Innovation in the Study of Superdiversity: Methodology, Methods, and Approaches

Empirically, superdiversity, which has to do with the social organization of difference in complex urban settings, has characteristics that challenge ethnographic observation and interviewing research methods that have been traditionally employed in urban, migration, and transnational studies. Instead, Vertovec (2020), Blommaert (2015) and others challenge scholars to think about superdiversity in terms of complexity. How do we translate complexity thinking into research practice? The answer is innovative methods. This chapter first provides a framework for thinking about methodological innovation in the study of complex social environments in urban settings. It then outlines innovative methods to meet the challenges of research on urban social complexity, matching different methods with features of complexity that have special relevance for superdiversity. These include multiplicity of agents or variables; diversity in agents’ or variables’ characteristics; interdependence of agents and variables; high outcome-contingency; unpredictable, nonlinear, multicausal trajectories; emergent conditions, systems, and dynamics; and self-organizing dynamical systems.