Champions of Diversity Governance? City Approaches to Cultural Heterogeneity in Europe, Japan, and South Korea

In an era increasingly described as the age of diversity, societies worldwide grapple with how best to conceptualize and govern cultural heterogeneity. Amid shifts toward transnational rights discourses, rising urban influence, and evolving notions of identity, a critical question emerges: How do social structures originally rooted in assumptions of homogeneity transition to frameworks that acknowledge and embrace pluralism? This dissertation addresses this question by proposing a systematic, transdisciplinary, and translinguistic approach to understanding the rise of diversity as a governing framework in Europe, Japan, and South Korea.Drawing on insights from sociology, political science, anthropology, and related fields, the study critiques prevailing parochialisms in the scholarship – disciplinary, geographical, and linguistic – which impede comprehensive analyses of how cultural heterogeneity is understood and managed. These biases often confine research to specific national contexts, limit dialogue across linguistic frontiers, and perpetuate Western-centric narratives. By challenging methodological nationalism and linguistic fragmentation, the dissertation calls for broader, more integrative perspectives on diversity governance.Empirically, the research is based on a multi-sited comparative study of three cities – Barcelona in Spain, Hamamatsu in Japan, and Ansan in South Korea – each recognized as a pioneer in local-level policies for managing cultural diversity. Through in-depth fieldwork, the dissertation documents how municipal administrations, civil society actors, and city networks work together to forge innovative governance models. It examines the development and diffusion of interculturality in the European context, tabunka kyōsei in Japan, and damunhwa in South Korea, highlighting both the overlaps and unique national-cultural inflections among these frameworks. By tracing the flows of ideas and practices across these localities, the study illuminates how discourses and policy models are transmitted, adapted, and sometimes contested, ultimately shaping both local interventions and broader international discussions.Structured in four parts with eighteen chapters, the dissertation begins by outlining key theoretical debates around homogeneity, cultural pluralism, and “diversity governance.” It then introduces the policy diffusion theory and a multiscalar approach focusing on cities as entry points for the analysis, which, together, serve as a methodological tool for investigating how ideas travel across diverse socio-political landscapes. Subsequent sections explore the historical evolution of governance frameworks, cultural policies, and sociopolitical identities in Europe, Japan, and South Korea, carefully contextualizing each city’s approach to diversity. Finally, the concluding discussion synthesizes the findings, pointing to potential mechanisms driving a global convergence of diversity governance models and reflecting on the multiscalar interactions – local, national, and transnational – that shape them.Overall, this dissertation contributes a unified analytic lens aimed at transcending disciplinary barriers and national boundaries to examine how societies conceptualize, operationalize, and diffuse frameworks for cultural heterogeneity. Its comparative design reveals that local governance actors play a vital role in global policy innovation, often becoming the laboratories where novel discourses emerge and circulate. The study underscores the importance of language in shaping cultural boundaries and analytical biases, arguing that an overreliance on English-language paradigms can marginalize valuable insights from non- Western contexts. Ultimately, the dissertation highlights how scholarly endeavors themselves act as agents of diffusion, influencing both public debate and concrete policy design. By broadening the analytical horizons, this research aims to foster more inclusive, reflective, and context-sensitive approaches to cultural diversity in a rapidly changing global landscape.