The Intercultural City: Migration, Minorities and the Management of Diversity 9781350988804, 9780857728302

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Giovanna Marconi is Assistant Professor, Department of Design & Planning in Complex Environments, University Iuav of Venice, where she also holds the position of Researcher, SSIIM UNESCO Chair on the Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants. She has a Phd in Urban Planning and Public Policies. Her research focus is on south-to-south international migration, transit migration and urban inclusion of international migrants. She has collaborated on a number of international research projects relating to these issues and has published widely on the urban dimension of international migration. Elena Ostanel is Research Fellow, University Iuav of Venice, based at the SSIIM UNESCO Chair on the Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants. She is also Research Fellow at the Open University. She holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning. Her past research has focused mainly on policy analysis in the city of difference, involving the EFI-EU funded project ‘Mediare.com’ and the Project of National Interest (PRIN) ‘Small-size cities and social cohesion: the social and spatial inclusion of international migrants’. She is now researching on social innovation and urban regeneration in deprived neighbourhoods.

THE INTERCULTURAL CITY Migration, Minorities and the Management of Diversity

Edited by

GIOVANNA MARCONI

AND

ELENA OSTANEL

Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright Editorial Selection, Introduction and Conclusion q 2016 Giovanna Marconi and Elena Ostanel Copyright Individual Chapters q Marcello Balbo, Adriano Cancellieri, Marco Cremaschi, Ruth Fincher, Carlotta Fioretti, Michail Galanakis, Kseniya Khovanova-Rubicondo, Loren B. Landau, Peggy Levitt, Lucy Mayblin, Alexei Medvedev, Nausicaa Pezzoni, Gill Valentine. The right of Giovanna Marconi and Elena Ostanel to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of Human Geography: 36. ISBN: 978 1 78453 257 4 eISBN: 978 0 85772 871 5 ePDF: 978 0 85772 830 2 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For Marcello

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Tables

ix x

Introduction The Intercultural City: Exploring an Elusive Idea Giovanna Marconi

1

Part I

A Critical Analysis of the Intercultural City Framework

1. Contemporary Urban Space and the Intercultural City Marcello Balbo

25

2. Urban Policies and the Intercultural City: A Reflection on Norms and Contexts Ruth Fincher

39

3. Policy Dimensions of an Intercultural City Kseniya Khovanova-Rubicondo

54

Part II Intercultural Cities? Evidence from Practice 4. The Means and Meaning of Interculturalism in Africa’s Urban Age Loren B. Landau

65

5. New Religious Spaces of Difference: Resources and Risks in the New Italian Religious Landscape Adriano Cancellieri

79

6. The Up-rooted City: Migrants Mapping Milan Nausicaa Pezzoni

89

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7. Diversity and Interculturalism: A Critique and Defence. Going through Multi-ethnic Neighbourhoods in Rome Marco Cremaschi and Carlotta Fioretti

109

8. Intercultural Public Space and Activism: Learning from Toronto Michail Galanakis

122

9. Parent Cafe´: A Right Way for Schools to Become a Truly Multicultural Space? Alexei Medvedev

137

10. Creating Meaningful Contact: Boundaries and Bridges in the Intercultural City Gill Valentine and Lucy Mayblin

153

11. Cultural Policy in Singapore: Cosmopolitan Competencies Asian Style Peggy Levitt 163 Conclusion: Toward a Just Intercultural City Space Elena Ostanel

176

Bibliography Contributors Index

188 205 209

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4.1 Transformation of Diepsloot, South Africa 1999– 2009

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Figure 6.1 First landing map

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Figure 6.2 Map by Kairucca Javed, Afghanistan

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Figure 6.3 Map by Ako Atikossie, Togo

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Figure 6.4. Map by Murat Aydin, Turkey

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Figure 6.5. Map by Ramadan, Egypt

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Figure 6.6 Map by Xheklina Lepri, Albania

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Figure 8.1 Dufferin Grove Park

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Figure 8.2 Dufferin Grove Park

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Figure 8.3 Dufferin Grove Park during a Friday night supper

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Trends in international migration, Europe 1990 – 2010

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Table 4.1 Percentage of population resident in city by time

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Table 4.2 Translocal financial connections by city

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Table 4.3 Expectation of residence in two years (percentage)

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Table 4.4 Organizational affiliations by city and migration status

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Table 4.5 Perception of trust

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INTRODUCTION THE INTERCULTURAL CITY: EXPLORING AN ELUSIVE IDEA Giovanna Marconi

An urban issue The objective of this book is to explore, from a variety of different scientific backgrounds and diverse geographical perspectives, the theoretical and policy potential that the notion of the intercultural city offers within the context of the contemporary globalized city. Focus is particularly directed towards the growing number of cities in both the global North and South experiencing international migration, a phenomenon significantly contributing to the factors that make urban environments increasingly plural, diverse and complex. Promoted by researchers of the SSIIM UNESCO Chair1 at the University Iuav of Venice (Italy), the fruitful debate among the contributors to this volume has been ongoing since November 2012. This interchange has sought to make a contribution to understanding if and why the application of the intercultural paradigm to cities experiencing growing ethno-cultural diversity might be useful for the advancement of urban societies, particularly with a view to what extent this paradigm presents a convincing approach towards an enhanced promotion of peaceful cohabitation, an equal ‘right to the city’ for all urban residents, social cohesion across differences, and collective civic growth. The dialogue has also aimed at exploring who is – or should be – responsible for turning this elusive idea of the intercultural city into a reality, provided we agreed on its nature as not just an idea but also an ideal, and thus worth pursuing and pushing forward as a priority within the urban agenda. Maintaining a clear distinction between analytical and prescriptive levels proved to be an important issue in our thinking and writings, since public debate often tends to mix the two in rather unpredictable ways.

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The choice of explicitly focusing on the application of interculturalism to urban fabrics – rather than framing the contemporary city with other slightly different concepts, such as multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism – was driven by a shared academic interest to explore in different contexts, and on the ground, whether such a perspective – increasingly promoted by authoritative institutions2 as something new, different and perhaps more promising – is indeed an original approach to fostering encounter across difference and to pursuing a better urban life for all urban residents (or at least for most). Of course, such an intellectual concern also stemmed from the expanding literature regarding the ‘crisis of multiculturalism’, particularly in Europe, and the possible policy frameworks that could be devised to manage superdiverse (Vertovec 2007) urban societies in the ‘post-multicultural’ era (Kymlicka 2010), among which interculturalism is increasingly proposed as one of the most promising possibilities. Nevertheless, as urbanologists with a variety of backgrounds, we were interested in exploring whether the intercultural approach could be regarded as a useful lens in acknowledging and accommodating growing differences in contemporary cities and towns. This interest was mainly stimulated by two reflections. First of all, the fact that the urban scale seems to be considered as the most appropriate and fitting arena for the application of such a paradigm (Uitermark et al. 2005), both by scientific literature and policy makers, in particular because it is at the city level that the negotiation of ethnic identities takes place on daily bases (Amin 2002). In this regard, particularly in Europe, it is well known that interculturalism has traditionally tended to focus on relations among individuals and groups in civil society3 rather than on the state’s approach towards its cultural minorities, which is perhaps the principal concern of multiculturalism (Levey 2012: 218). This trend was de facto institutionalized beginning from 2008 when, on the eve of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, the Council of Europe and European Commission launched their joint initiative – the ‘Intercultural City Programme’ – explicitly encouraging local (rather than national) governments to take an intercultural approach to migration, integration and social cohesion, and to develop comprehensive intercultural strategies to manage urban diversity (Wood 2009). It looked as though interculturalism fitted better than multiculturalism within the realm of ‘migrant policies’, i.e. those concerning the local level.4 Assimilationalist intentions which seek to render immigrant difference invisible can at times be found at the national level, or integrationalist concerns can emerge where different cultural demands are acknowledged and accommodated. In any case, there are always variations in policies within the same country, between what is stated at the national level and how local governments actually frame and face the increasing difference

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characterizing their cities. It is in the city that the demographic reality of cross-difference relationships between newcomers, long-standing immigrants and native inhabitants takes place. And the outcome of local interpretation and implementation of policy guidelines set at the national level varies contextually from city to city. It is therefore important to make a distinction between broad political norms and what actually takes place on the ground, affecting people’s lives, in order to help shape local policies accordingly. Simply put, it is local government that has first to embrace and then implement whatever is meant by ‘intercultural policies’. Secondly, we were observing an apparent lack of structured thinking and insight on what is a truly intercultural city, as well as why and how we are supposed to pursue its realization. When looking for scientific support for the application of the intercultural paradigm to the city, we found that evidencebased and research-grounded analysis showing the effectiveness, strengths and weaknesses of adopting an intercultural approach at the urban level in different urban contexts worldwide was largely missing. Instead, vague declarations of good intentions and statements of general principles prevailed, backed by very specific good practice examples promoted in this or that city. But as is always the case for any good practice, replication or adaptation in other contexts does not necessarily assure similar results. Phil Wood, author of the most specific book on the intercultural city,5 defines himself first of all as ‘an urban therapist’. The work he carries out as principal advisor to the CoE/EU Intercultural Cities programme is primarily directed toward positive thinking and inspirational communication through slogans on questionable principles and ethical aspirations. In this view, the intercultural city is defined as a sort of idyllic model: The intercultural city has a diverse population including people with different nationalities, origins, languages or religions/beliefs. Most citizens regard diversity as a resource, not as a problem, and accept that all cultures change as they encounter each other in the public space. The city officials publicly advocate respect for diversity and a pluralistic city identity. The city actively combats prejudice and discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for all [. . .] (Wood 2009). In these terms, we would rather agree with Kymlicka when he states that: The ‘interculturalism as a remedy for failed multiculturalism’ trope is not really intended to offer an objective social science account of our situation, but is rather [. . .] intended to serve as a new narrative, or if you like, a new myth (Kymlicka 2012: 213).

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Here ‘interculturalism’ is used to replace what Levey (2012: 223) observes as a somehow exhausted term: ‘multiculturalism [. . .] has become so mired in controversy and is so maligned in public debate that its semantic capital, as it were, has been spent’. He goes on to observe that what was apparently needed therefore, was: a new or different label that could appeal and be publicly sold [. . .] That interculturalism is nonetheless being embraced and promoted by the Council of Europe, among others, as an alternative to multiculturalism suggests that political considerations and convenience and not merely semantics are involved. Given this, the opportunity to apply this paradigm to the everyday dynamics and processes taking place in contemporary cities seemed worthy of further investigation.

Interculturalism as a ‘project’: the rediscovery of the importance of urbanity During the past few decades, the two macro long-term demographic trends that have been shaping the evolution of urban societies in a fundamental way, both in the global North and South, are indubitably the urbanization process on the one hand and the growth of international migration on the other. More urbanization and more immigration almost automatically mean more multicultural cities, both in terms of the number of cities that become multicultural and in terms of more multiculturalism within each specific city. Needless to say, ‘more multicultural cities’ does not necessarily mean ‘more intercultural cities’. International migration leads to a renewed centrality of the city (like globalization in general, as observed by Sassen), as it is placed at the crossroads of flows that overlap, often clashing with socio-political systems typically based upon more sedentary conditions, giving rise to new forms of coexistence in a shared space where differences are experienced and negotiated on a daily basis (Amin 2002). As urbanologists like Jane Jacobs and Richard Sennet already observed long ago, in contemporary multicultural cities both older and newer residents are compelled to live with, and to confront, the unfamiliar, the different, the other in the urban spaces of daily life. However, power relationships are noticeably unequal, since the former (i.e. older residents), being the most numerous (i.e. the majority) and rooted (i.e. the natives), typically claim more rights to what they consider to be their own territory and tend to dictate a ‘normal’ and unalterable state of affairs: ‘This is the way we do things around here.’

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Strangers and newcomers, arriving with different cultural backgrounds and new demands for the city are (and have always been) instinctively perceived as a threat to the established local order because of their potential to destroy local inhabitants’ habitus (Bourdieu 1990) and disturb reassuring ‘comfort zones’ – that is to say, ‘all that is familiar and homely, all that [native inhabitants] have grown up with and take for granted, including the socio-spatial knowledge of their neighbourhoods’ (Sandercock 2000: 23). This fear of loss, change and the unknown leads to the exaggerated defence of territories and traditions, a defence whose necessity often appears to be artificial, stemming from the presence of immigrants and their practices rather than from any real break from customary routines they might bring about. Nevertheless, they become the drive behind the emergence of identities and values that had never before been claimed by the local ‘native’ inhabitants. This is the case for many urban spaces that natives have nearly abandoned or under-used for a long time, which are re-discovered and claimed only when migrants start to re-use, reseize and re-signify them. This is also the case for brushed-up or even invented traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1993) aimed at (re)affirming the primacy and locked-in nature of the ‘dominant culture’, as if culture – i.e. that set of mutually related meanings, values and norms making up and regulating societies – has not always been made up of different ‘cultures’ continuously subjected to rapid and radical changes. The ways in which people of different backgrounds use the city in which they live, and the reaction of the so-called ‘host society’ to these new usages, have to be considered as indicators of how local public opinion and the political world perceive and handle international migrants. There is a circular relationship between the practices carried out by different groups and their perceptions of each other, which can be vicious or virtuous depending on contingent local circumstances. Conflicts emerging in contemporary cities often have little to do with the traditional cause of interracial strife – namely economic competition among the ‘have nots’ for resources such as land or jobs. What is at stake is culture(s): the right (and the right way) to live in that city, to use shared space, to behave, to be. Segregationist drives grounded in ethno-cultural differences are in place in most cities experiencing international migration, where we normally witness deepening socio-economic inequalities leading to alarming processes of classand identity-based spatial re-articulation of local settings. Depending on their specific geographical and historical context, such phenomena have led to ghettoization, banlieuization, white-flight, gentrification, reverse-gentrification, gated-communities and so on, all essentially corresponding to sociospatial polarizations of urban populations and an overall fragmentation of the urban fabric. Physical and symbolic boundaries are being erected and guarded

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to keep differences apart, confined either on the inside or the outside (Cutitta 2006; Alsayyad and Roy 2006). Besides showing the dissolution of basic urban values such as shared space, social cohesion and collective progress, this spatial reality results in a worrisome fragmentation of urban jurisdiction and citizenship rights, with a serious impact on urban representation and livability, as well as on an ideal image of the city as the locus of tolerance and freedom, conviviality and democracy. As Zukin observes: ‘The old civic virtues for mingling with strangers – civility, security, tact and trust – have lost their meaning in the fear for physical safety and the dramatization of ethnic diversity’ (Zukin 1995: 42). Segregation, polarization and marginalization have always characterized cities to greater or lesser degrees throughout their history. Nevertheless, the simple fact of living in a confined territorial space, where most structures of sociability inevitably had to be built, has always made interaction – either conflicting or convivial – between different individuals and groups, as well as a certain level of interdependence, unavoidable. This has long been considered the ‘added value’ of urban environments, i.e. their embedded capacity to provide citizens with a variety of ways of life, options and opportunities, offering choices, interaction and interchange. The backdrop today is very different. International population movements are bringing new territorial dimensions to the fore: as spaces of multiple belonging that trigger personal and collective connections – flexible, unstable and contractual – between the global and the local. In a global age in which relations occur within a time-space frame that has profoundly changed due to unprecedented advancements in ICT (Castells 1992), communities of belonging rooted in territorial proximity have considerably loosened. Unlike just a few decades ago, today people arriving in cities from other countries are able to (and usually do) maintain strong ties with their places and communities of origin, as well as their diaspora in other countries, actually carrying on social interaction in dual complementary relationship systems. One of these is ‘analogue’ (i.e. the city where they live) and the other ‘digital’ (i.e. their transnational networks). Besides the traditional strategy of relying on ‘the analogue’ ethnic social networks established in the host city, the struggle of migrants to integrate, adapt and commit to their new urban environment today has an additional ‘escape route’: they can also find constant help and relief in a wide-ranging digital system, accessing information and news on daily life in their homelands, communicating frequently with relatives and friends left behind, and asking to them for psychological and even economic support when needed. In this framework, the city’s – perhaps optimistically evoked and even mythical – original vocation of functioning as a sort of natural arena for cultural encounter among urban residents, smoothly

