This volume critically examines intercultural encounters in the context of global superdiversity, where identities, inequalities, and symbolic boundaries are increasingly fluid and contested. Moving beyond static notions of national culture or simplified ideas of difference, the collection engages with current developments in critical intercultural thinking, emphasizing intersectionality, structural power relations, and epistemic justice. Drawing on case studies from four continents, the chapters explore how everyday encounters in education, migration, healthcare, and digital spaces are shaped by broader institutional and material conditions. Language emerges throughout as both a symbolic and material resource, mediating access to inclusion or marking exclusion. The volume also reveals the tensions between official narratives of diversity and the lived realities of marginalization, while highlighting how grassroots practices and local knowledge challenge dominant discourses. A concluding contribution addresses the rise of anti-diversity rhetoric, underlining the need to understand how interculturality is not only enabled but also actively resisted. Together, these studies offer a multidimensional and reflexive understanding of how people live, connect, and struggle across complex differences in an unequal world.