Nurturing solidarity in diversity: Can local currencies enable transformative practices?
This chapter analyses the relationship between super-diversity and solidarity, considering the potential of solidarity in diversity based on an extensive case study in Rabot-Blaisantvest — a super-diverse and poor neighbourhood in Ghent. It assesses if and how the introduction of a local currency system in an impoverished and super-diverse neighbourhood in the Belgian city of Ghent stimulates interpersonal practices of solidarity in diversity. The local currency triggered new activities and stimulated a more diverse group of inhabitants to participate, thus strengthening interdependency in the neighbourhood and generating new forms of solidarity, especially between residents in similar economically disadvantaged positions. Some of these new forms of solidarity in diversity have a transformative effect, that is, they question existing and normalised social structures and relationships.