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leading to positive cultural contaminations, ethnic mixtures and hybridism, might prove obsolete. The coexistence of difference hardly results in automatic social cohesion, and, even to a lesser degree, in community-making. Community – a ‘damned word’ – has been defined by Bonomi as: an allegory of what we feel to be an absence, the first step towards a utopia and at the same time a practice of heterotopias (Bonomi 2002). Often cohabitation degenerates into an aseptic juxtaposition of dissociated and indifferent cells that do not communicate with each other and limit their interaction to a strict minimum, now in part because they can largely rely upon externally available (social, economic, cultural) resources. They are cities without urbanity, as Zijderveld would define them, ‘huge conglomerates, millions of people thrown together haphazardly, without common bonds and sentiments, without a shared sense of a collective, urban identity’ (Zijderveld 1998: 20). Physical proximity, habitual contact and neighbourliness no longer even seem to be necessary, much less sufficient, conditions to activate virtuous mechanisms of encounter, interchange and confrontation among the different individuals and groups populating a city. Paradigmatic evidence of this is offered by the failure of policies aiming to impose social and ethnic mixing as a strategy for promoting social cohesion and cultural interchange, as documented by an increasing number of authors (see, for example, Butler 2003; Allen et al. 2005; Musterd and Andersson 2005; Bolt and Van Kempen 2013). Although not all urban spaces are ‘natural servants of multicultural engagement’ (Amin 2002: 967), the city still has much to offer in terms of opportunity for encounter. A bit of pragmatism, backed by a growing literature on ‘everyday multiculturalism’ (Colombo and Semi 2007; Wise and Velayutham 2009), shows that urban spaces where common daily activities take place, known as ‘micropublics’ (i.e. workplaces, schools, libraries, etc.), continue to compel people to enter into contact with each other. Nevertheless today, more than ever, opportunities and conditions for encounter across differences need to be advanced if the objective is to escape a destiny of living in ‘cities without urbanity’. As Sandercock would put it: ‘neighbourliness’ among ‘strangers’ can be cultivated. Bridging different groups of urban residents with diverse cultural backgrounds is thus one of the major challenges that contemporary cities, their societies and governments have to face. What appears evident is that such interaction is no longer (or at least not often) an automatic ‘result’ of the urban, but rather an ‘objective’ to be pursued, an ambitious goal to chase after. In this sense, a first good reason for embracing an intercultural rather than a multicultural paradigm could be that the first embeds a ‘design process’, while conceptual confusion usually surrounds the latter, whose meanings can

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be either descriptive, i.e. referring to the objective reality that a society is increasingly plural, or prescriptive, i.e. a specific policy approach recognizing and accommodating differences (Bloemraad 2011). A second good reason for this shift in paradigm could be found in the fact that ‘interculturalism’ primarily places the accent on dialogue between the different cultures that cohabit the urban space. While each one of these should be granted the ‘right to presence’, they should all share the duty of confrontation and mutual engagement. At the same time, civil inattention must be considered a commonsense condition and thus migrants – or anyone else – must not necessarily be expected to become the social companions of people of other groups. Amin (2002) fittingly uses the term interculturalism to stress cultural respect and dialogue, and for its potential to: contrast with versions of multiculturalism that either stress cultural difference without resolving the problem of communication between cultures, or versions of cosmopolitanism that speculate the gradual erosion of cultural difference through inter-ethnic mixture and hybridization. According to the author: inter-ethnic understanding requires first of all the removal of mutual fear, intolerance and misunderstanding associated with racial and ethnic difference; then an effort not just to ‘exist with’ but to ‘come to terms’ with differences, and, finally, an acceptance that cultural pluralism (ethnic, racial, sexual, generational) is the mark of a vibrant and evolving society (Amin 2002: 968). At this point, a possible deduction one could make is that the main strength of the ‘intercultural city’ paradigm may well lie in its semantics, i.e. its potential for spurring action to be taken through urban policies and/or practices, since it intrinsically reminds us that the intercultural city is not yet a reality but rather a goal to be pursued through enhanced contact and dialogue. The intercultural city should thus be seen as an intention, a prodding towards action instead of a model or simple recipe. In this sense, when thinking about policies intended to foster ‘cohesion across difference’ or ‘integration across difference’, it is important to bear in mind that the ‘intercultural city’ which may result will be different from place to place. The kind of urban environment we end up with will be different, because its starting point each time will be different: not all migrations are the same in terms of the cultural diversity they bring, and

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cultural diversities do not only refer to groups with migrant backgrounds but also to the other characteristics of each individual making up the urban population (i.e. gender, age, sexual orientation, etc.) and to belonging to more than one group at the same time. There is a vast diversity in diversity. Cities confronted with increasing international migration have often framed diversity in terms of attitudes and relations between the ‘host society’ – as if it were a whole monolithic entity on the one hand – and ‘migrants’ – or at best main migrant groups – on the other. Accordingly, possible actions are boxed into the framework of integration policies or minority policies. In contemporary complex and fast evolving urban contexts, the socio-cultural construction of the difference between us ‘natives’ and them ‘migrants’ is becoming increasingly hard to define, blurred and unstable. Inclusive policies can no longer be limited to a simple mediation between mainstream society and the ‘others’, but must be increasingly conceived as multisided, polyvalent, flexible mediation frameworks capable of constant adaption and reinvention, in order to tackle ever new cultural diversities. Could the pursuit of interculturalism be a way to take a step forward and think in terms of strategies which acknowledge and respond to such a multifaceted urban scenario?

Notions on strategies for shaping the intercultural city6 Different kinds of policy and action could be envisaged to promote interculturalism within cities. Those directly addressing the issue which explicitly aim at enhancing intercultural communication, exchange and understanding are the first that usually come to mind. Their emphasis is on physical and social proximity between different cultural groups in the city and on measures to strengthen intergroup relationships. However, when considering what policies and actions to recommend in order to give rise to what we might think of as an ‘intercultural city’, we have to contemplate many other policy sectors that do not specifically address the promotion of interaction across differences but which, nonetheless, have a significant impact on the lives of all urban residents and their right to live together with dignity. In this sense, policies concerning adequate provision of – and equality of access to – urban facilities, infrastructures and services are crucial. For example, training public officials (teachers, doctors, front-desk public service personnel, policemen) on how to deal with difference, or making cultural mediators available to facilitate people’s interaction with institutions, are important measures targeting diversity and promoting equal access to ‘the city’. The same can be said for policies encouraging affordable housing production, or aimed at preventing discrimination in the workplace

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or schools. These are general policies that are not labelled by the local government as multicultural (nor sometimes even as urban, such as those concerning the workplace), but by advancing the interest of the overall urban collectivity they sit alongside those policies that specifically fall under the umbrella of ‘intercultural purposes’. The issue of urban intercultural policies is clearly very broad, and any intervention in these policy areas needs to be very clear. Certain questions need to be explored, such as: What might the ‘right to the city’ consist of in particular urban environments? And, under those specific conditions, what could the role of local government be in mediating that right to the city institutionally? Hence, when considering possible strategies aimed at rendering cities more intercultural, we have to make clear which part(s) of the policy framework we are specifically targeting in our analysis, and which outcomes we might expect to achieve by doing so. In our efforts towards shaping the intercultural city another important issue that must be taken into consideration concerns the ‘spatiality of policies’. This is particularly important if we are to focus on policy learning across different contexts, i.e. what policies implemented in certain places have been successful in advancing intercultural encounters and could be useful examples for other cities. If we take as an example the topology of ‘redistribution, recognition and encounter’ proposed by Fincher and Iveson (2008) as the three goals of social planning, they each have some scales of activity that might seem more appropriate. Redistribution – typically aimed at reducing both the gap between the rich and the poor and their sociospatial polarization – places a city-wide focus on issues such as affordable housing, prevention of exploitation in the workplace, universal access to excellent education and healthcare, and the provision of equal physical infrastructure across the city. The recognition of diverse groups, identities and their specific needs is usually more precise: e.g. making religious sites accessible, envisaging culturally specific community services or shops, providing support to make schooling more accessible by bridging language or cultural barriers. This kind of action does not take place at a city-wide scale but in particular targeted areas. With encounter the focus is on ‘sites’. This is the scale that architects and urban designers have always been more interested in, i.e. specific spaces ‘open’ to all – including both traditional public spaces, such as squares or parks, and micropublics such as libraries, schools and sport facilities – where, as mentioned above, interaction and exchange cannot be taken for granted but should be carefully considered and given incentive. Practices are also essential, if not even more fundamental, for triggering intercultural processes within the city. In places where central or local

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government do not play a key role in migrants’ inclusion or intercultural relations, either due to policy or inability, civil society usually takes action to compensate for this immobility and to cope with the growth of diversity in daily urban life. Nevertheless, even in cities of immigrant destination where governments actively promote the development of social cohesion or encounter across differences, a large set of activities occurs outside government intervention or even in conflict with it. NGOs, social movements, grassroots activism and community groupings of different kinds, provide aid and support to marginal groups, promote inclusive initiatives, experiment with new ways of living together and claim rights. These practices have a complex relationship with policies and often occur outside official bounds. How they concur to stimulate intercultural processes is another important aspect to consider when observing the dynamics in increasingly diverse cities and planning ways forward. Of course, the roles that public authorities, public policies and the practices of civil society can perform in shaping the intercultural city have a highly situational and contextual nature. In cities of the global South, if included in the urban agenda at all, international migration and interculturalism are seldom considered a priority, given the structural lack of resources and the urgency of other relevant urban challenges, such as the growing economic and social marginalization of the urban poor, an overall lack of citizenship rights leading to the expansion of informal settlements, insecurity of tenure, limited access to basic services, environmental deterioration, high levels of crime and violence, and so on (Balbo and Marconi 2005). In these contexts most international migrants add to the low-income population, with whom they share analogous levels of urban exclusion and marginalization. They also tend to adopt analogous coping strategies, taking up informal work practices and informal living arrangements (Marconi 2010). Here civil society plays a central role, whether or not it is organized. The ongoing economic crisis is profoundly affecting policy options and policy making capabilities in cities of the global North as well. In Europe, for instance, there is evidence (see, for example, IOM 2010; Nieuwenhuysen et al. 2012) that the crisis is having quite an asymmetrical impact in different countries where crisis-related transformations in migration systems are becoming manifest. Immigrant returns (i.e. to Morocco from Spain or to Peru from Italy), although not massive anywhere, are growing to some extent; and some destination countries are again becoming sending countries as they were in a not-so-distant past, producing a revival of south-north inter-European migration and a reversal of post-colonial flows, e.g. to Brazil or Angola from Portugal.

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At the urban level, the crisis is transforming integration patterns, trajectories and perspectives, showing how naive the widespread assumption was that integration would be a straightforward process. In precarious times, integration revealed itself as a fragile and reversible process. Making intercultural cities and making cities intercultural is thus as urgent a strategic goal as ever for those wishing to revive urbanity. But in order to pursue this aim, most European cities cannot rely on public policies and funding any more, at least not to the extent they could in the past. Public integration policies have always been quite controversial, both on political and technical grounds. Migrant-specific integration policies targeting specific groups have been subject to growing criticism in Europe, which has pushed towards a tendency that is usually defined as ‘mainstreaming’ – a more universalistic approach, aimed at facilitating immigrants’ access to universal welfare services. The current economic crisis has reinforced this trend and mainstreaming in some cases has been used as a sort of noble excuse for cutting costs on specialized immigrant services that sometimes are even more badly needed than before. By reducing the resources available, the economic crisis is redesigning roles and powers. Against this backdrop of shrinking public presence and shrinking economic resources in general, the risk that neighbourhoods in Europe with immigrant populations turn into arenas for ethno-cultural war among the poor is increasing. In a context where one can count less and less on public institutions to promote intercultural dialogue, cooperation and understanding, and to prevent conflict along ethno-cultural lines, managing to live together with dignity across differences increasingly appears as a direct challenge for urban communities themselves. Grassroots interculturalism thus becomes a key component of any effort towards social cohesion, urban inclusion and equal rights.

Purpose and structure of the volume Not without a healthy grain of scepticism, this volume seeks to investigate the validity of embracing interculturalism as a viable urban approach towards the governance of difference. The idea underpinning the drafting of this book was that of soliciting experts working in migration and urban fields to reflect upon the idea(l) of the ‘intercultural city’, which we considered as interesting as it was elusive. Our aim was not in any way to enter into the ongoing scientific debate on whether multiculturalism has failed or not (and where), or on how interculturalism differs from multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism. We launched a call for contributions through the dissemination of a ‘position paper’ to which applicants were expected to react. This paper was then readapted as the first chapter of this book.

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The first successful outcome of our call was that the challenge of exploring this ‘elusive idea’ was taken up not only by scholars but also by practitioners working on the ground. Secondly, in their analyses, some of the applicants referred to contexts outside Europe, and even the Western world, which gave us the opportunity to broaden discourse on the topic. We were well aware that when delving into the possibility of adopting any urban approach to cope with increasingly plural societies, geographical and historical variations must be carefully taken into consideration, and we wanted to avoid a frame in which interculturalism is only to be applied to Western urban contexts. While our attention to the topic began in the ‘European’ arena, i.e. it was stimulated by the spreading rhetoric of the intercultural city in this part of the world, the fact that independent thinkers focused on other geographical contexts emerged as an excellent starting point for our discussion, since we were (and are now even more) convinced that ‘interculturalism’ takes on different meanings in different places, and that conceivable policies or practices to follow in its pursuit – as well as the appropriateness of pursuing interculturalism at all – also vary contextually. Following this reasoning, the book is divided into two parts. The first part offers a critical analysis of the intercultural city framework. It begins with two chapters, one by Marcello Balbo and the other by Ruth Fincher, who both provide food for thought and theoretical insight into the pertinence of framing the contemporary urban governance of de facto multicultural cities within an intercultural perspective. These are followed by a short chapter discussing the Council of Europe’s strategy for promoting the intercultural city from an insider’s point of view. Part II of the book offers evidence-based analyses of the usefulness and effectiveness that the intercultural paradigm might have in handling living-with-difference issues in various cities and urban contexts. In this framework, Balbo (Chapter 1) reflects upon specific themes such as diversity, citizenship and public space, in relation to the current juncture in which more and more cities worldwide, embedded within global networks, are inevitably experiencing international migration and a resulting pluralization and complexification of their societies. He raises challenging questions for researchers and policy makers alike, such as: If the encounter of cultures, and the capacity to create new ideas it entails, have always contributed to socio-economic development, why is encounter hardly taken by policy makers as a condition worth embracing explicitly? What should we actually understand by the expression ‘being a citizen’ and which new or revitalized meanings could (or should) citizenship take on in contemporary glocal territories? What is ‘public space’ in pluralistic cities where the demands and uses of public space incessantly multiply and often enter into

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conflict? Is there just one public space? Would it be better if we reconsidered the very notion of public space, speaking rather about ‘public spaces’? According to Balbo the fundamental challenge confronting policy makers nowadays is to make citizenship rights, public spaces and urban assets in general, accessible to diversity. Otherwise a likely result will be to render migrants invisible, either ‘actively’, as a strategy that they could be forced to adopt in order to avoid problems, or ‘passively’, as an imposition dictated by dominant groups which pushes them into marginal, out-of-sight (working, residential, public) spaces. Balbo leaves the reader with little choice: if action is not taken to avoid the segments of the urban population becoming invisible, the outcome will inevitably be the impossibility of realizing the intercultural city. In its place will stand a divided city, where some residents exist and others are compelled not ‘to exist’. It is precisely on policies, and particularly on the variety of ways that urban policies might be relevant to intercultural futures, that Fincher (Chapter 2) centres her chapter. She first takes a step backward to warn against the risks that philosophical speculation about the concept of the ‘intercultural city’ might pose, as might any ‘naming and framing’ operation. She chooses to use the terms ‘intercultural(ism)’ and ‘multicultural(ism)’ interchangeably because she considers them to have the same general aims when used normatively and to describe the same circumstances when used to portray an urban reality. By reminding the reader that places differ in their histories of migration, and in the political interpretations their policy makers give to interculturalism or multiculturalism, she firmly instructs the reader to take a pragmatic focus and to carefully consider what happens on the ground, because, she argues, ‘a precise and uniform set of urban policies that might give rise to interculturalism in the city in every context cannot be specified’. According to the author, in order to advance our thinking about what interculturalism means in practice, and how it can be achieved, norms like the intercultural city need to be grounded in particular settings and contexts, rather than solely asserted in the abstract as political or ethical aspirations. One form of grounding she points to is an apparent shift in urban planning policies so as to view ethnic diversity as beneficial to the city if it can be commodified. She thus proposes evaluating whether or not commercially orientated urban policies, typical of the contemporary entrepreneurial or neoliberal city, could actually contribute to interculturalism or multiculturalism. In the closing chapter of Part I Khovanova-Rubicondo (Chapter 3) presents the CoE’s high-level policy framework for interculturalism in European cities, based on a thoroughly developed policy strategy to publicly advocate a respect for diversity and a pluralistic city identity. She reviews a set of policy dimensions that represent the core of the CoE Intercultural Cities

INTRODUCTION

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approach, aimed at valuing difference and creating a common ground, and presents a number of good-practice examples from cities participating in the programme. As an insider she observes that, as yet, insufficient evaluation of this policy framework has been carried out. Accordingly, she leaves the field open to research. Such an evaluation was not at all within the objectives of this volume. The decision to include this experience lies in the many questions that arise from learning about this specific programme: Is acquiring the label ‘intercultural’ just a branding exercise so that a city can appear in a ranking, or does being part of the intercultural city network really spur taking action? Has this policy approach been able to reduce ‘us’ and ‘them’ feelings about migrants in cities? Does it equally value interaction between different migrant groups just as much as interaction between migrants and the host community? The chapters in Part II place the reader ‘on the ground’, confirming what Fincher anticipates: context matters. The contributions here adopt diverse approaches to examining everyday experiences of sharing spaces in specific cities worldwide, the challenges this contingency brings about, as well as related policies, political discourses and major representations of it. The decision to open with the chapter by Landau (Chapter 4), focusing on African cities – actually challenging some of the very foundations of Western-centric debate on living-with-difference in contemporary cities and, to some extent, even the very notion of what is to be considered ‘urban’ and ‘urbanity’ – was intended to better illustrate how much context matters. The author argues that in Africa, and across the developing world in general, new immigrants and the recently urbanized increasingly cooccupy what he calls ‘urban estuaries’, i.e: hyperdiverse, liminal and highly fluid sites loosely structured by state social policy and hegemonic cultural norms, where novel modes of accommodation, sociality and exclusion are emerging in ways that confound expectations and standard ethics. Using examples drawn from three rapidly transforming African cities – Johannesburg, Maputo and Nairobi – and providing insights into some of their most diverse neighbourhoods, Landau levies three challenges to conventional wisdom on integration and interculturalism: the need to cloud the clear distinction between hosts and guests; the value of questioning migrants’ goal of joining a place-bound community; and limiting reliance on the state as the framer and driver of conviviality. Instead, he suggests considering emerging and pragmatically shaped forms of ‘communities of convenience’, along with the practical and philosophical issues they bring to

