Governing the multicultural city: Europe’s ‘great urban expectations’ facing austerity and resurgent nativism

Licia Cianetti

Urban Studies, 2020, vol. 57, issue 13, 2697-2714

Abstract: This article analyses European discourses on ‘optimal’ urban inclusion policies, as they are embodied in EU-sponsored city networking initiatives. Drawing from the scholarships on multiculturalism and urban austerity, it builds an inclusion agendas matrix that identifies four ideal-typical agendas for ethnic and racial inclusion: multicultural, diversity inclusion, community cohesion and neoliberalised diversity. It identifies a shift from group-based to individual-based concerns (mainstreaming) and from a politicised to a depoliticised approach to inclusion (depoliticising). It argues that (a) this double shift should be understood as the result of the mutually reinforcing pressures of nativism and austerity, and (b) inconsistencies in network discourses and policy advice suggest a pragmatic-adaptive logic that challenges simplistic understandings of cities as either (only) sites of resistance or (only) sites of full-blown accommodation of nativist and austerity imperatives.

Keywords: austerity; city networks; diversity; Europe; multiculturalism; nativism; urban austerity; 紧缩; 城市网络; å¤šæ ·æ€§; 欧洲; 多元文化主义; 本土主义; 城市紧缩 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:57:y:2020:i:13:p:2697-2714

DOI: 10.1177/0042098019884214

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