in 2007. Grounded in the critique of the ‘ethnic lens’ in diversity and migration studies, super-diversity is a multidimensional perspective on diversity which goes beyond the ethnic group as the only object of study and acknowledges the interplay of multiple factors that impact people’s living conditions (Vertovec. 2007). Despite its contribution to capturing the complexity of urban diversity, super-diversity has received criticism for matters ranging from its epistemological shortcomings (difficulties in operationalization and research conduction) to its potential for the promotion of individual liberty at the expense of collectivist notions of interest (see also chapter 2). Placing individual difference at the centre of understanding diversity promotes the individualization of policy whereby all differences are regarded as irreconcilable (Campbell 2006). While failing to address individual differences in interests and needs can result in the exclusion of vulnerable groups, individualization of policy can also create exclusionary and unjust outcomes. Likewise, addressing diversity, without paying attention to the intersection of various forms of oppression and privilege (e.g. on the basis of race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality) can exacerbate exclusion and injustice in urban areas. Theoretical and policy debates on diversity can thus benefit from critical research that takes account of the complex nature of diversity while grounding its understanding of the notion in the pre-existing and intersecting structures of power and privilege in society

Is diversity our strength?

A prominent characteristic of the city of Toronto is its increasing diversity, with half of the city’s population being foreign-born. While the concept of diversity appeals to Toronto’s reputation as a multi-cultural haven, the city’s approach to managing diversity is becoming increasingly instrumentalist, i.e. diversity is considered an asset as long as its benefits are economically valuable. As a result, inner-city neighbourhoods in Toronto are thriving due to development projects and services, while the most diverse neighbourhoods in the inner-suburbs are left in a dire state. This article presents an analysis of how the concept of diversity used within policy euphemises systemic discrimination and inequality based on race, class and gender. It serves to reveal the mismatch between policy rhetoric on diversity and its materialisation in the daily lives of the inhabitants of a low-income Toronto innersuburb, by juxtaposing policy discourses with inhabitants’ everyday experiences. By illustrating how inhabitants reproduce negative essentialised stereotypes based on diversity markers, the article argues that talking diversity as an alternative to or an escape from problematising the intertwined systems of race, class and gender oppression, could potentially serve to perpetuate them

Standing on top of society's sexist load:Gate-keeping activism and feminist respectability politics in the case of the Iranian MeToo Movement

Over the past three years, Iran has witnessed the birth and growth of an unprecedented movement, whereby countless women have come forward to narrate their experiences of sexual violence. Despite its innovative characteristics and significant accomplishments over a short period of time, academic scholarship has paid little attention to the Iranian MeToo movement to this date. This study aims towards bridging this gap by critically exploring the backlash the movement has generated. Taking a recently published open letter titled ‘inner critique’ as a case study, it deploys critical textual analysis, combined with a thematic analysis of data driven from in-depth interviews, to unpack the discourses used in the letter by placing them in their historical and material contexts and exposing their relation to pre-existing victim-blaming tropes and rape-scripts. The analysis further sheds light on the classed and gendered respectability politics through which Iranian feminists negotiate status distinctions and reproduce inner hierarchies of power. It concludes by arguing that, rather than offering necessary constructive critique, the open letter builds on and extends the state-backed discourse which depicts feminists as opportunistic agents of foreign political influence, in order to discredit their activism and suppress their radical potential for bringing about transformative change

Diversity, public space and places of encounter:

Increasingly, public spaces are being regarded as important resources for fostering multi-cultural coexistence and for creating opportunities for cross-cultural understanding and dialogue, in that they can provide a platform wherein interactions across diverse backgrounds occur. This article explores the perceptions of public place in a highly diverse, post-war, modernist suburb of Toronto, and the extent to which public spaces play a role in fostering interactions between different groups and catering for diversity in the area. The analysis indicates that there is little evidence for encounters between diverse groups in public spaces, due to the lack of spatial infrastructure anticipated in the modernist design of the neighbourhood. In addition, social factors such as surveillance and policing, lack of appropriate symbols that cater to different user groups, and presence of gangs and violence have resulted in residents’ self-exclusion from public spaces and undermined the frequency and quality of their social encounters

Serving diverse communities

The recent decades have witnessed a shift from the traditional top-down model of service delivery led by the state to the provision and delivery of services by community organisations. This article explores the extent to which community initiatives in Jane and Finch, a highly diverse, lower income, inner-suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, were successful in achieving their goals, and the relevance of the experience for current neighbourhood initiatives targeting diversity. It discusses the factors which contributed to the effectiveness of 10 analysed initiatives in terms of reaching their primary objectives. The analysis shows that despite the efforts within community initiatives to improve conditions for inhabitants, their impacts remain limited due to underlying structural challenges such as poverty and institutionalised racism, increasing fragmentation within the over-all network of initiatives and precarious funding, which pit programs against one another and hamper effective collaboration and solidarity needed in order to achieve transformative change