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the surface. Landau observes that these dynamics are neither particularly exceptional nor totally different from what occurs in some parts of Western immigrant destination cities, and thus that: scholars have much to learn from Africa’s urban estuaries where the nature of human mobility and intergroup engagement is creating a ‘moment’ when new forms of social organization and ethico-legal orders are being forged. Indeed, in many Western cities: (i) the super-diversity characterizing even the local population makes the host/guest dichotomy appear more and more a semantic incrustation on the collective imaginary than a reality, (ii) transnationalism is weakening migrants’ struggle to belong locally, and (iii) crisis-connected shrinking resources are drastically reducing the capacity of the ‘public’ sector to promote encounter across differences. Nevertheless, although similarities can be found in the multifaceted issues raised by international migration in different cities, outcomes and possible responses continue to have a highly contextual nature. For example, while in examining the transnational practices and ‘tactical cosmopolitanism’ of an ever-expanding pool of Pentecostal churches operating within Africa’s urban centres Landau observes that in those specific contexts religion appears to provide a mechanism that allows individuals to be in a place but not of it, Cancellieri (Chapter 5) highlights how migrants’ religious spatial practices in Padua (Italy) can actually also be seen as a struggle for emplacement. In the Paduan context this author takes into consideration that, if on the one hand ethnic worship places of different kinds represent a safe haven for socialization among ‘equals’, where it is possible to feel at home and protected from the ‘host’ environment perceived as ‘hostile’, these same places are also a symbol of migrants’ existence, used as a means of asserting their presence and right to be a visible part of the city. He argues that the level of ‘publicity’ of migrants’ religious practices, and thus their claim upon space, surely varies from group to group, but mainly depends on the degree of resistance rooted in stereotype on the part of the dominant culture (in this case Catholic) to different types of ‘otherness’. Therefore, while the yearly Filipino holy-cross procession can take place relatively easily along the streets of the city, and is perceived as a middleground between familiar and exotic folklore, most attempts by Muslim migrants to open official places of worship are firmly inhibited. With few options other than convening in private spaces for collective purposes, they are thus pushed into invisibility. According to Cancellieri, religious spatial practices actually represent both a resource and a risk for the socio-spatial inclusion of migrants: they have the potential to be a means of empowerment

INTRODUCTION

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on the one hand, but also of becoming highly secluded comfort zones on the other, resulting in further exclusion and enclavization. While advocating the enhancement of intercultural dialogue between dominant and migrant religious groups, Cancellieri thus points to an analogous need to recognize the growing richness of religious spaces that he observes in Padua, and to make them visible in the public sphere in order to shift the balance in favour of open encounter and exchange. Pezzoni (Chapter 6) also uses space as a starting point but her aim is to explore newcomers’ construction of urban imagery. Taking Milan as a case study and Kevin Lynch’s ‘image of the city’ as a guiding approach, she works on mental maps drawn by transitory populations to understand their own urban hierarchies, i.e. which parts of the city they use, how and why. By focusing on a specific moment of inhabiting – the phase before either settling permanently or leaving – she demonstrates empirically that those who are not rooted can still perceive and understand city spaces and invent their own individual connections to the place. Pezzoni recognizes that in carrying out this operation, marginal temporary populations have to devise their own sense of home in the absence of traditional paths built on experience. Mapping the city from the everyday allows her to build a ‘first landing map’, conceived to be a useful guide to Milan for newcomers. According to Pezzoni, conceiving the contemporary city as a place of encounter first of all requires an understanding of the points of view of the different populations using and inhabiting it, and of what the city spaces mean to them. The two chapters following Pezzoni share an overall positive view of the potential of interculturalism as a sort of third option beyond assimilationalism and relativistic multiculturalism, at least from the theoretical point of view, while they critically reflect on the dialectics between top-down and bottom-up intercultural strategy. Cremaschi and Fioretti (Chapter 7) examine two of the most multi-ethnic neighbourhoods of Rome (Italy) – Esquilino and Torpignattara – to assess the efficacy of ‘diverse’ vs. ‘intercultural’ city concepts when it comes to practice and policy. For the authors, these two perhaps relatively interchangeable concepts are burdened with excessive assumptions and ideological deposits which actually work to differentiate them, and thus need to be ‘tested’ on the ground to make sense. The authors argue that framing the contemporary complexity of cities through an intercultural lens can easily lead to the adoption of a top-down, prescriptive and superficial policy approach. Being more phenomenologically rooted, a ‘diversity lens’, on the other hand, allows us to start from the domain of everyday practices and processes which might also be intercultural and to then possibly scale up. As a consequence, Cremaschi and Fioretti take a rather sceptical view of the intercultural city rhetoric as it is today applied to the

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central square of the Esquilino neighbourhood (Piazza Vittorio) and marketed as a successful ‘good practice’. They contend that this labelling simply represents a banalization of reality. The actual state of the square is the outcome of a long and conflicting process, which has also included factors such as strict regulatory government interventions to contain Asian business in the area, rather than the simple product of any intercultural strategy. The level of ‘acceptable diversity’ that Esquilino exhibits today entailed the expulsion of more uncomfortable diversities, now concentrated in other – more peripheral – parts of the city, such as Torpignattara, which is increasingly diverse but not subject to institutional intercultural rhetoric. The authors strongly caution against using the intercultural city as a label for seemingly successful examples rather than as a tool for promoting real processes and existing practices of encounter and dialogue across differences. The Canadian context that Galanakis (Chapter 8) explores is very different from the European one. Even if Canada is a country in which increasing immigration and improving integration continue to be major national priorities (although these policies are less consensual than they were a couple of decades ago), and where local authorities are normally explicitly engaged in promoting participative processes, shifting from traditional multiculturalism to a more intercultural approach appears to be a challenge. By presenting a case of public-space activism in Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, Galanakis explains that such a conceptual shift risks remaining on paper a simple example of rebranding. At the same time, he also shows how grass-roots activities prompted by common unifying purposes can contribute to making a difference. Interculturalism serves in his study as the focal point and means to expose and examine – and ultimately to help eradicate – social injustice. He asserts that, in Dufferin Grove Park, public-space activism transcended ethno-cultural divisions, giving shape to a lively place rooted in civic engagement for the common good. What makes this case particularly interesting is that the group of volunteers claiming the right to use what they consider to be ‘their own’ and ‘everybody else’s’ park was actually not just protesting against the restrictive rules imposed by public authority on the admissible uses of public spaces, but really taking matters into its own hands and setting up public use(s) of the park in a different way. Without advocating the supremacy of grass-roots practices over government policies, Galanakis highlights the important contribution these sorts of bottom-up initiatives might provide in addressing urban space, diversity and intercultural communication. Returning to Europe, specifically to Germany and the UK, the subsequent two chapters provide evidence about the importance of initiatives creating meaningful ‘contact zones’ in which the participation of different groups on an equal basis is prompted by everyday common

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interests and shared objectives. Medvedev (Chapter 9) presents a concrete and promising example of what grass-roots strategies fostering encounter and intercultural dialogue can look like (in this case supported by institutions and occurring within them). He takes the reader into the microlevel of a single school in Hamburg to examine a socio-cultural phenomenon that has been spreading in Germany in recent years: so-called Elterncafe´s (parent cafe´s) set up in schools and other education-related institutions. Arising from direct experience, parent cafe´s are pragmatic attempts to better connect migrant children’s parents to native children’s parents and (educational) institutions alike, through establishing an institutionalized but low-threshold setting that combines both Eastern and Western traditions of coffee houses and tea rooms. Bearing in mind that the replication of good practices is a challenging issue, Medvedev explains why school-based parent cafe´s have so often proven to be an innovative and effective tool across differences for involving parents, enhancing the potential of schools as micropublics for social encounter. Their ‘spontaneous’ spread across the country in itself provides evidence of the potential of this practice as a workable strategy in developing intercultural communication that might thus be worthy of formal institutionalization. Drawing on the case study of an interfaith project implemented in a northern British city aimed at bringing young Jewish and Muslim people together across religious difference, Valentine and Mayblin (Chapter 10) examine the effectiveness of Gordon Allport’s contact hypothesis, that: under the right conditions (including the necessity for participants to have a sense of equal status and a common purpose or activity, for the engagement to be realistic rather than artificial, as well as for such encounters to have the sustained support of the wider community within which they occur), intercultural encounters can potentially facilitate good relations between diverse social groups. By observing the dynamics occurring within the time limits of the project framework, the authors conclude that the intensity and continuity of common activities designed to promote intercultural encounter are fundamental factors in determining their success and long-term effect – whatever these activities might be. Nevertheless, an important lesson learnt from their empirical observation, is the warning that socio-economic inequalities and uneven power relationships, rather than just ‘culture’, are (as ever) among the main factors underpinning urban fragmentation and exclusion. The final chapter, by Levitt (Chapter 11), is somewhat different from the other contributions to this volume because, by presenting the case of the

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Singaporean state and its ways of dealing with racial difference through museum policies, it does not focus on the challenges contemporary migration poses to the city but rather observes how culture can be a strategic construction and how cultural policy can be a key component of the nationbuilding project and process. Levitt reveals the purposes of significant museums in the city and shows how they have approached ethnicity in presenting part of the nation’s identity and preventing ethnic conflict. This chapter leaves the reader with many open questions. In fact, by (re)presenting ‘pasts’ and the static image of a multi-ethnic society made up of four groups (Chinese, Malay, Indian and ‘Other’) coexisting in the city-state since its formation, the major museums of Singapore seem to miss (or purposely omit) newcomers in their narratives, currently composed of both businessmen (and their wives or families) coming to work in the finance sector and, more commonly, construction and domestic workers and other daily labourers arriving from nearby Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. While the former are not only an important part of the museums’ target population (as potential ‘visitors’) but also one of the reasons underlying the effort of providing a high-quality cultural level (through adequate amenities for incoming executives), the latter seem simply not to be taken into consideration. In any case, both groups, not being citizens and thus not belonging to the nation, are not included in the celebration of a multi-ethnic Singapore marketed both internally and to the outside world. As highlighted in the conclusion to this volume, by repositioning everyday lived experiences in the city of difference at the centre of analysis, the contributions presented here provide a number of starting points to overcome abstract normative approaches framing diversity as just a matter of culture(s). The concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘equal rights’ – the right to the city, to visibility, to be different, but also ‘the right to indifference’ (Delgado 1999) – emerge pragmatically as an essential backbone for any effort and strategy for the promotion of encounter across differences on equal bases.

Notes 1. On the Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants – Urban Policies and Practices (www.unescochair-iuav.it). 2. Reference here is made specifically to the Council of Europe and UNESCO, both of which have recently issued influential documents essentially recommending a shift from multiculturalism to interculturalism: the ‘White Paper on intercultural dialogue’ (CoE 2008) and the World Report ‘Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue’ (UNESCO 2009). 3. See as an example the CLIP Network’s report, ‘Intercultural policies in European cities’ (http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2010/32/en/1/EF1032EN.pdf), focusing on the

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assumption that influencing and managing intergroup relationships among an increasingly diverse local population is a major challenge for cities. 4. Rather than ‘migration policies’ that are typically a responsibility taken up by the central government (Balbo 2009). 5. Wood, P., & Laundry, C. (2008). The Intercultural City: Planning for Diversity Advantage. London, Earthscan. 6. This paragraph largely draws upon the discussions carried out during a conference organized by SSIIM UNESCO Chair at the University Iuav of Venice and is intended to raise questions pertinent to striving for intercultural urban futures. Special thanks go to Ruth Fincher, Gill Valentine and Ferruccio Pastore who raised most of these issues.

PART I A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INTERCULTURAL CITY FRAMEWORK

CHAPTER 1 CONTEMPORARY URBAN SPACE AND THE INTERCULTURAL CITY Marcello Balbo

Diversity In the contemporary context of growing exchange and encounters among people with different cultural traditions, the way in which diversity is approached is at the root of how cities will position themselves in the realization of the intercultural city. In fact, as the setting for the flow of capital, goods, people and, accordingly, ideas and innovation, cities are centre stage in this diversity and the process of globalization. In the North, and increasingly in the South as well, the presence of people born elsewhere, or who remain somehow tied to places of origin different from where they live, reinforces the role of the contemporary city as a place of encounter, exchange and confrontation. Though neither simple to grasp nor easy to manage, the growing ethnic mix and socio-cultural diversity in today’s cities is a condition destined to rapidly evolve in the next few decades, due to the expanding number of migrants who will look for a way out of the widening economic, social and political disparities among countries worldwide. As underlined by many authors (Jacobs 1960; Sennet 1970; Morgan 1989; Lofland 1998), the encounter of cultures, and the capacity to create new ideas this entails, have always contributed to socio-economic development. Nevertheless, few countries actually see cultural encounter as a condition worth being explicitly embraced. With few exceptions, practically nowhere is the cultural diversity that necessarily accompanies immigration considered positive. Quite the contrary: in recent years most countries have adopted increasingly restrictive immigration policies, to the point of erecting physical barriers.

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In most cities the majority of residents perceive cultural diversity as a detrimental effect of globalization. Differences in language, ways of dressing, use of public space, and even hairstyles and cooking smells, are synonymous with distrust, simply because these unfamiliar behaviours question the sensory landscapes of everyday life which have been long-since taken for granted (Garfinkel 1967; Goffman 1971). The impact of the cultural differences that migrants bring with them on a national identity, i.e. on the ‘nation’s cultural self-understanding (Koopmans et al. 2005), is particularly jarring at the city level, where the concentration of individuals with different origins materializes into cultural diversity. On the other hand, this all propels a surfacing of identities and values never before claimed by native residents, together with an adoption of specific policies to validate them. The emergence of these new localisms is what those people afraid of being ‘left out’ see as the most effective response to the exclusionary character of the forces of globalization (Bauman 2001). In this frame, in many Western cities sorts of ‘revanchist’ policies against minorities are emerging with regard to public spaces (Smith 1996; Atkinson 2003; Mitchell 2003). Uncertainty about the future or, more exactly, about what the future may be like, is the primary reason for erecting defence mechanisms based on the assumption that local culture and local traditions are superior to the ones coming from ‘the outside’. In this view, the ‘outside’ is far away, but it may very well include nearby territories with consequences that range from the manipulation of history to the rise of exclusionary behaviour and xenophobic political organizations. The city is where encounter takes place daily. It is sensory and emotional, as well as cogent and serendipitous. In small and medium-size cities tensions tend to become more explicit, since uncertainty about the future is strongest, the presence of the other is more visible and explicit, and native residents are less used to it. The coexistence of multiple cultures brings to light different ways of living, whose different uses of the urban space act in accordance with the values and functions assigned to each type of space, i.e. the space for the family, for encounter with the community, or for intergroup relations. Just the same, complexity as a substantive feature of today’s cities is ever more evident. In the urban space, cultural diversity is everywhere: in restaurants, shops, markets, workplaces, housing and public spaces. It emerges continuously, be it in schools, where the children of immigrants are outnumbering those of the local population; be it in public spaces, where Muslim women wear the hijab (head-scarf), or in the Sunday gatherings of Peruvians and Bolivians for their large barbecues in the city parks next to the Pakistanis’ cricket matches, or the Filipinos highly voiced badminton

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tournaments, or the Eastern European women’s impromptu peer hairdressing salons. As a consequence of the increasingly complex nature of urban society and the time-space system of relations engendered by globalization, communities of belonging and related ties of allegiance considerably loosen. Migrants are certainly unwilling to abandon ‘home’ and even less inclined to embrace the cultural values of the country and the city they end up in. Indeed, migrants maintain and develop translocal and transnational networks and identities that span both local and national borders (Glick Schiller et al. 1992).

Citizenship Strictly related to the notion of cultural diversity is the issue of citizenship. One of the primary objectives in the building of nation-states was replacing social and political integration based on elements of exclusion (such as religion, kinship, and territorial proximity) with forms based on a system of rights and obligations equal for all individuals who belong to the same sovereign territory – the nation. In this framework, the way in which discourse on national identity is forged has a direct impact in shaping how the phenomenon of immigration is perceived and, as a consequence, on how open urban policies and societies are with respect to migrants’ inclusion and citizenship. Within the ‘container’ model of society presumed by the modern nationstate system, immigrants inevitably tend to be considered as problematic ‘outsiders’ and a politically dangerous potential security risk, cultural ‘others’ who are socially marginal and an exception to the rule of sedentariness within the boundaries of the nation-state (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). To foreign residents, ‘the border is not something they have left behind, it effectively follows them inside the state, denying them many of the rights enjoyed by full citizens or making their enjoyment less secure’ (Bosniak 2006). This discourse on national identity establishes: which points of view on the relation between immigrants and the majority society are considered sensible, which constructions of reality are considered realistic, and which claims and collective actors are held as legitimate within the polity. Together, these institutional and discursive opportunities facilitate the mobilization of some collective actors with certain types of collective identity and specific types of demands while constraining the mobilization of other actors and the expression of other identities and demands (Koopmans et al. 2005: 6).

