Diversity, inequality and urban change

This introduction to the special issue ‘Diversity, inequality and urban change’ provides a brief historical overview of assimilative, politico-economic and multicultural approaches in the USA and Europe. It focuses on representations of diversity in cities and highlights processes of theory transference, which are often silenced in debates about city paradigms. It draws attention to how the cities discussed in the special issue (London, Berlin and southern European cities) can contribute to the relational framing of the migration experience and multicultural life.