on "Immigration-related diversity, social cohesion and the Civic Culture" within the section on "The Civic Culture revisited: Challenges, changes and innovations in studies of participation and trust" at Reykjavik 25-27 August 2011. I hope that some of you will consider submitting paper proposals to participate in this session in relation to recent work you've been doing in this area. The deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 1 February 2011. You will find the instructions on how to submit a paper proposal here:

http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/

Here is the description of the panel:

http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/panel_details.asp?panelid=504

Is immigration-related ethnic diversity detrimental for social cohesion? Does the diversity that results from increasing migration inflows hinder social trust and cooperative behaviours? All around Europe, politicians and pundits alike are increasingly and visibly concerned about the potential disruption to local communities, and public life in general, that a growing and diverse immigrant population might bring along. But is there really enough evidence to support these concerns? Is it ‘inevitable’ that more diverse societies will be less ‘public-spirited’? Empirical studies on these topics have been so far limited in their capacity to provide a generalisable answer to these questions. Many studies focus on countries as the units of analysis in medium to large-N cross-national comparisons. However, it is doubtful that this is the appropriate level of analysis to test some of the core propositions of how immigration-related diversity might hamper social interaction among citizens. Moreoever, most of the studies that have more recently examined intra-national variation using smaller units of aggregation have been limited to a relatively reduced number of western societies, and especially to the United States, Britain and Canada. This panel seeks to attract empirical papers that focus on fresh data and, whenever possible, on less-studied European societies and that examine how immigration-related diversity is or is not related to less cooperative and trusting relations among citizens and neighbours. We will especially welcome papers that analyse small-scale units—such as local communities, the neighbourhood or census sections.

Political Discussion in Modern Democracies: http://www.routledge.com/9780415548458/

Learn about my book 'joining political organisations'

http://www.ecprnet.eu/ecprpress/book_details.asp?bookTitleID=13

Check out the localmultidem project http://www.um.es/localmultidem