This book started from contemporary concerns with migration, displacement and dispossession on unprecedented scales, whether people have been moving as the result of violence, ethnic cleansing or natural disasters, or in search of better livelihoods and security for themselves and their families. Others have been moving as the result of processes of ‘social cleansing’, displacement by market forces, especially when have been being re-enforced, rather than challenged, by urban policy interventions. There are underlying structural factors to be addressed here, in the context of neoliberal globalisation, with increasing inequalities of wealth and power, accompanied by increasing anxieties about violence and international terrorism.

As the opening chapter also identified, there are issues to be addressed within and between communities. Communities can, and too often do, exacerbate the effects of displacement, becoming fragmented and divided in the process, blaming each other/the ‘other’ for their frustrations and anxieties. But these are so far from being the only options, as previous chapters have also demonstrated. Alternatives approaches can be, and are being, developed, as part of wider strategies for the promotion of social solidarity and social justice.

This is absolutely not to conclude by proposing any particular blueprint or blueprints for the future. On the contrary – one size most clearly won't fit all. Rather, the conclusions will simply refer back to some of the more promising practices that have been emerging from previous chapters, identifying some of the ways that communities can move on, building and rebuilding themselves in less socially divisive ways, developing mutual supports and social solidarities, at both local and transnational levels. What common understandings might be useful here? How might such understandings be convincingly shared more widely? How might these contribute to the development of effective alliances to promote social justice agendas? And how might the arts contribute to increasing mutual understanding and empathy, contributing to the development of movements for social change?

Developing common understandings of communities and change in the global context

Just as people can have multiple identities, so can they identify with multiple communities. As Amartya Sen has already pointed out (2006), there is no need to suggest that our national allegiances and local loyalties should be replaced by a global sense of belonging, or vice versa.