TMCIS-CERC Lunch & Learn - Visualizing Superdiversity in Canadian Cities (Presentation by Dan Hiebert)

The concept of superdiversity was developed by Steven Vertovec from Max Planck Institute to help us understand and come to terms with rapid cultural change (diversification), especially in urban centres that attract large numbers of migrants and immigrants from around the world. It highlights that new forms of diversity are being added to societies already characterized by older forms of diversity that also intersect with longstanding patterns and processes of inequality. Toronto, of course, is an iconic example of these developments.

For the past five years, Dan Hiebert, Professor Emeritus at UBC and visiting Scholar of Excellence at CERC Migration, has been working with Vertovec to build methods to enable people to ‘see’ these changes through interactive data visualizations. This has resulted in websites focused on cities across the Pacific Rim, in Canada, and another iconic case, in New York City. Hiebert and Vertovec are in the process of revising and reimagining their efforts as new data become available and in conjunction with emerging forms of inequality (e.g., vulnerability to COVID and increased heat-island effects related to global warming).

In his presentation, Hiebert will briefly outline their starting point – the concept of superdiversity – and demonstrate their efforts to visualize this process in Canadian cities and consider how they might improve the tools they have been developing.

A light lunch will be served to in-person attendees after the seminar.

If you are joining us in person, please follow the directions to the CERC office here. 

DAN HIEBERT is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of British Columbia and visiting Scholar of Excellence at CERC Migration, specializing in public policy issues. His research interests include immigration policy, the integration of newcomers into the housing and labour markets of Canadian cities, and the consequences of the growing ‘super-diversity’ of Canadian society. His work often involves collaboration with partners in government and non-government organizations. From 2003 to 2013, Daniel served as Co-director of Metropolis British Columbia, a Centre of Excellence fostering research on immigration and cultural diversity in Canada, which was also dedicated to building a community among academics, government officials, and practitioners from the non-profit sector. He has participated in several public advisory roles, serving as Co-chair of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration (until 2017) and currently as a member of the Advisory Council to the Deputy Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and is on the Advisory Board of the Transatlantic Council on Migration. He is currently Academic in Residence at IRCC and participates directly in the development of immigration policy.