The forces and illusions of Queens’ super-diverse neighborhoods

Although New York City remains one of the most racially segregated cities in the world, “super-diverse” neighborhoods, defined as areas where members of the domestic majority and multiple immigrant groups congregate, are becoming particularly prevalent in the borough of Queens. To understand the forces generating Queens’ super-diverse patterns, this paper demonstrates how immigration policy, financial crises, urban infrastructures, and racial discrimination spawned these contemporary settlement patterns. In doing so, it finds that black and African American groups are almost entirely excluded from residing in these neighborhoods. However, these geographies are regularly celebrated for their inclusivity. Such praises are demonstrated by detailing how state officials deploy diversity narratives that contradict locals’ experiences at a Queens public plaza. Collectively, this paper adds new perspectives to critical urban studies scholarship by showing how (super) diversity typologies and rhetoric create illusions that reinforce urban inequalities and social hierarchies.