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In the construction of a national identity, the nation-state eroded the ideas of the city and of citizenship as a dimension of belonging to the city space and involvement in its social fabric. In fact, citizenship has come to mean the set of rights and duties that relate citizens to the nation-state. Yet, the relationship citizenship/city has not waned: on the contrary, cities remain at the core of citizenship development (Holston and Appadurai 1996) and they are the main stage for engagement among different cultures. Today’s cities are places where different cultures may cooperate, enter into conflict or disregard each other. However, they cannot completely ignore each other. They are thus compelled to coexist, making cultural difference and its corollary, multiculturalism, intrinsic conditions of contemporary urban space. The complex nature of the contemporary city brings about a complete change in the notion of citizenship as the relation between the individual and the state: ‘In some places, the project of a national society of citizens, especially liberalism’s twentieth-century version, appears increasingly exhausted and discredited’ (Holston and Appadurai 1996: 188). The notion of one-man, onestate citizenship rests on what is referred to as ‘methodological nationalism’, i.e. ‘the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 302). As already mentioned, technological innovation in communication and transportation has severely shifted the meaning of citizenship away from an affiliation to the country of destination and its subsequent values and identity. At the same time, ‘[e]ven those [migrants] who are not ready to join the wider political community of their host country feel that they have a stake in the city’ (Baubo¨ck 2003: 151). Many, if not most, international migrants link to distant places more than to their present community and local space, which results in a growing ‘mismatch between citizenship and the territorial scope of legitimate authority’, with governments obliged to be accountable to citizens living outside the country, along with those living inside its borders (Baubo¨ck 2008: 31). This is not only a migrants’ condition, since communication technologies enhance a space of currents that evade the control of any locale, reducing the commitment to the city of globally networked elites as well. However, for migrants this results in formal citizenship, i.e. becoming a member of the destination state, becoming far less important an objective than in the past, when maintaining ties with the country of origin was arduous. The revival of urban citizenship (Isin 2009; Appadurai 1996; Amin and Thrift 2002) vs. national citizenship in the urban space of globalization is linked to the much higher value granted to substantive aspects of membership as opposed to formal ones (Holston 1998). The needs of everyday life mean that for migrants their priority is on substantive citizenship as fully

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entitled members of the urban community, i.e. on being recognized as a constituent part of the city’s cultural and physical space which they contribute to making work, thus actually converting cities into the genuine space of citizenship. What is of interest to individuals and families arriving from distant places, is primarily their right to access the opportunities the city has to offer in terms of jobs, housing, and services, rather than the rights related to the nation-state citizenship, such as voting, taking an active part in politics, and serving in the army. The priority for international migrants, who largely add to the poor segments of the urban population, is not so much membership of the nation-state, which produces only limited tangible benefits, but a substantive access to the ‘right to the city’. Such a different notion of citizenship is reinforced by the – often only temporary – relationship with the country, and the locality, of destination. Temporary and circular migration make the sense of belonging to institutions and society much more fragile than it was in the past, when the perspective for many was never to go back to their countries of origin. In a globalized world, migration is typified by its multiple characteristics – permanent, temporary, circular, individual and family-wide – all aspects that change the way migrants perceive the issues of citizenship, loyalty, and identity. For this reason, in the contemporary city citizenship takes on multiple meanings that can be addressed only by adopting multiple responses tailored to each migration course, or by following unconventional approaches aiming to overcome the dichotomy between citizens and non-citizens. Among the latter, the concept of ‘denizenship’ (and ‘denizens’) (Hammar 1994) is an interesting field of enquiry – an ‘in-between’ category entitling foreign residents to multiple social and legal rights, up to the ability to vote locally, though they are not granted full political rights. Whether the quasicitizenship status of denizenship entails the risk of confining foreign residents to a second-class membership still framed within the paradigm of the national state remains an open question. A further step ahead is needed to overcome the concept of citizenship as an unchangeable discrete entity and instead grasp its multidimensional and processual character. According to Stasiulis (2004: 296): citizenship is more fruitfully regarded in relational terms, as an unstable set of social relations actively negotiated and contested between individuals, states, other political communities, territories, and between the realms of the private and public. ‘In order to make sense of the implications of “contemporary” developments for citizenship we require new concepts rather than recycling of old categories’

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(Isin 2009: 368). This means a shift from citizenship conceived as a static status (be it inherited, acquired by birth or obtained through ‘naturalization’ processes) to citizenship as a practice and a process; from citizens conceived as ruled subjects to citizens as claimants of rights (Isin 2009) – first and foremost rights of full access to urban assets and opportunities on the equal basis of ius domicilii. Multi-level and transnational citizenship regimes and forms of hybrid citizenship (Stasiulis 2004) that decouple citizenship from nationality should be explored. From this viewpoint, the recognition of migrants’ legal status seems to be one of the first items that should be included in a tentative agenda towards a real urban citizenship, since it significantly eases the degree of confrontation with local residents. At the same time, by reducing the centrality of community-based local and transnational networks for coping with day-to-day necessities, it facilitates interaction with the other residents as well as political and social engagement in the pursuit of collective development. This seems all the more necessary in light of the fact that contemporary migration is a: world-wide archipelago of ethnic/religious/linguistic settlements – oblivious to the trails blazed and paved by the imperialist-colonial episode and following instead the globalization-induced logic of the planetary redistribution of life resources (Bauman 2008). which questions many of the traditional binary relations, such as identity/ citizenship, individual/place, neighbourhood/belonging. Accommodating this social and cultural mix, however, often conflicts on the one hand with drawing together cultural diversity and the different values it carries, and, on the other, with reconciling community rights and the individual rights on which modern urban societies are based, as well as with the set of shared values that lies at the heart of urban social cohesion. Citizenship and cultural diversity can only subsist if a set of basic values are shared, thus defining the community of allegiance among individuals who are at the same time equal and diverse, born locally and new residents, nationals and migrants. Nevertheless, such values cannot rest on cultural requirements, behaviours or, worse yet, religious followings. This is a particularly onerous issue at a time when the liberal social contract on which the modernity of Western countries rests is being confronted and contested by other ideas of modernity (Appadurai 1996). For this reason, the notion of citizenship as a community of allegiance to common moral and civic values is increasingly replaced by an idea of citizenship as an association of people with the right to adequate living conditions, primarily employment, housing, health services, schools, and collective space.

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The new meaning citizenship takes up in the context of cultural diversity and growing international migration brings to the fore the issue of the ‘politics of difference rather than [. . .] a politics of universalism, or equalization of rights’ (Taylor 1992, cited in Holston and Appadurai 1996). In most cases, the objective of urban policies is at best to address the needs of (legal) migrants on the basis of equal rights with respect to the rest of the urban population. This means essentially fighting discriminatory rules and procedures in order to guarantee equal access to primary urban goods and services. Though under democratic rule equality of access does not seem to be a particularly progressive stance, its actual achievement is in no way immediate. Local resistance to such an equalization of rights is often strong and loudly voiced on the basis of a right of priority for ‘natives’ over newcomers, legitimized by the idea of their being entitled, as members of the nation, to an exclusive set of rights and privileges. An arbitrary logic underpins the opposition between ‘national’ and ‘non-national’ and all discriminations against immigrants are linked back to this fundamental differentiation by law, a supreme justification of all other distinctions. ‘The fact that the immigrant is not a citizen of the nation, justifies the limited needs that are recognized to him in terms of equal treatment before the law and in the everyday practices’ (Sayad 2008). Equalization of rights, and the subsequent equality of access to urban services, is also strongly opposed on the fundamentally erroneous assumption that migrants pay less taxes than locals and by consequence have less right to access public housing, schools and health services. Such resistance is all the more striking when one considers how the universalist model started to be questioned at the end of the 1980s and the notion of ‘differentiated citizenship’ was introduced (Young 1989), stressing how the disadvantages people intrinsically suffer from their ethnic, gender, and religious affiliation prevent their equality and full integration. For this reason, in the 1990s many countries acknowledged the idea that ‘some forms of cultural difference can only be accommodated [. . .] if their members have group-specific rights’ (Kymlicka 1995: 26). Acknowledging that the presence of different cultures is an asset for national as well as local society, in order to preserve and encourage cultural diversity equal treatment may require differential treatment. The notion of differentiated citizenship encompasses the idea that it may be necessary to grant additional rights to specific groups and individuals, including international migrants, whose culture is at a disadvantage compared to the dominant one. Additional rights are necessary not only to make migrants equal to other city residents while preserving their cultural background, but also to facilitate their integration into urban society,

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thus promoting social cohesion and spatial inclusion (Parekh 2000: 262). The assumption behind this reasoning is the recognition that the culture of the dominant majority can create disadvantages for minorities that trigger the need for support and protective measures for their cultures. This view reflects the idea that only through full recognition of their presence, culture and traditions will international migrants be ready to become part of, and be involved with, local society. In other words, to make migrants equal residents with a common sense of belonging in the greater interest of society at large, it could well be necessary to give them specific and additional rights, if only temporarily. This argument in favour of positive discrimination does not come without criticism, in particular as regards the possibility of constructing a shared idea of society that cuts across differences and extends beyond self-interest. In the view of Habermas (1994), measures intended to equalize the conditions of specific groups such as women and migrants, to the rest of the population ‘turn into new forms of discrimination and instead of liberties being guaranteed people are deprived of freedom’. In addition, this type of ‘legislation and adjudications [is] oriented to traditional patterns of interpretation and thus serve only to strengthen existing [. . .] stereotypes’. Differentiated citizenship may generate a weakening of the sense of collective belonging, and affect citizens’ willingness to accept sacrifices for the benefit of others. Differentiated citizenship policies may also reinforce the image of migrants as a problematic population in need of public support, and foster social segregation as well as spatial fragmentation. Furthermore, it is hard to design policies that are at the same time equitable and supportive of differentiated citizenship. In contrast, addressing universalist policies to deprived segments of the population without distinction of their ethnic, gender, or religious conditions is seen as more equalizing. Beyond their intrinsic character and the weakness, or sheer lack, of public discourse on migration stressing the benefits to society offered by cultural diversity, universalist welfare policies, as opposed to more group-targeted policies, remain the only foreseeable response to the difficulties that more and more sectors of the urban population have to face in the context of the current economic crisis that many destination countries are experiencing.

Space Cities reflect the pattern of dynamic relationships among individuals and groups who behave according to the cultural values they were born within and are familiar with, even when they have left that context behind and disengaged from it. It is this system of relationships that constitutes the social

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and cultural context within which the citizens of a city, ‘willingly or not, conduct the ethical-political discourse in which they attempt to reach agreement on their self-understanding’ (Habermas 1994). Fostering encounter and exchange among different cultural groups, on the basis of equal respect, is the essence of the city. Cultural values and a sense of collectivity are two aspects often at odds, and reconciling them may prove quite difficult. This is particularly true when it comes to public space and its use, since public space is the main arena of encounter, exchange, and confrontation among different cultures. It is in public space that individuals meet, and groups of people from the same community congregate, engaging with other groups that utilize the same space at the same time, occasionally clashing over the others’ uses. Urban public space is the stage for unremitting encounters of individuals, and their cultures, where people interact and negotiate in the ‘spaces of interdependence’ (Amin 2002: 967) such as the squares, streets, and parks that make up the specific character of urban space. The question of space is at the core of the construct of difference. Through the formation of ‘spatial identities’, stereotypes contribute to the fragmentation of urban space. This gives rise to the emergence of areas specifically allocated for the use of local populations and various migrant communities: ethnicity is constituted through the manipulation of urban space in order to provide room for living, all the way from parcels of actual land or protocols about who gets out of the way on the street to the smallest body movements that betray an expanded or contracted body image. The point is that different cities provide different resources for particular ethnic groups to construct themselves in space, and these groups therefore do so differently (Amin and Thrift 2002). The presence of diverse cultures involves uses of spaces that may be unfamiliar to residents, and are thus often perceived as a potential menace to the well-being of the local urban society. In reality, public spaces are neither deterministic places of fear nor automatically places of encounter (Balbo 2012). They are open social and political fields, within which both physical as well as symbolic dimensions play a fundamental role. They are spaces where diverse people meet, talk, perform and assist different practices, interact or avoid doing so, observe, imitate and take inspiration, participate, negotiate, criticize, enter into conflict. Public space is not neutral, it is the corollary of democracy: Conflict is not something that befalls an originally, or potentially, harmonious urban space, but rather urban space is the product of conflict

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(Deutsche 1996). It is filled with signs, symbols and markers that are variously interpreted by socially positioned and culturally distinct people. As a result, ‘public spaces mean completely different things for different groups’ (Lownsbrough and Beunderman 2007), making highly questionable the idea that one ‘good practice’ implemented in one public space can be easily replicated in another public space (Pastore and Ponzo 2012). When looking at the contemporary city, the question appears to be to what extent the notion of public space fits into the growing diversity and multiplicity of ‘public spaces’ inherent in the culturally diverse globalized city. Given that ‘newcomers reveal the limits of the public sphere as constituted and imagined by the society and its legislators at a given time’ (Go¨le 2006), the presence of different cultures demands a redefinition of what collective space is, and of the public sphere in general. ‘By bringing [minority cultures] in from the margin, they can bear on and reshape the dominant culture, contributing to remaking a shared public culture in an intercultural way’ (Bloomfield and Bianchini 2004: 42). Public space is not a static concept. It is not limited to the formal areas of gathering planned and built for this purpose by city leaders and urban planners. The increasingly complex and heterogeneous mix of the urban population has multiplied the demand for public spaces, which often stop being places of freedom and opportunity to end up being ‘defended’ through lines of demarcation, no-go areas and front lines. Even when a space apparently seems to be free-for-all and accessible to whoever wants to set foot on it and spend time there, intangible lines of division between isolated ‘cultural public spheres’ may fragment it. At worst, people – be they natives or migrants – may seek to translate their cultural public sphere into physical territory, necessitating the exclusion of those who do not fit into it, do not ‘belong’ to that specific group, or those perceived as breaking established conventions of behaviour and norms which are taken for granted. One outcome of the inadequacy of the public sphere is that, under the pressure put on safety by public authorities through controls and physical barriers, undocumented as well as legal migrants often choose to be ‘invisible’ by going unnoticed and limiting their encounters with the local population. Safety concerns result in shearing migrants from urban society and hampering their social and spatial inclusion. Their lives end up being somehow surreptitious, conducted exclusively in the only places that make them feel relatively safe: home and work. Their use of public space is limited mainly to those activities that they themselves create and feel as protective, such as walking with a toddler, chatting in small groups or holding a community dinner. Alternatively, sites of ‘insurgent citizenship’ may emerge, marked by new identities and practices that, bring to the forefront the heterogeneity

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of lived urban experience by disturbing established histories (Holston 1998). Exclusion from public spaces serves the dual and interrelated functions of rendering those not included invisible and allowing those included to feel as if they make up the entire population. At the same time, spatial exclusion is ‘[. . .] a quiet, subtle way to protect and produce moral communities that situate themselves at the intersection of (present) survival and (future) realization’ (Madsen 2004). As a consequence of the weakening of a sense of belonging, along with claims to the right to preserve their cultural values, migrants identify themselves only partially with the hierarchy of places and their use inherent in other residents’ perception,. Markets, even temporary, selling ethnic food and products, or the places where religious events, celebrations and festivals take place, may be far more significant in the migrants’ imaginary map of the city than the high street, city hall or cathedral square. Unless this diversity in the physical use, as well as the symbolic perception of public space, is accepted, local residents will display suspicion and fear, while migrants will adopt practices of resistance through rendering themselves invisible and intangible, becoming spectators instead of actors of the city (Ostanel 2010). Where they make up sizeable portions of the resident population, migrants may shape urban space to their own needs by opening shops supplying ethnic goods and offering services tailored to their culture and traditions not provided for by the host society. Frequently these new activities are highly concentrated within limited areas and give rise to a specialization of space that did not exist before, thus changing the feel of that portion of the urban space. What is modified is the sense of the collective place, those ‘deeper and even subconscious feelings that people have about the place where they live and those they share it with’ (Wood 2008: 249), which colour with a peculiar hue the different parts of the city. The settling of foreign populations may prompt local residents to relocate to new residential areas, in turn allowing an entirely different population to settle in the area they fled from. This process of reverse gentrification transforms traditionally attractive and well located neighbourhoods into areas that city residents look at with suspicion and resentment and to which they generally avoid going. Furthermore, a lack of accessible dwellings drives people of the same origin to concentrate in the same areas where they are able to re-create community-based networks, which they can rely on, in their daily struggle. Such ‘defensive’ enclaves themselves become the cause of seclusion, hampering the integration of migrants in the wider urban community and fuelling the social and spatial fragmentation of space typical of many contemporary cities. Surprisingly however, the ‘ethnic’ neighbourhoods may again become new areas of activity and encounter in the city, attracting

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populations from all quarters including the affluent residential areas to which the well-to-do had previously relocated. Ethnicity, in many cases, is part of the ‘urban branding’ that serves for the construction, communication, and management of the city’s image on the local as well as the international level. Such a partitioning of the urban space into a sort of mosaic with multiple tiles reflects and at the same time materializes a representation of society based on stereotypes that reaches well beyond being a superficial representation of society to become the social reality. In a society of stereotypes, the allocation of space mirrors social, economic, and institutional differences, triggering a process of the tacitly-agreed-on domination of certain areas over other parts of the city (Balbo 2009). Whether the ethnic appropriation of specific parts of the urban space translates into a process of acceptance and recognition, or motivates separation and conflict, depends essentially on the urban policies adopted and how effective they are in promoting the necessary mix of peoples, lifestyles and uses of space that are at the basis of a dynamic urban society. Public space is where the physical, as well as cultural presence of the other becomes more visible, and the encounter and strain across diverse communities is most explicit. For this reason, a policy of public space is critical to building a common culture and overcoming the stereotypes that foster social and spatial exclusion. The intercultural city rests on a concrete social construct where the various components of urban society come to preserve their own cultures within the framework of a shared understanding of civic culture and sense of urbanity (Zijderveld 1998).

