Introduction—Socialising with Diversity

Meissner commences her book by presenting social connectivities as central to urban migration-driven diversities. This focus moves away from the dominant view of diversity as little more than a compendium of ever more categories of difference. She embeds her discussion within research on superdiversity to move beyond origin specificities as the primary concern in analysing network patterns. Meissner also emphasises the importance of conducting research not only amongst migrants with large origin groups at destination but also those whose number of co-migrants is relatively small. Small migrant groups unsettle many of the common assumptions about ethnic networks that habitually drive quantitative explorations of migrant networks. This sets the scene for the remainder of the book and a brief summary of each chapter is offered.