Diasporic communities represent novel cosmopolitan configurations rather than gradual assimilation

Evidence

It is therefore a fundamental error to mistake their diasporic ways of life as simply in slow transition to full assimilation (an idea quietly and decisively laid to rest, in Britain at least, in the 1970s). They represent a novel cultural configuration—to borrow an oxymoron, “cosmopolitan communities”—marked by extensive transculturation (Pratt 1992). In turn, they have had a massive, pluralizing impact on public and private social life in Britain, literally transforming many British cities into multicultural metropolises. They were the “cool” in that transient New Labour phenomenon, “Cool Britannia.” One sign that they have outrun the commonsense categories is that they are simultaneously invoked as representing that “sense of community” that liberal society is supposed to have lost, and as the most advanced signifiers of the urban postmodern metropolitan experience! — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 335

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the oxymoron ‘cosmopolitan communities’ and transculturation (Pratt) as the key conceptual terms for naming post-assimilationist cultural configurations.
• XREF: The ‘empty signifier’ move here connects directly to Laclau’s theory of empty signifiers and to Hall’s larger body of work on articulation, plus to how Islamophobia readings deploy similar logic about whiteness/Britishness as unmarked norm.