This paper examines the interplay between discourses on diversity, urban governance and migrant agency in the frame of urban policies for accommodating cultural diversity driven by migration. Drawing from the concept of “regimes of diversity” we examine the institutional configurations and the narratives on diversity of two globalized cities. To illustrate the importance that the curation of diversity has gained in urban strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, we use the initiatives around cultural diversity that have been implemented in Lisbon and Buenos Aires. This comparison complements the excessive focus on developed cities in the western world that systematically appear as the elements of comparison in the specialized literature. Ethnographic and qualitative research was carried out in specific urban spaces where culture-led regeneration is underway. We integrate in our analysis a wide range of actors involved in urban governance, from municipal authorities, through immigrant organizations to migrant entrepreneurs to provide a complete interpretation of such mechanisms. Despite quite different migration histories and structural features, findings show that both cities pursue similar strategies of coping with migrant-driven cultural diversity implying three main dimensions: aestheticization, place marketing and “ethnic showcasing”. We argue that migration cultural traits are brought into such processes through cultural mediatory mechanisms that are specific to entrepreneurial cities’ models where cosmopolitan urban imaginaries are promoted. We raise some conceptual and policy related questions about new regimes of visibility and forms of social organization of cultural diversity specific to entrepreneurial models of urban governance.

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Governance,culture,curation of diversity,diversity regimes

• Sociologia - Ciências Sociais