Superdiversity from a Historical Perspective

Abstract

Abstract In general, historians are skeptical when new terms are introduced, asking whether the term and what it seeks to describe are really new. Over time, researchers have introduced new terms to describe the diversities and complexities they observe. And they have often observed that what they experienced was new, and of unprecedented and ever-increasing speed, scale, and scope. That observation is in some measure true, but it does not mean there are no similarities in how migrants relate to their migrations; how societies, countries of origin, transit, and destination) respond to their departures and arrivals; and how change shapes or influences an experience. There is merit in pointing out newness. But there is also merit in pointing out and explaining continuities. There is continuity in the introduction of new terms. Authors have introduced a multitude of terms, and the differences between them are often not as large as those who coin them suggest. Past differences and changes are easily smoothed over. This chapter shows that problematizing migration today works by deproblematizing that of the past, by homogenizing groups, mostly in retrospect, and by denying the complexities of the past.