Conviviality, conflict and distanciation in young people's local multicultures

Through an analysis of research with youth in some of the most multicultural, and deprived, neighbourhoods of five Australian cities, this paper explores the local and spatial practices through which belonging and productive intercultural relations are negotiated. It provides an insight into the ordinary processes by which youth get along in multicultural neighbourhoods, and suggests that both conflict and distanciation must be part of the discussion about conviviality in order to properly capture the complexity of productive relationality in the lives of young people. By focusing on how practices and feelings of belonging are enacted and elicited in the spaces of everyday life, that is, by taking an ‘everyday multiculturalism’ approach, it suggests that it is necessary to situate complex questions about diversity and social cohesion in ordinary lived experience.