Living with diversity in Jane-Finch

In the past decades, diversity has become a popular catchphrase in theoretical, policy and public discourses in Canadian cities. Toronto is Canada’s most diverse city, wherein a long-standing immigration history coupled by the introduction of the Canadian Multiculturalism policy in the 1970s have rendered diversity a prominent value for the city’s inhabitants (Ahmadi and Tasan-Kok, 2014). Celebration of diversity has become a popular theme in Toronto’s policy and image making, such that many policy documents have proclaimed diversity as the city’s biggest strength. However, while the celebration of diversity has attracted funds and services to inner city Toronto, stereotyping based on different categories of diversity (particularly ethnicity and class) has resulted in the stigmatization and criminalization of poor racialised neighbourhoods located at the edges of the city.Diversity in urban areas may derive from multiple factors such as behaviour, lifestyles, activities, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality profiles, entitlements and restrictions of rights, labour market experiences, and patterns of spatial distribution. Research on diversity in the past decades has resulted in the creation of an extensive body of work on the notion. However, there are a few gaps in theory which the present study seeks to address, namely: (a) Research on diversity often overlooks the complexity and dynamic nature of diversity and maintains an overemphasis on ethnicity. (b) Despite plentiful evidence for the diversification of peripheral neighbourhoods, the available body of research focuses primarily on inner-city areas, leaving out the more remote rural and suburban areas (Humphris, 2014). (c) There is a tendency to present a ‘flat’ or ‘horizontal’ type of differentiation of diversity, which does not account for the various positions and hierarchies within and between different categories of difference.In light of these gaps, this study seeks to add to our understanding of urban diversity, as perceived and experienced by those who inhabit, frequent and govern urban areas. It answers the following primary research question: How is diversity experienced at the neighbourhood level, as (a) discourse, (b) social reality, and (c) practice? Diversity as discourse refers to the public narratives around diversity, while diversity as social reality concerns the descriptive characteristics that render an area diverse. Diversity as practice refers to policies, programs and local practices that aim towards managing diversity (see also Berg and Sigona, 2013). The research question is investigated in four interconnected chapters, which engage with the three formerly mentioned dimensions to various degrees. The study further makes use of a variety of qualitative and participatory techniques (i.e. qualitative interviews, roundtable talks, participant observations, and focus groups) to gather rigorous empirical data on living with and managing diversity in an inner-suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, namely Jane-Finch

Living with diversity in Jane-Fitch

In the past decades, diversity has become a popular catchphrase in theoretical, policy and public discourses in Canadian cities. Toronto is Canada’s most diverse city, wherein a long-standing immigration history coupled by the introduction of the Canadian Multiculturalism policy in the 1970s have rendered diversity a prominent value for the city’s inhabitants (Ahmadi and Tasan-Kok, 2014). Celebration of diversity has become a popular theme in Toronto’s policy and image making, such that many policy documents have proclaimed diversity as the city’s biggest strength. However, while the celebration of diversity has attracted funds and services to inner city Toronto, stereotyping based on different categories of diversity (particularly ethnicity and class) has resulted in the stigmatization and criminalization of poor racialised neighbourhoods located at the edges of the city. Diversity in urban areas may derive from multiple factors such as behaviour, lifestyles, activities, ethnicity, age, gender and sexuality profiles, entitlements and restrictions of rights, labour market experiences, and patterns of spatial distribution. Research on diversity in the past decades has resulted in the creation of an extensive body of work on the notion. However, there are a few gaps in theory which the present study seeks to address, namely: (a) Research on diversity often overlooks the complexity and dynamic nature of diversity and maintains an overemphasis on ethnicity. (b) Despite plentiful evidence for the diversification of peripheral neighbourhoods, the available body of research focuses primarily on inner-city areas, leaving out the more remote rural and suburban areas (Humphris, 2014). (c) There is a tendency to present a ‘flat’ or ‘horizontal’ type of differentiation of diversity, which does not account for the various positions and hierarchies within and between different categories of difference. In light of these gaps, this study seeks to add to our understanding of urban diversity, as perceived and experienced by those who inhabit, frequent and govern urban areas. It answers the following primary research question: How is diversity experienced at the neighbourhood level, as (a) discourse, (b) social reality, and (c) practice? Diversity as discourse refers to the public narratives around diversity, while diversity as social reality concerns the descriptive characteristics that render an area diverse. Diversity as practice refers to policies, programs and local practices that aim towards managing diversity (see also Berg and Sigona, 2013). The research question is investigated in four interconnected chapters, which engage with the three formerly mentioned dimensions to various degrees. The study further makes use of a variety of qualitative and participatory techniques (i.e. qualitative interviews, roundtable talks, participant observations, and focus groups) to gather rigorous empirical data on living with and managing diversity in an inner-suburban neighbourhood of Toronto, namely Jane-Finch

Synthesis

The starting point of this project was the ‘paradox’ in how the concept of urban diversity is evoked, in theory, in policy and in practice, as something which is simultaneously celebrated and demonised. Diversity is indeed a fashion word, it sounds celebratory, tolerant and harmonious, but not too confrontational (Essed, 2002). Diversity has gained popular appeal especially because it offers an approach that goes beyond ‘dated’ terms such as equality and anti-racism. Yet diversity workers often tend to experience this very paradox, working within organizations that claim to be committed to diversity but feeling as though they are ‘banging their head against a brick wall’ (Sara Ahmed, 2012, emphasis mine). The same paradox is evident in the manner in which the city of Toronto approaches its diversity. The premise that diversity is a strength which should be celebrated appears to be a popular notion within Toronto’s city policy and mainstream public discourse. Yet, Toronto’s most diverse neighbourhoods located at the edges of the city are scapegoated and criminalised. This is especially the tendency when ethnic, cultural and religious diversity coincide with poverty, welfare dependency and poor infrastructure. This study set out to provide empirical knowledge of what living with and working towards diversity in urban areas looks like. Specifically, it raised the question: How is diversity experienced at the neighbourhood level, as (a) discourse, (b) social reality, and (c) practice?? This question was broken down to four sub-questions which were investigated in four interconnected chapters (chapters 3 to 6). The present concluding chapter provides a summary of the findings of each empirical chapter and further discusses these findings in relation to one another. It closes with recommendations for both policy and future scholarship addressing diversity in our cities