The predicament of the intercultural city As the previous discussion has highlighted, the intercultural city is a city where differences persist but merge on the basis of equal respect, thus generating a new urban imaginary through a collectively accepted use of space where equivalence of differences is acknowledged as the starting point for a new sense of belonging. This results in the dismissal of all material and immaterial partitions, and the recognition by the urban society of the gains that supervene from accepting the intermingling of different groups and cultures. However, the intercultural city can exist only if a number of conditions are in place. First and foremost it is imperative that citizens’ rights be granted to migrants. Recognizing migrants as full citizens, entrusted with the same rights and duties as all other members of the urban community, is the first step towards rejecting all notions of ‘otherness’ and the pervasive negative

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stereotyping that results. Only by ensuring equal respect is it possible to dismantle a collective imaginary in which diversity catalyses the feelings of anxiety of the ‘ordinary global citizen’ and poses a threat to daily life. To make diversity a ‘concrete realization’ it has to be built on a common understanding of sense-making and place-making that goes beyond the family and the community. In this view, governments should look at diversity as a structural component in the process of city-building. In an increasingly globalized world, the presence of different cultures within the same urban space is inevitable; it is also a driving force in making the city more vibrant, providing a added value to the attractiveness of cities. Different cultures have to amalgamate into a sound allegiance around a set of shared values around which social cohesion can be built. Not at all an easy task, but unless it is able to reconcile the differences, the idea of diversity as a drive to the construction of the intercultural city is doomed to remain wishful thinking. Contradictions between diversity and collective values are particularly evident in the use of space, particularly collective space. As a ‘rival’ good that can be consumed by only one person or group of people at a time, space is subject to competing and possibly conflicting uses. It is each other’s individual and collective behaviour in public space that brings the local population and the migrants to experience each other, making space the primary ground for exchange and tension. For this reason, if different cultures with different backgrounds have to co-exist within the same public space, a redefinition of the public sphere as socially constructed is needed, as well as of the rules that preside over its fruition, the uses that can be accepted and those that are banned. The intercultural city is a city where equal power of negotiation is granted to the different cultures and groups, thus recognizing that migrants cannot be compelled to dismiss their original cultural values and take on those of the host urban society. Quite to the contrary: guaranteeing the possibility to preserve each group’s cultural heritage is at the core of the intercultural city. Granting equal power of negotiation means giving migrants access to the resources and voice needed to gain equal conditions with the rest of the urban population, and providing them with the capacity to achieve the goals or values they regard as key to their cultures. Multiplicity of uses of public space is a constituent part of urban life and a constant component of urban policies. Accepting that unfamiliar uses of space do not represent a menace to the well-being of urban society, and that different uses of collective space are an essential part in the process of social and spatial inclusion of international migrants, is at the root of the intercultural city. This stems from the assumption that acceptance of the

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equivalence of difference rests mainly on the capacity of individuals and groups to interact, but also on the features of the spatial context, its quality, and the existence of shared clear rules for the use of it. Finally, in cities where adjustment and innovation lie at the basis of their success or failure, willingness and ability to encounter and exchange with diversity are crucial. With the growing diversity and the multiple meanings ‘public space’ takes on, in the intercultural city urban policies have to adopt cultural diversity as a criterion on which to design public space and its uses, with a view to build a new sense of belonging based on the recognition of the positive value that equivalence of differences takes up.

CHAPTER 2 URBAN POLICIES AND THE INTERCULTURAL CITY: A REFLECTION ON NORMS AND CONTEXTS Ruth Fincher

Introduction There is no question that the policies of governments help to shape the intercultural or multicultural demeanour of cities that receive immigrants. But this general statement has immediately to be qualified. It is not just the overarching norms of the policies that are significant. If different meanings of interculturalism and ways of practicing it in a variety of jurisdictions are to become evident, for us to learn from, then the focus of analytical attention needs to be more than overarching norms. In addition to statements of broad intention, modes of policy implementation are important, including processes of public participation and ways in which interactions between the state and social or activist movements form a practical culture of movement towards goals (or not). Policy norms, implementation strategies, and their political-economic contexts in times and places vary of course. In addition, different policy settings can occur within nations as well as between them, because it is urban governments (not national ones) that have the most direct interactions with immigrants, indeed with all urban residents, who are located in cities and suburbs living their daily lives. And if we are thinking of time-related variations in policy settings, then both the timing of the immediate introduction of certain policies, and the duration of time over which similar policies have been in place, affect the ways that cities are intercultural or multicultural. If, over decades, a certain culture of

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incorporating newcomers develops in places with a positive history of multiculturalism and immigration, then the populations of those cities may be more adept at living with difference even without detailed policies enjoining them to do so, than in places where intercultural policy thinking has only recently been introduced after decades of inattention to such matters. Specifying which urban policies are those in all cases that best move cities towards some defined state of interculturalism or multiculturalism is difficult; it is impossible, really. Are we talking about national or local/ municipal policies? Are we referring to policies explicitly targeting immigrant newcomers so as to improve services to them or their integration into local settings? Policies naming the question of living with difference as relevant for everyone? Or policies that seek to make universal urban service provisions and a right to the city for everyone? In different contexts, the answer might include any or all of these. Urban policies relevant to interculturalism are not just those specifically directed to interculturalism or multiculturalism as a property or responsibility of the immigrant population. Indeed there is some evidence (Valentine 2010) that policies encouraging the flourishing of, and acceptance of, difference should be broad and accept intersectionality, not just be directed to one particular ‘identity’ group or ‘equality group’ like immigrants. On the one hand, a more broadly pitched encouragement of ways to live with difference may avoid the painful and possibly stigmatizing specification of ‘hosts’ (natives) and ‘newcomers’ (immigrants), of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of those who belong and those who are outsiders. On the other hand, broad policy settings encouraging the flourishing of diversity can hide practices of racism and disguise policies that do not confront this form of oppression effectively (Ahmed 2012). Other policies whose outcomes occur in cities particularly, but which are not entirely ‘urban’ policies, may have implications for the place of immigrants in cities and societies. Levitt (see Chapter 11) demonstrates this in her discussion of the cultural policies guiding social depictions of the past and present that are featured in museums in Singapore. Recognizing the fact that a wide range of urban policies, or policies principally affecting urban populations, have implications for immigrants and their incorporation into the affairs of cities, the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities Strategy identifies a wide range of policies, in areas including education, health, business and employment, and assesses them specifically for the manner in which they improve relationships between social groups in cities (see Chapter 3). The community-developing activities of Neighbourhood Houses in Canada, in which people interact during their involvement in tasks of mutual interest, across their differences and not dwelling on those differences (Sandercock and Attili 2009), direct us to the same conclusion – that

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interculturalism can occur through activities in which the fostering of that interculturalism is not the major stated goal. Acknowledging that a uniform set of policies that give rise to the intercultural city cannot be specified for every context, I will now discuss two aspects of the search for better urban interculturalism or multiculturalism through urban policies. I will make the argument that norms like the intercultural city need to be grounded and interpreted in particular settings and practices, rather than solely being asserted in the abstract as political or ethical aspirations. Noting one form of such grounding, I then consider a number of urban planning policies directed at articulating the benefits of ethnic diversity in cities that view ethnic diversity as successful if it gives rise to the commercial and market-based outcomes that are part of the neoliberal vision for entrepreneurial cities. Before this, however, I will comment briefly on my use of the terms ‘intercultural’ and ‘multicultural’ for urban analysis.

The terms ‘intercultural(ism)’ and ‘multicultural(ism)’ In investigating urban policies in and for the intercultural city, I choose to use the terms ‘intercultural(ism)’ and ‘multicultural(ism)’ interchangeably, because they have the same general aims (where they are used normatively) and they describe the same general circumstances (where they present an account of an urban reality). There are writers and politicians (especially in Europe) who prefer to use the term multicultural no longer, associating it with a long-term political vision that has failed (Mitchell 2004). But elsewhere in the world the term multicultural is not always used in a negative and populist way: for example, in Australia the term has recently been rehabilitated (albeit in ways described by some analysts as too assimilationist) (Chiro 2011). Indeed there are many writers who now point to the demographic reality in most major cities of people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, side-by-side, engaging in many forms of habitual, daily interaction and negotiating their everyday differences thereby (Amin 2012: 60). Even if multiculturalism is not favoured politically in some nations, it is widely practiced in daily life. Other writers do not distinguish between the terms multiculturalism and interculturalism very strongly. Khovanova-Rubicondo (Chapter 3), presenting a view from the Council for Europe, distinguishes multicultural from intercultural programs only by saying that the latter seek to forge ‘common ground’ between culturally diverse groups, as well as recognising their differences. Sandercock and Attili (2009), writing about the Canadian city of Vancouver, identify interculturalism as a national policy norm but also as a ‘shift’ within that nation’s multiculturalism.

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One very important aspect of Canada’s evolving political culture at federal government level, especially in the past decade has been the effort to create a sense of national identity and national belonging that is grounded in ideals of active citizenship, democracy and political community, rather than in notions of ‘Canadianness’ grounded in race or ethnicity (the latter being the case in most European countries).This very important shift is also a shift in the meaning of multiculturalism, from its earlier incarnation emphasizing recognition and support of all immigrant cultures and the celebration of ethno-cultural differences, to an intercultural position emphasizing the building of bridges between cultures. And this has been reflected in actual funding shifts, away from the support of ethno-culturally specific organizations or facilities to organizations with explicit intercultural mandates (Sandercock and Attili 2009: 226–27). Accordingly, I join those who see multiculturalism as remaining important, and as a similar norm to interculturalism, even if interculturalism specifies multiculturalism in slightly different ways from its meanings in the past (which some, like Sandercock and Attili, and Khovanova-Rubicondo, see as a positive move, and others, like Chiro, may see as a somewhat assimilationist and therefore less positive move). Seeing diversity in cultures as a positive thing, and that cultures develop through everyday interactions between and within them that are contested and argued about as often as not, Sandercock and Attili (2009: 220) theorize interculturalism as ‘a daily political practice’ based on the right to the city and the right to difference. I agree with this theorization, but point out that the right to difference can give rise either to a community, city or society in which cultural groups live side by side with each other’s difference, relatively indifferently, or in which there are closer connections formed at sites where people engage together in activities in which they are interested, across their differences (and see Amin 2012). Policies supporting interculturalism, whether they seek to encourage communities of interest across differences or benign acceptance of co-present difference, must set up, as basic, a set of societal expectations that difference is not to be maligned and a set of regulations and practices that protect that right to difference in its many forms: ‘the dialogue requires certain institutional preconditions, such as freedom of speech, participatory public spaces, empowered citizens, agreed procedures and basic ethical norms, and the active policing of discriminatory practices’ (Sandercock and Attili 2009: 222, italics in original). I see the institutional preconditions specified here as a major part of the ‘common ground’ between different social groups in cities that KhovanovaRubicondo (Chapter 3) regards as key to interculturalism. I also see these institutional preconditions as a core part of the multiculturalism that

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countries such as Canada and Australia adopted decades ago at the same time as they recognized cultural differences within their populations (though the nature of these institutional preconditions may have changed over the decades as governments have viewed their significance in different ways and as national politics has evolved as Chiro (2011) argues for the Australian case). Whilst these institutional settings are the ‘common ground’ of all citizens in a nation, they are also very specific groundings for a country or place and therefore are not empty, general norms. Because, of course, even as we read normative statements of the political culture that forms the intercultural city of our aspiration, it is clear that there will be many interculturalisms (and multiculturalisms) in practice, as a variety of policies and practices are developed in different sites, in light of their different cultural and political histories.

Grounding norms in practices and settings Policies express norms, and the discussions of policies conducted by social scientists often focus on those norms as foundational to the success of the policies (a focus on norms may also be the product of wanting to compare situations across socio-spatial and political contexts, trying to draw out differences without going into too much contextual detail). As many writers note, policies intended to integrate immigrants into nations or cities have offered a variety of normative orientations, from conservative intentions like assimilation to a variety of forms of multiculturalism which recognize that diverse cultural expressions will continue in the population (Sandercock and Attili 2009; Chiro 2011; Khovanova-Rubicondo, Chapter 3 of this volume). In considering policies and their likely success in fostering interculturalism or multiculturalism, however, far more than overarching normative statements need to be considered. A reason for this is that top-down, philosophically expressed norms alone do not provide a reliable guide to what happens in the daily practice of interculturalism. So as social scientists concerned with the urban and the everyday, we cannot rely on philosophical norms as a kind of ‘shorthand’ or proxy to express what is happening in places. In support of this claim, this section mounts two arguments from contemporary social science. First is the point that the norms stated by institutions (and policy norms are always expressed by institutions) do not describe the actions actually taken by the people in those institutions, which may not always be in the spirit of the norms stated. In an investigation of policies for diversity in institutional workplaces, Ahmed (2012) has found that statements of general aim and intention, often the kinds of norms expressed in institutions’ mission statements, are not where analyses should end of what institutions (those

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communities of actors) actually do. ‘Diversity practitioners’ whom she interviewed within universities (people whose job it is to design and implement policies encouraging diversity), ‘spoke about institutionalization [of diversity] in terms of what institutions “tend to do”, whatever it is they say they are doing or should be doing’ (Ahmed 2012: 24 – 5, italics in original). Thus, the practitioners working actually to put into effect a directive about diversity found that great persistence was required to overcome habitual resistance to that idea. Specifically, dedicated strategic work in negotiating the daily practices of the institution was required to make sure that documents about diversity, mission statements and others, were circulated to the different parts of those institutions, discussed there, viewed seriously and taken up. It is not just that institutional practices can diverge from what an overall policy norm like diversity directs should happen, which of course they may; rather, an important point is that considerable effort, discretion and strategy is required to ensure that policy norms actually ‘do’ something, and make a difference in what institutions cause to happen. It cannot be assumed that having a policy about something – in this case diversity – is sufficient to ensure that the institutional and other behaviours which made this policy necessary will change. The same thing can be said of national policy statements about multiculturalism or interculturalism – it cannot be assumed that having such aims means those aims are effected, especially in the short term, for practices can lag behind top-down expectations, may not occur at all, or may occur and have consequences inconsistent with the overall norm. Of course the practices of institutions can vary from their mission statements, even if unintentionally. Large institutions have many different sections and parts, and practices not compliant with the overall direction stated in policy may occur locally. Recent research, for example, again on universities, contrasts their broad mission statements of hope that international and domestic students will learn from each other in classrooms and in the social activities they engage in around universities, and will form cosmopolitan communities of activity across their differences, with certain persistent local practices in those same institutions that separate students from the ‘host nation’ and students from ‘overseas’ (Fincher 2011). In the same way, broad national statements of multicultural intentions can be complied with, or not, in different regions and places within a nation. It can be the case that where there are national policies of assimilation in a nation, there are simultaneously practices within some cities of that nation that are more akin to multiculturalism and fostering encounter across difference. And in other cases there can be national policies of multiculturalism, accompanied by conservative trends in particular cities or regions that do not comply with the national aim (Fincher, Iveson, Leitner and Preston 2013). For example, in

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Australia regions and parts of cities exist in which racist attitudes are more prevalent than elsewhere in the country, inconsistent with the longstanding, national multicultural norm (Forrest and Dunn 2007). Ahmed’s work thus gives a first important point that norms in policies – general aims like those of interculturalism, that people should overcome their fears and differences and live together in certain ways – need to be understood in analyses of progress as to their actual uses in institutions and places, rather than being understood only for their philosophical or political content. The work that policies do, in context, is what determines their outcomes. The first aspect of the ‘grounding’ of norms like interculturalism and multiculturalism that needs to occur, then, is this recognition that stating the policy norms themselves, having a general policy of broad intention, is not sufficient to ensure that the work of pushing that policy forward in different parts of organizations, and different places, is done effectively. The second argument about the need to ground policy norms comes from theorists actually critical of the use of norms at all in trying to make social progress.1 Commentaries about geographic theories of justice have included debates, recently, about the value of philosophically derived foundational norms of justice, with Olsen and Sayer (2009: 189) finding it difficult to reconcile these norms with on-the-ground social processes and cases. Barnett (2011) has taken the matter a step further, making particular criticisms of concepts of justice derived epistemologically rather than from social action in context. In his view, ideas and norms of justice should be, and in fact are, formed from the context of social action and activism on the ground and not without this. He cites environmental justice and right to the city struggles as examples in which norms about justice are derived from situated experiences of injustice. Now, it is difficult to argue that activist movements for environmental justice in particular settings have not been aware of, and drawn from, conceptual debates about redistributive justice and the ways that features of the built environment bestow advantages on some people and locations and disadvantage others. Nevertheless, this perspective of Barnett’s, that justice norms are intuited from performed activism against specific injustices, does raise the need to hold conceptual norms and situated realities in close conversation if socio-spatial progress is to be made. In Planning and Diversity in the City (2008), Kurt Iveson and I tried to build an interaction between philosophically derived concepts of urban justice, and situations in which practitioners seeking justice had put in place policies in local situations that seemed to be using these norms in applied ways. As we quickly discovered, it is impossible to single out specific policy actions seeking to implement interpretations of urban justice that are solely about one of the three policy norms on which we focused – redistribution,

