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Multiculturalism ‘from Below’: Reflections of an Immigrant Ethnographer

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Book cover Debating Multiculturalism in the Nordic Welfare States

Part of the book series: Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series ((CAL))

Abstract

Preoccupied with debates about the adequate understanding of multiculturalism as a set of civic-political ideas and its (mal)functioning in legal and institutional arrangements, social scientists have devoted little attention to this phenomenon as conceived and practised by people in their everyday lives. Relying on my professional expertise in (im)migration and ethnic studies, and personal experience, in this chapter I examine the meaning and ground-level operation of multiculturalism as studied by an ethnographer and as experienced by a (multiple) immigrant. In addition to autobiographical accounts, on the basis of available ethnographic studies I comparatively assess the forms and ‘contents’ of interpersonal multiculturalism in four locations which display varying intensities thereof: the city of Malmö in Sweden showing a minimum level of interpersonal multiculturalism; the British retiree community on the Costal del Sol in Spain and Elmhurst neighbourhood in New York, both located in the middle although with differently textured multicultural orientations and practices; and the Mission District in San Francisco in its upper echelons. Next, I try to explain this diversity by identifying the specific constellations of macro- and microlevel societal circumstances that have shaped interpersonal multiculturalism in each case.

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Authors
  1. Ewa Morawska
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Augustana College, USA

    Peter Kivisto

  2. University of Turku, Finland

    Peter Kivisto

  3. University of Helsinki, Finland

    Östen Wahlbeck

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© 2013 Ewa Morawska

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Morawska, E. (2013). Multiculturalism ‘from Below’: Reflections of an Immigrant Ethnographer. In: Kivisto, P., Wahlbeck, Ö. (eds) Debating Multiculturalism in the Nordic Welfare States. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318459_3

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