14-15 March 2013, Centre for URBan Research (CURB), University of York

Key speakers: Gareth Millington(author of Race, Culture and the Right to the City)  and Annette Spellerberg, Chair of Urban Sociology, University of Kaiserslautern, visiting fellow CURB.

Immigration and diversity lie at the heart of electoral contests globally in recent years. The liberal consensus around multi-culturalism saw its first signs of crisis around the Salman Rushdie affair and went into a sharp reverse after the events of 9/11 as national policy agendas, party leaders and the mainstream media took an increasingly hostile view of ‘cultural enemies within’. At the same time, the sense of economic crisis, for commentators like Slavoj Zizek and John Gray, has gripped mainstream political thinking, the value of national in-groups has been raised by the force of uncertainties themselves generated by financial uncertainty and declining public supports. What…