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recognition, and encounter. Always, in the cases of urban policy practice we interrogated conceptually, we found ways in which that policy work on-theground could be understood as deploying a range of normative concepts (which is no reason not to single out those concepts for analytical purposes). So, if one examines the forms of policy work undertaken in Canadian and Australian cities to establish new immigrants in successful lives in their new places of residence, in light of those nations’ long-term commitment to multiculturalism as nation-forming, there is to be found a history of ethnically specific service provision made primarily by community services divisions in municipal governments or by non-governmental organizations acting locally. Language classes, initial housing and a range of ‘settlement services’ have been made available to new immigrants, with national government funding for this purpose made to state governments, sometimes directly to municipal governments and sometimes to non-governmental organizations and charities. Not only has the conceptual basis of this service provision been redistribution, on the understanding that many migrants and refugees lack the resources to become established, but the conceptual basis has simultaneously been recognition of the specific and culturally derived needs of these groups (and distinct cultural groups was largely what they were understood to be, under the national commitment to multiculturalism). In local municipalities attracting many new immigrants, especially places now receiving immigrants and refugees of greater diversity than ever before, local authorities can struggle to provide such services if their populations need both redistribution and recognition in large measure. To illustrate this, I can do no better than quote one senior local government manager of community services, responsible for providing social and community services in a superdiverse (in Vertovec’s (2007) sense) suburb in outer Melbourne, who was interviewed in 2011. He is clearly committed to both recognition and redistribution as norms for providing services to immigrants, but his municipality struggles with the recognition task when recognition is based on ethnic and national identity as articulated precisely by the immigrant and refugee groups themselves, and when economic need is so great as well. Interviewer (I) –Do you find the cultural diversity a challenge here? Municipal community services manager (C) –It’s a huge challenge. I –What do you see as the major challenges? C – (pause) 150 nationalities and half of them want their own dedicated space. And we can’t give it to them. I –Do you mean dedicated space as in meeting places . . .? C – The Eritreans want a community facility for the Eritreans, and the Burundians want a space for the Burundians, with the Sudanese there are 5

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tribal groups and fortunately they are mostly Christian. They each have very strong senses of their identity but they are in this place called Australia. They put a lot of demand on us. Huge. [Elected local] Councillors get quite reactive to it. They get very conservative. To the outsider it could be interpreted as racism. It is actually protection from setting up precedents. You say yes to one and you open the floodgate to all of them and our budget just isn’t going to handle it. Our service demand system is just massive. The Maternal and Child Health model is a universal model of access for mothers with babies built on a European white/Anglo concept – 15 minutes for a session where you can be in and out – [baby] weighed, a bit of advice. Here [sessions are each] 45 minutes and you have got to have an interpreter, so the cost overlay for us to manage [is large] . . .and we are funded on a universal model from the state government and council kicks in the rest. But I have got to tell you the state government does not give us a bonus for the complexity that we deal with. You run that across every arm of community services – across aged care, across family services, across early years, across library services. There is a cost infrastructure for doing the right thing and we don’t get funded to do it. The ratepayers of this community pay for it. So multiculturalism has a HUGE impact on this municipality. Now some [critics] have come and said, well that’s wrong, you are reinforcing it [cultural difference]. But we are saying we get the message about services like maternal and child health within the cultural setting . . . Here sometimes it is the community elders that have more say than anyone else. We have to figure out who they are. So it’s a very complex social fabric here. We have got some cultures that are incredibly patriarchal and we have got some cultures that are incredibly matriarchal. Yet our service model and delivery system has certain in-built assumptions about that and we struggle to understand the nuances sometimes. Here, in this local context of suburban super-diversity, the practical experience of providing community services according to multicultural norms is a difficult one, and the tensions to which it gives rise daily are part of the institutional fabric of multiculturalism as practiced in the city. Debating the norms alone does not raise the dilemmas of places and their precise contexts, as they are mentioned by the municipal community services manager quoted here. Community services delivery in this super-diverse suburb of Melbourne is beset by the practicalities of facilitating the desire of very recent immigrants and refugees to find solace in their own ethnic groups and to find the physical and social space to do this. It is also clear that there are critics, noted by the interviewee, of maternal and child health services being provided in culturally specific ways. Those critics argue that the idea of

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‘mainstreaming’ – of providing services to diverse cultural groups without assuming that ethnic, religious or nationality based groups are the most appropriate channels through which to provide such services – is a better alternative for services provision. Mainstreaming has some hold in policythinking about the provision of community services locally, multiculturalism’s recognition of cultural difference notwithstanding. Decades ago, a major review of ‘settlement services’ and ‘the family’ in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s was undertaken and its authors raised this matter. One of the main points of debate has been the question of ‘mainstreaming’ services to immigrants as opposed to providing ‘ethnically-specific’ facilities . . . a significant part of the Federal Government’s Ethnic Affairs Program has been concerned with community development in various ways, including funding for community development workers attached to ethnic organizations. All of this rests on many often unvoiced theoretical beliefs: that ethnicity, culture and community are, to an extent, interchangeable – or at least complementary – categories, and that the ethnic group or ‘community’ is a legitimate object of social policy and in many cases an appropriate policy instrument. A critical examination of this model is required (Morrissey, Mitchell and Rutherford 1991: 11). The broad national norms on multiculturalism have often had nothing to say on whether recognition of immigrant cultural diversity is better delivered via mainstreaming or by separate and culturally specific delivery of services, in local settings of particular socio-spatial characteristics. The experiences of local service providers determine the style of service provision, or a situation arises in which funds are limited and so a less streamlined and culturally tailored service is provided. But this matter is at the very core of institutional practices in cities of diverse ethnic character. Recently, a decision has been taken not to provide services to immigrants in Amsterdam via ethnically identified groups, but rather to fund services if requests are made by crossethnic groups.2 As noted earlier, in Canada a similar perspective is now in practice, and is viewed as an example of interculturalism because it builds bridges (or has the potential to build bridges) between cultures (Sandercock and Attili 2009). The national normative orientation of policy is very important, and indeed in Canada national policy seems to have embraced mainstreaming as a service delivery priority. But for understanding interculturalism as a daily reality in urban places, variations in institutional practices in those places, even as broad norms are negotiated to produce local outcomes, are also very significant.

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I turn now to look at one contemporary feature of urban policies and multiculturalism in cities: the positioning of ethnic diversity as something to be sought through commercialization.

Urban planning policies: ethnicity for commercial edge rather than intercultural wellbeing? A considerable literature bemoans a lack of interest amongst many urban planners in the social questions of multiculturalism and interethnic relationships, and how the regulation of the built environment and the encouragement of place-making might facilitate social inclusion rather than segregation (Thomson and Dunn 2002; Sandercock 1998; Sandercock and Kliger 1998; Qadeer 1994). There is some evidence, however, that one set of urban planning policies and actions is expressing interest in ethnicity and interactions between culturally identified groups, but in the commercial edge and gentrification to which it might contribute rather than (necessarily) the well-being for urban populations as a whole (though many do argue that urban redevelopment and gentrification have broad benefits). Looking at this commercial focus on ethnically identified places demonstrates how norms for interculturalism can be associated with quite varied circumstances when embedded in different political and economic contexts. If some forms of interethnic interaction are facilitated by governments and their partners because of their potential commercial consequences, is that a positively contributing part of interculturalism and multiculturalism? Maybe so – as long as the commercial processes in question don’t segregate and victimize particular minority groups and as long as vulnerable members of those ethnically identified communities are not disadvantaged. There are numerous instances of the broad norms of multiculturalism being ‘captured’ by commercial interests not aligned with the progressive and liberal agendas normally associated with multiculturalism. Particularly recall the manner in which local residents, objecting to real-estate investment in downtown Vancouver by Hong Kong business people, at the time when Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control and many residents and much investment capital left Hong Kong, were accused of being racist and non-compliant with Canada’s multiculturalism (Mitchell 1993). So, if one point about the interrogation of norms like multiculturalism and interculturalism is that they cannot be sensibly analysed without looking at the practices with which they are associated, then another point is that they may not be understood outside their politico-economic context. In the case of the urban planning policies to which I will now allude, that politico-economic context is the entrepreneurial or neoliberal city (Sager 2011; Harvey 1989). Interculturalism in cities may

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have a certain meaning when urban planning is positioned within such a context. The question to ask here, as I have pursued in a long review paper with colleagues, is: Can entrepreneurial urban planning be intercultural or multicultural, or does it by necessity fix and then marginalize ethnic and racial difference even as it claims to be celebrating ‘diversity’? (Fincher, Iveson, Leitner and Preston 2013). In entrepreneurial cities with immigrant and minority populations that are relatively concentrated spatially, or at least in which commercial premises identifiable as supporting those groups are spatially concentrated, urban planning policies may seek to market these urban places to visitors or tourists as showcasing ‘cultural diversity’. Where this happens, it will often be the result of business-facilitation alliances between local governments, business and community organizations. In major cities in the United States, Canada and Australia there have been Chinatowns and Little Italys established in this way over past decades, often building on an original site of commercial activity by Chinese and Italian immigrants but now catering to a far wider consumer group. European analysts, observing the more recent appearance of such sites in cities there, suggest that a number of conditions need to exist if these commercial precincts are to succeed: alongside the spatial concentration of immigrant activities in a place and an effective alliance or local growth coalition, there needs to be a suite of policies and regulations that supports ethnically identified commercial areas (i.e. an absence of policies precluding these); community organizations and immigrant entrepreneurs to support the businesses; safety and accessibility for visitors; and a set of ethnically identified products that can be successfully marketed to visitors (Hall and Rath 2007: 16 – 18). So, in London, local governments have been interested in expanding the consumption activities of certain areas that have been longstanding sites of an immigrant presence and of poverty, thinking that this might improve the socio-economic circumstances of these areas (Shaw, Bagwell and Karmowska 2004). Alliances have been formed and regulations set in place to support this new economic activity, but analysts have found that even where local development of this kind has been encouraged, local immigrant business people have suffered from increases in shop rental costs, and immigrant residents have found the economic change in the area economically prohibitive (Shaw et al. 2004). In Birmingham, in a different part of the UK, the city government has marketed the cuisine of its immigrant population from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and the Caribbean. But as in the London case, whilst visitors have gained, members of the local immigrant population, especially immigrant family businesses, have not always benefited because they have been required to cut prices and labour costs in order to

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survive. ‘At the top is a discourse of urban redevelopment, multiculturalism, spectacle, consumer choice and the pursuit of leisure. At the bottom is a tale of marginal economic survival, unsocial hours and under-rewarded toil under precarious conditions of ever-present risk’ (Jones and Ram 2007: 64). In Singapore, with the designation of Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam (the Malaysian enclave) since the 1980s as commercial ‘historical districts’ (Yeoh 2005), one finding has been similar to that of the UK writers mentioned. That is, government urban planners are establishing conditions for consumption in ethnically identified precincts by visitors, but failing to ensure that members of local ethnically identified communities benefit from the changes deriving from their presence (Chang 2000). Despite these negative assessments of the way multiculturalism can be ‘distorted’ by an emphasis on its association with local business, there are some situations in which immigrant entrepreneurs may themselves market their own ethnicity and draw economic benefit from it (Rath and Hall 2007). The agency of immigrants and minority groups in some inner city locations of longstanding immigrant settlement can also be associated with a form of gentrification that benefits those longstanding residents, even when in some other locations gentrification can cause displacement of poorer minority communities (Atkinson 2000). And the commodification or commercialization of ethnicity by immigrants can occur in suburbs as well – for example, the ‘ethnoburbs’ of Los Angeles have been observed by Li (2009), a phenomenon which occurs as well in Toronto and New York. These are mixed residential and business sites in suburban localities in which there is a variety of ethnic groups present but with one (often Chinese) dominating economically in the redevelopments occurring. These are also usually economic investments by a local immigrant middle class seeking a particular cultural expression in their business types. So, an important question is: Should norms for interculturalism and multiculturalism readily include the facilitation of immigrant entrepreneurship and immigrant-led gentrification in urban redevelopment? Urban policies that plan the entrepreneurial or neoliberal city draw the planning task away from its earlier focus on managing the provision of services to local residents, for their well-being, and ask it to position the city and its multicultural ‘assets’ in a world of outward-looking global consumption and rivalry (Harvey 1989). The move to entrepreneurialism is part of the politicoeconomic context in which many city governments find themselves, and its implications for the forms of interculturalism that might appear in cities should be noted. These forms of interculturalism may not all be about democratic interactions and community development in this politicoeconomic context, but will often also include commercial objectives.

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Immigrant communities will always contain members who share those commercial objectives and join alliances with local governments and chambers of commerce to facilitate commercial growth. Insofar as local and other governments are involved in facilitating or initiating entrepreneurial developments, forming urban policies associated with multiculturalism, certain issues arise for consideration. First, urban redevelopment may cause rising prices for small and vulnerable businesses and for local co-ethnic consumers used to buying at lower prices. This is part of the overall concern in urban policy at the impacts of gentrification on lowerincome areas and people. And second, there is the question: Are urban planning policies, by adopting some commercial aims, relinquishing their long-held attention to questions of redistribution, in the case of immigrant populations in the city? There seems no question that urban policy should be involved in commercial change and the role of immigrant entrepreneurs, and their supporting communities, in that change. Excising the commercial from interculturalism and multiculturalism would be unrealistic, given the dominance worldwide of the entrepreneurial city. But, as Fainstein and Powers (2007) indicate, the involvement of urban policy in the commercialization of immigrant and minority endeavours needs to be planned thoughtfully, with a view to supporting a range of immigrant commercial activities in a range of locations. They cite their view that in New York City, the tendency of government to invest for tourism in the commercial affairs primarily of large corporations and locations in the central city needs to be countered, in favour of a more imaginative and inclusive investment strategy that also focuses on suburban areas and smaller immigrant businesses.

Conclusion This chapter has juxtaposed two matters: the first matter is the reality that urban policies supporting interculturalism or multiculturalism cannot be specified generally to apply in a wide range of different places and contexts, and the second matter is the tendency for social scientific discussions of multiculturalism and interculturalism nevertheless to focus on general policy norms as if they do tell us something important about what happens in the everyday. I have tried to signal the incompatibility of these two situations, the former ontological and the latter epistemological. Two arguments have been made as to why a reliance on discussion of top-down norms like democracy, recognition, redistribution or even the right to the city or the right to difference will not be sufficient if we are to understand how multiculturalism and interculturalism (themselves also broad norms) actually play out in places. First, I have argued that norms need actively to

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be grounded in settings and places – translated for effective understanding of what is being enacted in what Sandercock and Attili (2009) call the ‘daily practice’ of interculturalism – if we are to learn from them to propose progressive change elsewhere. Second, I have proposed that the political economy of neoliberalism and entrepreneurialism cannot be separated from the meanings now given to multiculturalism and interculturalism. This second point is related to the first, insofar as people in different places experience neoliberalism in a range of ways, much as they do multiculturalism. It is the power of urban analysis that it can effect such a translation of norms, bringing the national mission statements of multiculturalism and/or interculturalism into a context in which it is clearer to what those statements are actually giving rise, or not, at the scales at which they are implemented, thus demonstrating how and what needs to be changed.

Notes 1. I draw here on arguments developed at greater length in Fincher and Iveson (2012) in a review of contemporary theorizations of justice and injustice in cities. 2. Uitermark et al. 2005 describe the outcomes of this decision and the dilemmas it poses.

CHAPTER 3 POLICY DIMENSIONS OF AN INTERCULTURAL CITY Kseniya Khovanova-Rubicondo

Recent global developments are bringing the issue of cultural diversity to the forefront. ‘In a more integrated world, the question of how different people can peacefully interact is the critical problem for the next many decades’ argue the sociologists seeking to identify plausible answers (Alesina and La Ferrara 2003: 29). It is largely acknowledged that modern developed societies are experiencing growing diversity both at different scales – private and public organizations, cities, regions, countries – and in different spheres – cultural, social, and economic. One of the main reasons behind such a phenomenon is the process of globalization that has suddenly spurred the flows of ideas, knowledge, goods, services, capital and people among countries. Undoubtedly, no feature of globalization is considered with more unease than the large flows of workers that come from different cultural backgrounds. This phenomenon is causing many tensions and policy makers have to tackle new issues and policy dilemmas. The majority of cities in Europe nowadays are confronting the issue of cultural diversity management on a daily basis. The growing mobility of workers with varying skills, education and abilities, potentially can represent an extraordinary resource for a community or society. However, native citizens often perceive immigration as a threat, as large migratory flows can seize economic opportunities, jeopardize wealth. In addition, some studies show that the higher the heterogeneity of a community, the less likely are the members of this community to pool resources (Hardin 1968). Hostility and anxiety have the potential to manifest themselves in discrimination and xenophobia, thus making cohabitation among diverse ethnicities more difficult.

