Super diverse streets: Economies and spaces of migration in four city streets

Hall, Suzanne and Finlay, Robin and King, Julia (2018). Super diverse streets: Economies and spaces of migration in four city streets. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-853040

The ‘Super-diverse streets’ project is an ESRC-funded exploration of the intersections between city streets, global migration and urban marginalisation. The research is a comparative analysis across UK cities and aims to examine the economic and social life of high streets, and how urban retail economies and spaces are shaped by and shape urban migration. The four high streets include: Rookery Road (Birmingham); Stapleton Road (Bristol); Narborough Road (Leicester); and Cheetham Hill (Manchester). Each street is selected for its location in an ethnically diverse as well as comparatively deprived urban locale, to engage with what kinds of street economies emerge in places where jobs are hard to come by, and the impacts of historic state under investment are hard-felt. Furthermore, Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester and Manchester are amongst UK cities that have the highest percentage of ‘country of birth’ citizens from outside of the UK, after London. The research is widely disseminated through the ‘Super-diverse Streets’ project website with mappings and visualisations and concise reports as well as a You Tube video on ‘Migrant Streets’ and a Royal Geographical Society educational podcast on ‘Diverse Places and Ordinary Streets'. Publications include journal articles and book chapters, and a research monograph is planned.

Data description (abstract)

The project data comprise socio-economic surveys of street proprietors, data visualisation of the surveys and additional spatial mappings, and focus group workshops. The first phase of this project incorporates qualitative, face-to-face surveys conducted in 2015, on Rookery Road (Birmingham); Stapleton Road (Bristol); Narborough Road (Leicester); and Cheetham Hill (Manchester). In total, the face-to-face surveys across four streets incorporate 910 units, 596 retail units, 68 vacant units, and 351 surveyed proprietors. The survey focuses on: when, how and why migrant proprietors arrive on these specific streets; the type and duration of shop activity; whether proprietors live locally; whether local and global networks are integral to economic activity; and the types of skill sets proprietors have, such as language, qualification, work experience and additional business interests. Data visualisations were then developed to highlight relationships between key data, and additional drawings were made to highlight the spatial composition of the street. The Phase 1 survey of these four streets was conducted by Suzanne Hall, Robin Finlay and Julia King. The second phase in 2016, conducted with Social Life, incorporates data on scoping discussions and focus group workshops on Rookery Road (Birmingham) and Narborough Road (Leicester) with proprietors, local interest groups, representative and elected leaders and local authorities. The focus group discussions included how traders and local businesses impact on the changing city, both through how people organise themselves economically and collectively beyond their own personal lives, and how they negotiate with the city around them.

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