Is Superdiversity a Useful Concept in European Medical Sociology?

Medical sociology has a poor track record of researching diversity in theoretically innovative ways. This paper notes usage of the term superdiversity in migration and urban studies, to ask about its utility in general and more specifically for researching the social production of health and illness. Referring to a multi-country interview study about healthcare seeking strategies, the need to understand the diversification of diversity and the challenges for multi-method health research are described. Six interviews each were conducted in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, to give a diversity sample of 24 adults who described their strategies and practice when seeking healthcare. In discussing how far superdiversity can help to model socioeconomic and cultural changes already identified as challenging health policy and service provision, the paper draws on case study material. The complex intersecting dimensions of population diversity to which superdiversity draws attention are undoubtedly relevant for commissioning and improving healthcare and research as well as policy. Whether models that reflect the complexity indicated by qualitative research can be envisaged in a timely fashion for quantitative research and questions of policy, commissioning, and research are key questions for superdiversity’s ongoing usefulness as a concept

Learning in Collaborative Moments

In this article, we describe experiences with dialogue evenings within a research collaboration on long-term care and dementia in the Netherlands. What started as a conventional process of ‘reporting back’ to interlocutors transformed over the course of two years into learning and knowing together. We argue that learning took place in three different articulations. First, participants learnt to expand their notion of knowledge. Second, they learnt to relate differently to each other and, therewith, to dementia. And third, participants learnt how to generate knowledge with each other. We further argue that these processes did not happen continuously, but in moments. We suggest that a framework of collaborative moments can be helpful for research projects that are not set up collaboratively from the start. Furthermore, we point to the work required to facilitate these moments.</jats:p

It's Complicated: People and Their Democracy in Germany, France, Britain, Poland, and the United States

This in-depth study explores how citizens in five countries (Germany, France, Britain, Poland, and the United States) feel about democracy, their frustrations, and their demands, with a particular focus on those with an ambivalent relationship with democracy

Nigerian London: re-mapping space and ethnicity in superdiverse cities

This paper explores the idea of ‘superdiversity’ at the city level through two churches with different approaches to architectural visibility: the hypervisible Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and the invisible Igbo Catholic Church, both in North London, guide our exploration of invisible Nigerian London. Although Nigerians have lived in London for over 200 years, they live beneath the radar of policy and public recognition rather than as a vital and visible element of superdiversity. This paper argues that we can trace the journeys composing Nigerian London in the deep textures of the city thus making it visible, but this involves re-mapping space and ethnicity. It argues that visibility is vital in generating more open forms of urban encounter and, ultimately, citizenship

Sickness, migration and social relations : the therapeutic practices and medical subjectivities among Ghanaians in London

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

On Editing African Diaspora: Pondering Situatedness and Hodological Care Interview with Rijk van Dijk and Kristine Krause

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Pathways to care: how superdiversity shapes the need for navigational assistance. Sociol Health Illn

ABSTRACT The recently developed sociological concept of superdiversity provides a potentially interesting and useful way of developing an understanding of life in contemporary Europe. Here we report on research based on individual narratives about access to healthcare, as described by a range of people from very different socio-cultural backgrounds in four European countries. This paper notes the frequent appearance in first person narratives of the need for navigational assistance in the form of knowledge, cultural completence and orientation that facilitate the identification and use of pathways to healthcare. Our dataset of 24 semi-structured interviews suggests that, in the context of needing healthcare, the feeling of being a &apos;stranger in a strange land&apos; is common across a wide range of backgrounds. In social settings characterised by transnationalism and cultural heterogeneity, understanding the need for navigational assistance, particularly at times of uncertainty, has potential importance for the design and delivery of health services. The relationship between the inhabitants of contemporary Europe and the healthcare systems available in the places they live is dominated by both complexity and contingency -and this is the cultural field in which navigation operates. (187 words