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In Europe, the strong pressure that immigration is placing on the borders of the countries that traditionally receiving the immigrants (most notably France, Germany and UK; more recently Greece, Italy, Spain and Austria) has created an intense discussion on immigration policies. After EU enlargement, entry by people from less developed EU countries became easier. Trends in international migration, as tracked by the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, indicate continuous growth in the immigrant population in Europe during the last few decades (see Table 3.1). The slowdown in migration at the global level caused by the global economic crisis appears to have come to an end. Migration to Western European countries fell in 2010 for the third year in a row (although the level of migrants in 2010 was still higher than in 2000, for instance), but started to grow again in most Western European countries in 2011 (OECD 2012). Following events in the Middle East and North Africa, the immigration issue has become one of extreme importance for the continent. For most cities in Europe, cultural diversity is the issue they now face. With public opinion sensitive to migration issues against a backdrop of continuing employment, many governments have introduced more restrictive migration policies. Yet, while increasing migration and ethnic diversity present a profound challenge, they also offer an opportunity for cities, which they can and need to grasp. One of the defining factors that will determine, over the coming years, which cities prosper and which decline, is the extent to which they turn their diversity into an advantage and an asset. The heated institutional debate on the consequences of migration has been accompanied by a large and growing empirical literature (Easterly 2001; Collier 2001; Easterly and Levine 1997). What is evident from this literature is that institutional and public administration structures in host countries are best positioned to develop the capacities to steer the effects of immigration on Table 3.1

Trends in international migration, Europe 1990 – 2010

Indicator

1990

2000

2010

49,400,661

57,639,114

69,819,282

720,989,000 6.9%

726,568,000 7.9%

732,759,000 9.5%

Estimated number of international migrants at mid-year Total population at mid-year International migrants as a per cent of the population

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011). Trends in International Migrant Stock: Migrants by Age and Sex (United Nations database, POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2011). http://esa.un.org/ MigAge/p2k0data.asp.

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the society by providing for increasing benefits of heterogeneous communities and reducing their negative effects. The administrative structures of cities are particularly important in this sense, as it is cities that usually experience the highest immigrant flows. It is also cities that have civil communities large enough to have specialists in management, given the demands for services placed upon them today (Khovanova-Rubicondo 2009). Immigration is a burning topic in society nowadays, the economic, social and political implications of which still have to be better studied and understood. While the existing empirical research offers a large number of positive results regarding the effects of cultural diversity on the economic growth and social well-being of a community and society as a whole (Khovanova-Rubicondo 2009; Florida 2002; Lazear 1999; Sassen 1994), it also makes clear that diversity embodies a continuous trade-off between social and economic costs and benefits (Alesina and La Ferrara 2005; Alesina et al. 1999). If appropriately managed, diversity, for instance, can enhance productivity, innovation and growth, demonstrating by this its economic and social value for communities and for society as a whole (Alesina et al. 2000). Cities are viewed as the key places where these benefits are the most visible, for it is in cities that the large range of goods, services, people, ideas and skills is gathered. It is in cities that all these ‘components’ of globalization can be combined, multiplied, scaled and perceived or appreciated from a variety of perspectives (of city inhabitants). Several social scientists have related diversity with urban agglomeration. They claim that the functioning and thriving of urban clusters relies on the variety of people, factors, goods and services within them. Examples flourish in the urban studies literature. Jacobs (1969) views diversity as the key factor of a city’s success. Sassen (1994) studies ‘global cities’ – such as London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo, the key feature of which is the cultural diversity of their population – and their strategic role in the development of activities that are central to world economic growth and innovation. Similarly, Bairoch (1988) views cities and their diversity as the engine of economic growth. Evidence exists that diversity can also have negative effects on society due to more complex interactions (and even ‘communication barriers’) between different cultures, incompatible behaviours, lack of shared values and norms, or sheer antipathy. These phenomena increase the so-called ‘interaction costs’ between the members of a culturally diverse community. Similarly, from the point of view of economic growth and consumption, while variety in available goods, crafts, food, services, entertainment shows, styles of design (clearly correlated with cultural diversity) has a positive utility value, cultural diversity may also generate various utility losses: individuals may need a costly diversified cultural background to fully enjoy a variety of cultural goods

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and services. Moreover, diversity may generate fear of losing national identity, or a reaction against ‘aliens’ that manifests itself as a reciprocal distaste. There is a hypothesis that the interaction costs between people with different cultural backgrounds may also depend on the time of arrival of the different cohorts of immigrants: interactions are likely to be easier when groups have had enough time to develop a common set of values and habits. In this case, the costs of interaction between the groups, as well as the ‘distaste’ for foreigners, may decrease as foreign-born and native individuals alike understand better their differences and common values. According to the literature, the costs and benefits of diversity depend not only on the number and relative sizes of cultural groups living in the neighbourhood or city, but also on the degree of their integration, and the institutional and political environment that encourages or undermines this integration. It is thus important for city administrators and managers to choose a strategy appropriate and applicable to their environments, that can help to amplify social and economic benefits for multicultural urban communities.

Urban policy approaches to diversity Cities all over the world operate in widely varying national and local systems and very different regulatory and political frameworks. These differences influence the way cities respond to demographic changes and diversity. Over the last 30 years, several distinct approaches to minorities and diversity have been identified in European urban communities. Five models been tested empirically (Alexander 2001 and 2003) and include: (1) Non-policy approach: where migrants or minorities are regarded by the city as an irrelevant or temporary phenomenon with no lasting impact, or they are considered unwelcome. Consequently, there is no need for the city to formulate a policy response/action. (2) Guest-worker policy: where migrants are regarded as a temporary labour force that will eventually return to their home countries. Consequently, policy is short term, and the relevant policy response is designed to minimize the impact of migrants on native population. (3) Assimilation policy: where migrants and minorities are accepted as permanent but it is assumed that they will assimilate as quickly as possible. Their differences will not be emphasized or welcomed, and may even be discouraged or suppressed if they are considered to be a threat to the integrity of the nation. (4) Multicultural policy: where migrants and minorities are accepted as permanent and their differences from the host community are welcomed,

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encouraged and protected by law and by institutions backed by antiracism activity. Multicultural policy accepts the risk that, under certain conditions, this may lead to separate development or even segregation. (5) Intercultural policy: where migrants and minorities are accepted as a permanent phenomenon, and where their right for being different from the host community is recognized by law and institutions. Policies, institutions and activities which create common ground for mutual intercultural understanding, empathy and shared aspirations are valorized. The results achieved by the first four models, including the multicultural policy model, have been limited to very specific community settings and often proved insufficient to address the needs nowadays of heterogeneous urban communities. The intercultural approach has been increasingly seen as a way of urban community governance and space planning, given its recognition of ethnic differences and valorization of common ground for mutual intercultural understanding, empathy and shared aspirations.

Intercultural urban strategy: policy dimensions So far, the highest level of intercultural approach implementation has been achieved by the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Intercultural Cities Programme. Founded in 2008 during the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, today the programme numbers more than 50 cities all over the world. By intercultural is understood that the city has a diverse population of people with different origins, nationalities, languages, religions or beliefs. Most of its citizens regard diversity as an asset, accepting that all cultures change as they meet each other in public space. The intercultural city officials publicly advocate respect for diversity and a pluralistic city identity. The city actively combats prejudice and discrimination and ensures equal opportunities for all by adapting its governance structures, institutions and services to the needs of a diverse population, without compromising the principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law (Wood 2009). In the context of the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities Programme, the intercultural approach is applied in all cities participating in the programme. The intercultural approach usually includes the adoption of the intercultural urban management strategy – or intercultural city strategy – and an introduction or reformulation of policies related to the needs of the city’s diverse communities. The implementation of the intercultural urban management strategy is usually accompanied by the establishment of relevant governance mechanisms and institutions that work to ensure inclusion and equality.

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Implementation of the intercultural urban strategy under the Intercultural Cities Programme focuses on the following main policy dimensions: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

Education and training Urban public space Housing and neighbourhoods Urban safety Business and employment Economy and income generation Art and sports Public services and civic administration Media and communication International relations

Essentially, all these policy dimensions are not new to urban communities. Yet, in intercultural cities, they are reviewed from an intercultural perspective or ‘lens’, i.e. with regard to their impact on cultural identity, mutual perceptions between ethnic communities and the nature of their relationships. For instance, as a result of the application of the intercultural ‘lens’ in the field of education, initiatives to reinforce the intercultural impact of the school system are encouraged; they address the range of elements and factors – from the diversity of the physical appearance of schools to the educational content and the relationship between school and the wider community. Application of the intercultural perspective in the area of urban planning emphasizes the importance of public spaces, as they are used by most citizens and thus raise the possibility for cross-cultural interaction. Well managed and animated public spaces can become an embodiment of the city’s intercultural intentions, and even intercultural solidarity. Thus, it is important that urban space policies account for, and reflect, the diversity of the urban population, encourage intercultural exchange, social interaction, and employ flexible and sufficiently diversified techniques in space planning, to accommodate nonWestern participation styles and non-verbal forms of expression. Appropriateness and efficiency of these policy dimensions for intercultural strategy implementation have been tested by a range of cities/CoE Programme participants in Western and Eastern Europe which are striving, each in accordance with its history and circumstances, to adopt a positive approach to diversity and manage it as an asset. The collective input of these cities has contributed thoughtful reflections and examples of good practice have shaped a unique approach to migrant/minority integration called intercultural integration. The Intercultural Cities Programme webpage1 is regularly updated with examples of good practice of policy implementation by intercultural cities

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participating in the programme. These examples are grouped by the elements of the intercultural city strategy,2 which include education, public space, social services, housing and neighbourhood, business and economy, arts and sports, young people, mediation and conflict resolution, language services, media, international policy, governance, leadership and citizenship. By way of example, the successful experiences in ‘public space’ of the participating cities of Tilburg (Netherlands), Berlin Neuko¨lln (Germany) and Barcelona (Spain) are displayed in Box 3.1. In addition to the separately presented examples of best practice of intercultural policy implementation, a broad-spectrum analysis of the performance of the intercultural city policy elements, either as a group or for

Box 3.1: Intercultural City Programme – successful examples in ‘public space’ Tilburg, Netherlands: Public space as a platform for education, exchange and creativity Recently established in the city, House of the World became a meeting place for new people and ideas. The house is a unique experimental garden for multicultural meetings, a source of inspiration for people who want to do their best for a tolerant world. It is a platform for education and exchange, for debate, expositions, movies and creative activities. Refugees work in its restaurant. Another example is the Round Table House, which is an inter-religious centre in Tilburg-North. In this house residents meet for discussions of the questions they have, e.g. about religion and society. People from all different religions can organize their meetings in this house. In this way, understanding of cultural differences and social cohesion is promoted and stimulated. Berlin Neuko¨lln, Germany: Redesigning a city centre considering intercultural diversity Neuko¨lln has the chance to be the first place in Germany to redesign a city centre in a way that acknowledges cultural diversity. The City Council of Berlin Neuko¨lln was awarded by the German Federal Government the title ‘Place of Diversity’ and with this sends a message against right-wing extremism and for diversity and tolerance. The place-name sign ‘Neuko¨lln – Place of Diversity’ is set up visibly on the square in front of the underground station ‘Britz-Su¨d’. Barcelona, Spain: Participative approach to the urban planning The city authorities tend to go deeper in the practice of participative citizenship through adapting urban policy approaches so as to ensure that they represent the socio-cultural diversity in the target city areas. The increasing cultural diversity of the city has brought about new ways of being and using public spaces, streets, squares, amenities and shops. This is how a renewed definition of the public space – spaces for relations – came into being as an integral part of the idea of the city, where public space becomes a place for meeting, exchange and ‘generation’ of citizenship. Thus, the city administrators work to assure a dialogue between urban planning representatives and citizens through inter-group roundtables that involve a committee for public spaces, committees for coexistence and an inter-group committee for immigration. While creating bridges for dialogue, these roundtables help to promote and standardize bilateral relations in urban space development and planning.

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all of the programme’s participating cities, can be performed based on the information collected from the city administrators or managers. Obviously, different cities perform differently in various policy areas, yet the importance of the above listed policy elements – dimensions – for intercultural approach implementation remains evident across the cities. Policy elements such as business and economy, sports and arts, and youth perform considerably better across the analysed (quantitatively) cities. Additional qualitative inquiries also show that productive involvement of public institutions and business organizations, local NGOs and community associations, the media and a variety of youth organizations, in the implementation of intercultural strategy today is evidence that the cities’ coordinated structures for empowerment of their diverse communities, and for the implementation of relevant intercultural policy dimensions, already exists. Sustainability of these coordinated structures – as a necessary condition for endurable development of heterogeneous communities – depends on the widespread understanding of diversity as an asset and as a source of innovation, creativity and growth. The will of community members and city administrators to make necessary changes to meet the needs and requirements of a diverse population is another determinant of the endurable development of diverse communities.

Conclusion In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that, even though the importance of the above listed policy dimensions for intercultural approach implementation is evident across the intercultural cities (through their best practice examples and statistical information collected), empirical evidence is not yet sufficient to scientifically justify their aptness and efficiency. This is true also for the reason that the intercultural urban strategy implementation is comparatively new, and thus the time-frame of its implementation does not allow for a profound (time-series, for example) analysis by social scientists. Further continuous scholarly inquiry is necessary to test the efficiency and aptness of the policy dimensions of the intercultural urban strategy implementation, in particular in diverse geographical contexts. The first step in this direction has been already made in the recent meta-review by Khovanova-Rubicondo and Pinelli (2012) of a number of studies focusing on aspects related to the intercultural cities approach elements, concepts, and settings, including education and intercultural integration; diversity management and governance; urban space planning; public service provision in mixed urban communities (which includes, among other things, housing and neighbourhood policies, security and policing); social cohesion; conflict

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resolution; and the employment impact of immigration. The meta-analytic assessment provides also in addition a detailed list of the studies reviewed, including a synopsis and an indication of an area for which the benefits of cultural diversity are described in a given study. The next step could best be accomplished on the basis of an expanded collaborative research. For instance, a relevant international level project could bring together scholars from around the world allowing them to investigate the above described intercultural policy dimensions from the point of view of their applicability and efficiency in intercultural urban strategy implementation in their respective countries. This would result in broadly tested, solid and meaningful conclusions/recommendations for policy makers and city administrators, not only on how better to manage diverse urban communities and spaces, but also on what policy dimensions can be viewed as the most efficient in the field of cultural diversity management in different urban communities, varying for example, in their size, diversity, economic characteristics, time of creation, age groups, level of public services provided, etc.

Notes 1. See http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/culture/Cities/Default_en.asp for more details. 2. See http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/culture/Cities/guidance_en.asp for more details.

PART II INTERCULTURAL CITIES? EVIDENCE FROM PRACTICE

CHAPTER 4 THE MEANS AND MEANING OF INTERCULTURALISM IN AFRICA'S URBAN AGE Loren B. Landau

The promise and premise of integration Multiculturalism has been declared dead across Europe and North America.1 Although often criticized, its end at the hands of right-leaning governments has proved disorienting. If not multiculturalism, then what? Resurgent assimilationism may satisfy conservative fantasies, but is unlikely to be realized in the communities where newly arrived refugees and immigrants find themselves (see Snel et al. 2006: 285). Throughout the world, new immigrants and domestic migrants occupy a world only loosely structured by state social policy or dominant cultural norms. Across the less formally institutionalized countries of the South, emerging immigrant gateways are characterized by transience and ongoing mobility without rooted institutions, people or central organizing principles. The sociality and solidarity likely to form in such spaces may be best described as communities of convenience – some cosmopolitan, some conflictual – driven more by pragmatic responses to the quotidian challenges of particular sites and times than a grand imagination of an integrated society.2 Only by purging our gaze of our own normative objectives, whether assimilationist fantasy or cosmopolitan utopianism,3 can we begin to understand these interactions, the conditions producing them, and their potential consequences for our societies and our politics. That is what this chapter tries to do. Using examples drawn from neighbourhoods in rapidly urbanizing African cities – sites I term ‘urban estuaries’ – this chapter helps reveal cracks in the ethical foundations on which integration debates are often premised. The first

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is a clear distinction between hosts and guests. The second is migrants’ desire to be part of a place-bound community; if that is too strong, then the desire and willingness to be fully part of one rooted in their place of current residence, be it neighbourhood, city or country. Doing so draws our attention to the importance of the spatial and temporal dimensions in which ‘intercultural’ regimes develop.4 Much as we must reconsider our language of migrants and hosts, so too must we rethink our reliance on a language of national integration. Instead we must pan more widely and focus more locally to reveal both forms of multi-sited belonging and the complex dynamics and engagements of specific sites where people negotiate multiple, and often conflicting, histories and social positions (see Bhatia and Ram 2001: 2; Spire 2009: 141). What we see there is confusing and often corresponds poorly with our normative principles, however conservative or cosmopolitan they may be. The rest of the chapter proceeds through a short discussion of my research methods, approach and the data I employ. It then moves on to a phenomenon I term the ‘urban estuary’: cities, or parts thereof, where the varied migrant trajectories intersect to generate novel forms of social interaction and authority. I then return to the themes outlined above: the distinction between host and migrant, the desirability and possibility of space-bound integration, and the mechanisms through which new socialities are produced. Having largely jettisoned the metric of classical ‘integration’, the chapter concludes by suggesting a variety of other practiced modes of accommodation: markets, tactical cosmopolitanism, and odd forms of ethnic consociationalism.

