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This Introduction highlights the specific features and the most innovative aspects of the book. First, the focus is on the relational aspects of integration understood not as a rigid state of peaceful coexistence but as a dynamic achievement which may pass through negotiations and conflict, providing a theoretical framework suitable for understanding what has been happening in several European cities over the last two decades. Second, the boundary-making approach proposed by Fredrik Barth as early as the 1960s, but seldom coherently operationalized in empirical research has been adopted, so that in the analysis groups were not identified a priori but on an empirical basis, and sometimes appear to be predominantly defined on criteria different from ethnicity, thus widening the book’s scope beyond migration studies. Third, European neighbourhoods have been investigated as crucial arenas of integration where public narratives displayed by policy communities and media interact with cognitive frameworks and relations developed in everyday life, producing different and changing ideas of ‘us’. Finally, the Introduction offers an overview of neighbourhoods investigated in the following chapters by classifying them into two broad groups – former industrial neighbourhoods and central service-oriented neighbourhoods – distinguished by different degrees of population turnover and diversity.

This chapter explores how housing policies and the nature of housing stock have conditioned residential geographies and diversity patterns in two south London neighbourhoods, Bermondsey and Camberwell. The key drivers are policy changes to social housing allocation and the post-industrial reconfiguration of urban space expressed in processes of gentrification and the redevelopment of riverside docklands into expensive housing units. These developments have challenged existing narratives of community, but they have also shifted the focus of analytical enquiry towards emerging us-them divides based on class and generation. Within the context of diversity and social cohesion, both neighbourhoods are characterized by a comparatively unproblematic day-to-day muddling along with difference, but also a generally declining level of civic engagement and neighbourhood cohesion, expressed by a sense of ‘living together apart’.

This chapter analyzes inter-group relations in three neighbourhoods of the German city of Nuremberg. A thematic focus is placed on inter-group conflict in order to illustrate and deepen the general understanding of integration as a form of ‘discordant harmony’. Through a detailed analysis of processes of emergence, development, and settlement of neighbourhood conflicts in two neighbourhoods (Werderau, Langwasser) – contrasted against a case where peaceful interethnic relations prevail (Gostenhof) – the chapter shows the ambivalent nature of neighbourhood-level interethnic conflict, which can certainly disrupt but also ultimately promote inter-group relations depending on a plurality of factors among which an important role is played by the capacity and will of local policy communities to interpret, face and manage conflicts.

In this chapter we will take an inside look at inter-group relations between Hungarians and non-EU immigrants – in particular, those from China and Vietnam – who live side by side in the vicinity of the Four Tigers Market which has become the largest wholesale centre for Chinese and Vietnamese products within Eastern Europe in the last two decades (Nyíri, Magyarország helye a kínaiak világkereskedelmi hálózatában. In (pp 130–138). Budapest: MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete; 1996). The part of the city stretching from Józsefváros (8th district) to Kőbánya (10th district) was selected as a field of investigation to inquire how the fragmented, post-socialist host society encountered the mainly economy-driven Asian migration that started in the early 1990s. In the residential and business interaction sites that we have investigated, long-held prejudices as well as a well-kept distance shape the everyday social encounters of the inhabitants. The active interaction between native Hungarians and Asian immigrants – both in residential and working sites – is almost exclusively of a business nature. Wider inter-group relations are hindered by several factors: the highly xenophobic attitude widespread among Hungarians, the prejudiced thinking and incompetence of policy makers, the financial instability if NGOs and their exposure to current political will, and last but not least, the passive role of local and national media.

The main focus of this chapter is on two Barcelona neighbourhoods: Sagrada Família (situated in the Eixample District) and Poble Sec (in the Sants-Montjuïc District). Among the outcomes, it can be highlighted that in both neighbourhoods, schools, public libraries and civic centres emerge as spaces where encounters and interrelations occur. Furthermore, the existence of a well-knit network of social organizations at neighbourhood level is a very useful tool for social cohesion, especially in Poble Sec. In the Sagrada Família neighbourhood, both cooperation and conflict between groups are rather scarce, and they are not as important to the neighbourhood’s life and to the residents’ perceptions as in Poble Sec. In explaining these differences, while the difference in the percentage of foreigners is an important factor, the urban fabric is equally crucial. Place and space do not only play a secondary role as the setting of the interaction; rather the configuration of areas where encounters occur has a significant influence on conflict and cooperation in neighbourhoods. Thus, a clear practical direction emerging from our research in Barcelona is that immigrant integration policies should be designed with space and place in mind not only as settings but also as objects of those same policies.

This chapter attempts to reconcile two approaches still poorly harmoniously integrated in migration studies on Italy: the “migrant focused” and the “space focused”. The chapter seeks to understand how various factors, such as gender, class, generation and the urban structure, produce different effects on social relations in the post-industrial city of Turin. The two neighbourhoods under analysis share a working-class history and strong political mobilization that created social cohesion and a strong local identity as well as promoting the positive inclusion of internal immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s. The history of the post-industrial urban transformation which followed has been very different in San Paolo and Barriera di Milano. In the first neighbourhood the conversion process happened quickly; whereas in the second one it is just beginning and remains uncertain because of the current economic crisis. New immigrants arriving in these neighbourhoods today are confronted with very different urban and socio-economic contexts that are characterized by different views on immigration, inter-group relations, types of conflicts and resolution. The analysis of situated sites of interactions, such as the public gardens, the candy store and the public baths, shows how often conflicts can be explained not in terms of opposition between natives and immigrants but by other influencing factors, such as generation and length of stay in the neighbourhood.

In this chapter we will analyze empirical data from the media section of the project within a comparative European framework to examine the role of the local dimension in media representations of immigrants and ethnic minorities. This allows us to investigate the impact of a series of variables implied in the media making of symbolic boundaries – a process involving localities at different scales, groups of residents, non-residents, local organizations and city administrators – and raises questions about the power of neighbourhoods in determining or countering media narratives and the labelling power of the media. What emerges from our analysis is that neighbourhoods with their own shared sense of a vital narrative are better able to control and frame news referring to them and to forestall any process of moral panic fostered by the actions of moral entrepreneurs. We argue that the neighbourhood policy community can play a crucial role in structuring media representations, and that this role is typically under-investigated by scholars of media and journalism studies. The ability to maintain control of media narratives by downplaying an “intercultural conflict frame” does not necessarily mean enhanced visibility for immigrants and minority groups. To this respect, we argue against the typical claim that a more balanced (less negative) representation of immigrants and ethnic minorities necessarily follows from involving these actors in the production of news.

At the end of our tour of European cities, this final chapter will be devoted to a comparative analysis based on the empirical findings from our target neighbourhoods. We will take into account the various levels of analysis explained in the Introduction: representations and narratives of residents and neighbourhood users; social practices and relations among groups as observable in everyday situations; macro-frames as generated by local media and neighbourhood policy communities.

More precisely, concerning everyday processes, we will look at the ways in which both social and spatial boundaries are built and marked. In analyzing macro-frames, we will focus on what we have called neighbourhood policy communities (see Introduction) and their ability to create their own narratives and thus also on their ability to influence local media representations and to contrast xenophobic movements.