Pedestrian crossings: young people and everyday multiculturalism

Young people have been the focus of both hopes and fears about the futures of
culturally diverse nations. It has become commonplace to centre youth in debates
about the impact on social cohesion of rapid and increasingly diverse global flows of
peoples. Concerns proliferate about the capacity of youth of migrant and refugee
backgrounds to ‘integrate’, and about the more flexible and critical forms of
citizenship and belonging that some youth are forging. Others are idealised as the
new cosmopolitans, eager consumers in the global youth market and adept players in
the global economy. Paradoxical images emerge. Youth are often simultaneously
imagined as at the vanguard of new forms of multicultural nation-building and social
cohesion, and as those most inclined towards regressive nationalism, fundamentalism
and racism. Images of youth-led interfaith and intercultural harmony projects
compete with those of race riots and racist youth violence, deeply complicating the
public representation and interpretation of young people’s place in multicultural
nation-making.