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Professor Susanne Wessendorf

Professor Susanne Wessendorf

Visiting Professor

International Inequalities Institute

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Languages
English
Key Expertise
Immigration, Migrant Settlement, Ethnicity, Race

About me

Susanne Wessendorf’s research focuses on immigration, integration, ethnicity and race. She is a Social Anthropologist and has been doing research on migration, transnationalism and diversity for more than ten years. She has undertaken in-depth ethnographic fieldwork over long periods in complex urban settings, working with people of different age groups, ethnic, national and class backgrounds. Her work focuses on understanding new forms of social inclusion and exclusion in contexts of immigration-related diversity. She has written on social relations in super-diverse areas, and patterns of settlement of recent migrants in such areas. Her current work looks at recent immigration into urban areas which host long-established ethnic minorities, and how long-term racialisation and discrimination of long-settled ethnic minorities impacts on the reception and settlement of more recent migrants.

Since completing her DPhil at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, she has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, and held a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham.  

Publications

Books

2014. Commonplace Diversity. Social Relations in a Super-diverse Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

2013. Second-Generation Transnationalism and Roots Migration. Cross-Border Lives. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Edited Volumes

Vertovec S, Wessendorf S, eds. 2010. The Multiculturalism Backlash. European Discourses, Policies and Practices. London; New York: Routledge. 

Journal articles

2020 "Ethnic minorities' reactions to newcomers in East London: symbolic boundaries and convivial labor, British Journal of Sociology, 71 (2). 208 - 220

2018 'New Migrants’ Social Integration, Embedding and Emplacement in Superdiverse Contexts', Sociology, 53(1), 123–138. 

2017 'Migrant belonging, social location and the neighbourhood: Recent migrants in East London and Birmingham', Urban Studies.

2017'Pathways of Settlement among Pioneer Migrants in Super-Diverse London', Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 

2017 'Pioneer migrants and their social relations in super-diverse London', Ethnic and Racial Studies. 

2016 'Settling in a super-diverse context: Recent migrants’ experiences of conviviality', Journal of Intercultural Studies 37(5): 449-463.

2014. 'Being open, but sometimes closed'. Conviviality in a super-diverse London neighbourhood. European Journal of Cultural Studies 17:392-405.

2013. Commonplace Diversity and the ‘Ethos of mixing’: perceptions of Difference in a London Neighbourhood. Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power 20:407-22.  

2010. Local Attachments and Transnational Everyday Lives: Second-generation Italians in Switzerland. Global Networks 10:365-82.

2008. Culturalist discourses on inclusion and exclusion: the Swiss citizenship debate. Social Anthropology/ Anthropologie Sociale 16:187-202.

2007. 'Roots-Migrants': Transnationalism and 'Return' among Second-generation Italians in Switzerland. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33:1083-102.

2007. Sushi-eating secondos and Casual Latins. Political movements and the emergence of a Latino counter-culture among second-generation Italians in Switzerland. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 28(3), 345-360.

Book chapters

2018. ''All the people speak bad English.’ Communicating across differences in a super-diverse context', in A. Creese and A. Blackledge (eds) The Routledge Handbook on Language and Superdiversity.

2015. Commonplace Diversity and the ‘Ethos of mixing’: perceptions of Difference in a London Neighbourhood. In M. L. Berg, B. Gidley & N. Sigona (Eds.), Ethnography, diversity and urban space: Routledge.

2011. Dimmi con chi vai..... Associazioni fra gruppi di pari e affermazione culturale fra gli immigrati italiani die seconda generazione in Svizzera. In M. Barbagli & C. Schmoll (Eds.), Stranieri in Italia. La seconda generazione. Bologna: Ed. Il Mulino.

2010. State-Imposed Translocalism and the Dream of Returning. Italian Migrants in Switzerland. In L. Baldassar & D. R. Gabaccia (Eds.), Intimacy and Italian Migration. Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World (pp. 157-169). New York: Fordham University Press.

2008. Italian Families in Switzerland. Sites of Belonging or Golden Cages? In R. Grillo (Ed.), The Family in Question. Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities in Multicultural Europe (pp. 205-224). Amsterdam Amsterdam University Press.

2007. Who do you hang out with? Patterns of peer group association, cultural assertion and detachment among second-generation Italians in Switzerland. In T. Geisen & C. Riegel (Eds.), Jugend, Migration und Zugehörigkeit. Subjektpositionierungen im Kontext von Jugendkultur, Ethnizitäts- und Geschlechterkonstruktionen (pp. 111-127). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

Working Papers

2019. 'Ethnic minorities’ reactions to newcomers in East London: symbolic boundaries and convivial labour. III Working paper 35.

2015. 'All the people speak bad English': Coping with language differences in a super-diverse context. IRiS Working Paper, 9. 

2014. Researching social relations in super-diverse neighbourhoods: Mapping the field. IRiS Working Paper, 2.

2008. Negotiating Italianità: Ethnicity and Peer-Group Formation among Transnational Second-Generation Italians in Switzerland. Working Paper No 48, Sussex Centre for Migration Research.

2009. Local Attachments and Transnational Everyday Lives: Second-generation Italians in Switzerland and in Italy. Working Paper WP 09-07, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

2010. Commonplace Diversity: Social Interactions in a Super-diverse Context. Working Paper of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (WP 10-11). 

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