Much of Australia’s superdiversity is apparent in the cultural and linguistic repertoires of children growing up in multilingual families and communities in linguistically diverse highly urbanised and peri‐urban communities. Ideally, this superdiversity should lead to positive views of early multilingualism that inform curriculum and pedagogy which is responsive to children’s multiple linguistic repertoires and cultural practices. This approach would represent a welcome departure from deficit-based views of multilingualism, embedded in a monolingual mindset and English-only pedagogies that informs much of educational policy in Australia. However, in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) there remains a serious lack of investment, curriculum guidelines and pedagogical support in promoting and extending young children’s multilingual potential.

In one way or another, each of these teachers in the quotes above is grappling with the role of theory and how best to employ it in their teaching to assist their students to better understand the cultural complexity of the world in which they live. By ‘cultural complexity’, I am primarily referring to that derived from the ethnic diversity now characteristic of school communities in migrant-based nations, such as Australia. This, of course, is evident on a global scale with increasing migration, both voluntary and forced leading to the rapid transformation of national populations. Diversification through migration is more prevalent in some countries than others. But, with global flows of people occurring alongside that of information, goods, services and capital, aided by digital technologies and the speed of, and easier access to, travel, nowhere remains impervious to the forces of globalisation and the cultural complexity that results. Such rapid and complex change is difficult to comprehend, but its effects are so far-reaching that now, more than ever, there is a need for the appropriate conceptual resources to better navigate its impact.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the field of cultural psychiatry before focusing on the UK context. Salient factors in the national context of cultural psychiatry include the history of imperialism and the impact of postwar migration on the development of a multi-ethnic society. This has necessitated research in the following priority areas: the recognition of the effects of racism and discrimination on mental health, and, relatedly, efforts to achieve services that meet the needs of ethnic minority groups. Current areas of research are outlined before a deeper discussion of two strands that will be explored more widely in the book. These are, in order: the need to recognise more fully cultural hybridity with ethnic minority populations and the perspectives of South Asian psychiatrists within the white spaces of psychiatry and the impact this has on practice. All too often ethnic minority populations, historically within the UK, from non-white ethnicities are clumped together for statistical reasons. This leads to gross oversimplifications that flattens differences. Addressing the complexity of identity in its intersectionality and that too through the interviews with South Asian psychiatrists leads to a more developed understanding about identity, which is necessary in improving mental health services for South Asian patients.