Assessing the Effects of Immigration and Diversity in Europe

This article introduces the special issue on ‘The effects of ethnic diversity and immigration in Europe’ to the JEPOP readers. The article starts with a summary of the controversy generated by Putnam’s 2007 article ‘E Pluribus Unum’. Next, it provides a brief account of the state of the art in the scholarship analysing the link between diversity, trust, social capital and social cohesion. The article continues with a discussion of a number of key problems that affect the existing scholarship, and highlights how the contributions to this special issue overcome some of these limitations. After this, the article considers the implications of this debate for the study of elections and public opinion. It concludes with a succinct overview of the contributions to the special issue and a discussion of how they help move forward the scholarship in this area.