Data, methods and approach Scholars have much to learn from Africa’s urban estuaries, where the nature of human mobility and intergroup engagement is creating a ‘moment’ when new forms of social organization and ethico-legal orders are being forged. These are not the realization of any grand imagination but the products of street-level pragmatism and tactics. This may not represent the future of migration, integration and interculturalism everywhere, but remarkable levels of heterogeneity, ongoing mobility and translocal loyalties, and the state’s limited authority and reach among the urban poor, are not unique to Africa’s cities. One only needs to look at the American ghettos, the French banlieues or parts of deindustrialized Britain for suitable parallels. This exploratory chapter draws on an ecumenical set of data in illustrating patterns of movement and social interaction. Most of the information reflected here stems from migration-related research in Southern and Eastern Africa – beginning with Johannesburg and expanding to Nairobi and Maputo – undertaken between 2002 and 2011. The survey data were largely generated

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from interviews with 2,211 people in the three cities. These data do not fully represent either the migrant or host populations in any of the sites, let alone the experience of migration and displacement elsewhere on the continent.5 Rather, data collection targeted particular groups of foreigners categorized by nationality. Consequently, the chapter speaks most accurately about these groups. With the exception of Mozambicans included in the Johannesburg survey, the team selected groups – Somalis, Rwandans, Sudanese and Congolese – straddling the line between economic migrants and those who might be considered (in substance, if not in law), forced migrants or displaced persons. Given the lack of reliable statistics on the size of the foreign population, its composition, or, in many cases, on domestic population dynamics in any of the cities, effectively weighting the observation in the data in order to obtain a good representation of the reality is almost impossible. While each of the sites included here is a destination and transit point for domestic and international migration, together they express a diversity of social, economic and political characteristics that gives me the confidence to make modest generalization about trends within estuarial zones, or what others might call urban ‘gateways’ or ‘arrival cities’ (Singer et al. 2008; Saunders 2011). Moreover, they are each destination and transit points for a ‘mixed flow’ of refugees, immigrants, circular migrants, and people transiting to communities and cities elsewhere. Their diversity nevertheless reflects a variety of experiences to afford the basis for the kind of conceptual outline I provide.

Urban estuaries and elusive hosts Revealing the future of interculturalism first demands parsing presumptions behind contemporary debates surrounding migrants in ‘Western’ society and the meaning of hospitality. Only by rethinking the fundamental actors in the integration process – migrants and hosts – can we begin to understand the engagements likely to appear in the coming decades. In ancient Greek, laws clearly defining foreigners – xenos – drew firm distinctions between the rights of outsiders and citizens (see Westmoreland 2008). In this binary, as with most in the subsequent millennia, the terms of engagement are to be determined by hosts, while arrivants choose between compliance and turning back. Somewhat more recently Kant reflected on the position of the outsider, in trying ‘to overcome some of the limits imposed by the division of the earth’s surface by national boundaries’ (Dikec 2009: 5). In Perpetual Peace, he outlines two rules of hospitality intended to guide interactions in the age of the nation-state (see Brown 2010; Benhabib 2002; Naas 2002). The details are not important here. What matters are the primary actors occupying his argument: hosts and states. Although Levinas and Derrida famously critique

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Kant for the limits his ethics place on guests, they nonetheless continue to speak of hosts and guests or variants thereof (Westmoreland 2008: 8). Indeed, for Derrida, one of the greatest failings of Kant is the continued power the host exercises in naming new arrivals and placing them within an existing socio-legal or cognitive schema. For Derrida – as it presumably was for Kant, the Greeks, Taylor, Beck and other theorists – it proves difficult to comprehend situations where distinctions between hosts and guests dissolve and the ability/right to structure engagements falter. Perhaps that is a slight misrepresentation, for Derrida does describe a conditional of ‘unconditional hospitality’, a hospitality without limits. But, he argues, such a situation cannot exist or be sustained because it ‘turns the home inside out’ (Westmoreland 2008: 6) or, in Miller’s summary, ‘A host is a guest, and a guest is a host.’ For Derrida, such a condition effectively denies the possibility of identifying hosts or the role they should play. Moreover, it robs hosts of their powers to structure engagement and thereby denies individual and collective sovereignty: it ‘opens up the possibility for contamination in that it calls for no governing body such as a sovereign state or master of a home to establish laws and authority over another subject’ (Westmoreland 2006: 8). While only the most utopian cosmopolitans envision a world without host-guest divisions, such distinctions are already dissolving in Africa’s urban estuaries. Snel et al. (2006: 28) rightfully note that the language of integration generally refers to the incorporation of new elements (immigrants) into an existing social system. The question for our age is what happens when the pace of change is such, and levels of heterogeneity become so great, that it makes little logical sense to speak of existing social systems. It is precisely into those environments in which many migrants now arrive. Such sites are effectively ‘urban estuaries’: meeting points of people from various backgrounds, where only some (and often a minority) can sensibly be categorized as ‘hosts’. Moreover, it is not entirely clear that the people arriving wish to establish a place-bound community in the areas where they live. These two factors – the absence of a discernable host and ongoing transience and translocalism – fundamentally shift the terms of our discussion. I will return presently to the implications of this shift, but not before a few words on what is going on. As a result of failing rural economies, conflicts, material inequalities, gentrification and other urban development programmes, people are moving into, out of and through cities in search of profit, protection, and passage elsewhere. The elite and well connected of countries have evacuated inner-city neighbourhoods in favour of new peri-urban estates and gated communities (see UN Habitat 2008; Briggs and Mwamfupe 2000). In their place, rural

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migrants, international migrants, and the ‘upwardly mobile’ urban poor converge. Elsewhere, once sparsely occupied peri-urban areas have become stations and destinations for people moving out of the city and those first coming to it. Figure 4.1 graphically illustrates the extraordinary pace of these changes in Diepsloot, an area just outside of Johannesburg that was farmland only a little more than 15 years ago.6 Similar transformations are occurring on the edges (and sometimes in the middle) of Kinshasa, Nairobi, Maputo and elsewhere.

Figure 4.1 Transformation of Diepsloot, South Africa 1999 – 2009 (Source: City of Johannesburg)

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Much like natural estuaries, where the interaction between tides and rivers creates unique and dynamic ecosystems, these urban gateways generate distinct socio-political forms through the multiple movements and dynamics taking place within them. In these zones, ethnic/national heterogeneity and cultural pastiche are often the empirical norms, not exceptions (see Larkin 2004; Mbembe 2001; Simone 2004; Zlotnick 2006). Among other effects, these forces are generating greater disparities of wealth, language, and nationality, along with diverse gender roles, life trajectories, and intergenerational tensions in both migrant-sending and receiving communities. Through geographic movement – into, out of, and within cities – urban spaces are increasingly the loci of economic and normative ties, with home villages and diasporic communities spread (and spreading) across the continent and beyond (Geschiere 2005; Malauene 2004; Diouf 2000). While we must be wary of speaking in metaphors – migrants are often equated to influxes, tsunamis and other dangerous aquatic phenomena – the ‘estuary’ helps capture the distinctiveness of a given space shaped by multiple agents bound largely by their transience and marginalization.7 For present purposes, the question is: How, in such spaces, can we continue to speak of hosts and migrants? And without bounded and identifiable political communities to set the term of engagement, what might integration come to mean? Table 4.1 illustrates the degree to which the cities in questions are, indeed, cities of strangers. It is also worth noting that people often remain highly mobile once in a city. While these figures misrepresent the total movements across a conurbation, given that sampling focused on ‘gateway’ neighbourhoods and estuarial zones, they nonetheless demonstrate the degree to which migrant populations are present and why such mobility offers resistance to the consolidation of community. Connections and regular shifts between rural (or peri-urban) and urban areas are a critical factor in slowing the emergence of urban regulatory regimes and ‘traditional’ forms of solidarity. For many moving for work, the primary motivation is profit and the need to extract urban resources to subsidize the Table 4.1

Percentage of population resident in city by time Johannesburg

Maputo

Nairobi

24.5 19.7 34.5 847

17.5 21.5 40.9 609

10.6 16.3 39.6 755

Years spent in city , 2 years 2 –5 years 5 –10 years N Source: Author’s survey data.

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Translocal financial connections by city

Native-born local Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant N

Johannesburg

Maputo

Nairobi

41.6 58.9 53.7 43.3 847

55.6 26.1 54.2 23.3 609

62.3 33.0 57.5 8.6 755

Source: Author’s survey data.

‘real’ life they live elsewhere. Indeed, in many instances spouses and children remain elsewhere while single men and women earn money in the cities to sustain them (see Table 4.2). Although urban residents may establish second urban families, in many instances social, ethnic and political ties to rural areas prevent full social integration into urban communities. People’s intention to retire or move elsewhere further discourages financial and emotional investments in urban areas. In some instances, significant numbers of the foreign-born population – or non-local citizens – arrive in the city seeking protection from conflict and persecution, with the intention to return home or move on when conditions allow. This helps generate a kind of permanent temporariness in which they actively resist incorporation (Kihato 2013; Landau 2006; also Malauene 2004). For many, cities have become ‘places of flows’, where rooting and local representation is not the goal (see Castells 1996). Moreover, the burdens and binding that connections and political participation offer are often something to be avoided (Kankonde 2010; Madsen 2004). Given the insecurity of land tenure, the possibility of violence, and ongoing economic deprivation, people often maintain feet in multiple sites without firmly rooting themselves in any (see Freemantle 2010). These populations deeply challenge the emergence of central social authorities or strong territorially bound sets of allegiances demarcating Table 4.3

Expectation of residence in two years (percentage)

Native-born local Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant N Source: Author’s survey data.

Johannesburg

Maputo

Nairobi

50.0 68.9 45.0 43.2 847

76.8 65.2 65.6 55.5 609

75.4 44.4 69.3 52.5 755

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insiders and outsiders, hosts and guests. Although Africa’s cities have been the sites where state powers are most evident (Herbst 2000; Bratton, 2006), formal or constitutional protections and prohibitions often make little difference in people’s daily lives and interactions as they are not supported by muscular enforcement (see, for example, Swilling et al. 2003). That formal citizenship and rights are rarely attached to significant state-provided benefits (e.g., education, health, water, housing) only further limits the practical distinctions between legal residents and those without such recognition (see Landau and Duponchel 2011). Even in South Africa, arguably sub-Saharan Africa’s most ‘legalized’ country, access to housing, land, work and services is negotiated on the ground through a panoply of rationalities and calculations, sometimes involving laws and state actors but not always in predictable ways (cf. Hansen and Stepputat 2010). That is what the process of integration will look like. What it produces is something we have yet to fully understand.

Interculturalism, integration and authority Where does this leave us? If Bulley is right that ‘hospitality requires some notion of an “at home” for its possible performance,’ then what is integration when we see multiple homes or where everyone is both host and visitor? (Bulley 2006). Is this the atomized and anomic disorder that Kaplan (1994) Table 4.4

Organizational affiliations by city and migration status Johannesburg

Maputo

Nairobi

Belongs to religious organization Native-born local Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant

66.3 54.4 52.8 48.8

73.7 56.5 72.9 72.6

92.0 53.0 92.8 20.1

Belongs to cultural organization Native-born local l Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant

9.0 22.2 7.4 6.7

8.1 17.4 3.1 2.6

24.6 4.4 20.9 4.9

Belongs to credit association Native-born local Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant

9.0 23.3 17.6 13.2

40.4 26.1 37.5 29.5

39.9 9.6 32.7 3.2

Source: Author’s survey data.

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describes and Durkheimians fear? Derrida proffers the term ‘hostipitality’, to connate the enmity such situations of coerced hospitality tend to generate. Spatialized or ethnicized chauvinism is a possible outcome and unfortunately is common across Africa as it is elsewhere in the world (see Nieftagodien 2011; Misago 2011; Geschiere 2009). But violence and overt, effective exclusion is the exception, not the norm. The remainder of this chapter schematically reviews the mechanisms and ethos of interculturalism that are emerging within my ‘estuarial’ research. This is work in its early stages, so the ideas below are speculative and not yet fully theorized. Underlying my analysis is the question of how varied forms of belonging and systems of allocating rights and privilege are taking shape in environments with weak – if any – divisions between hosts and guests. I begin by considering broad indicators of social capital, a precursor to the formation of bounded (if not spatially defined) identities. I then explore the role of religious affiliations before touching on other forms of membership and organization: consociational gangsterism, tactical cosmopolitanism, and ultimately (if speculatively) a kind of market-based liberalism. Whether religious, cultural or economic, collective participation is a potentially important mechanism for inculcating a sense of common purpose and for forging the social connections necessary to suffuse a population with common perspectives, values and ethics. It is also necessary if we are to speak of groups as somehow negotiating as hosts, guests, or something in between. Table 4.5

Perception of trust Johannesburg

Maputo

Nairobi

Have trust in native born Native-born local Foreign-born local Native-born migrant Foreign-born migrant

75.6 11.6 77.9 25.0

50.7 57.9 62.5 33.7

52.1 25.7 65.7 26.3

Have trust in foreigners Native-born local Foreign-born local Domestic migrant Foreign-born migrant

33.3 32.9 37.4 41.2

29.8 34.8 36.9 46.3

22.6 27.8 22.4 41.1

Have trust in co-nationals (foreign born only) Local Migrant

26.6 48.6

36.8 48.6

49.6 48.6

Source: Author’s survey data.

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However, given the population’s volatility and orientation, social networks are often spread thinly across many people and places and there are remarkably low levels of trust between ethnic and national groups. More surprising is the limited trust and bonds within them. Among neither migrants nor the ostensible host population can we speak of a community or set of overlapping institutions that is engaged in a collective project. These may eventually cohere into some form of widespread norms or implicit sense of a collective enterprise, but note the population dynamics and limited engagement with common institutions that appear to be engaged in a collective project. Tables 4.4 and 4.5 illustrate the remarkably low levels of institutional affiliations and trust across the three cities in which we conducted research. Religion is the one notable exception to relative absence of social organization among the populations under discussion. Throughout Europe and Asia, religious institutions have played central roles in binding populations to each other and to place (and in excluding everyone else). Where the state has faint influence, they can serve to help generate alternative subjectivities and publics. However, a combination of factors, including the increasing heterogeneity of the urban population, means these institutions play a significantly different role in African cities. Among the Nairobi citizenry whom we surveyed, for example, 65.6 per cent were Protestant, 30.6 per cent Catholic, 2.7 per cent Muslim, with only 0.3 per cent claiming no religion. In Johannesburg, the sample was 59.7 per cent Protestant, 18.8 per cent reporting no religion, 14.1 per cent Catholic, and 6.8 per cent Muslim. (The foreign born population in Johannesburg was more evenly divided, with 39 per cent Protestants, 28.5 per cent Catholics, 26 per cent Muslims, and 6.3 per cent claiming no religion.) While urban Africans are strongly religious, the denominational divisions within those affiliations – and the often fractured and conflictual relationships among them – can serve more to divide than create a unified network with which to disseminate messages of unity and sanctions to achieve it. Along with the sheer diversity of competing claims for religion and belonging, many churches’ liturgy further undermines the possible emergence of a territorially bound or state-centred subjectivity. This is perhaps most visible in the ever expanding pool of Pentecostal churches operating within Africa’s urban centres. At one level, these institutions offer the possibility of bridging barriers between various groups. As one Zimbabwean migrant in Johannesburg stated: ‘In the church, they help us in many ways, no matter where you come from, they just help you.’ While they offer a sense of salvation in the form of ‘health and wealth’, they are distinctly post-territorial in their outlook. Space does not allow me to reflect the diversity of testimonies and preaching included in even one 5 hour Mass, save to say many build on their strong connections to institutions in Nigeria,

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Ghana, Congo and the United States. For some of the churches’ founders – typically migrants themselves – the pulpit is a gateway to a global social imaginary. In the words of one Nigerian pastor, at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles church in Johannesburg: ‘Africa is shaped like a pistol, Nigeria is the trigger and South Africa is the mouth from where you can shoot out the word of god.’ For others, they have been sent on a mission to Kenya, Mozambique or elsewhere to help counter post-colonial malaise – including corruption and state oppression – with a message of truth. Moreover, while they may preach tolerance, many of these churches generate a set of translocal and, often, antipolitical tenets of belonging. Their fragmentary, and often conflictual, sources of religious authority further serve to deny the state – or indeed even a single church – the possibility of naming what is good and the direction the collective should follow. Religion, at least as described above, provides a mechanism that allows people to be in a place but not of it: to be neither host nor guest: a form of ‘tactical cosmopolitanism’ (Landau and Freemantle, 2010). Recognizing ascendant forms or exclusion levied against them, migrants draw on a variegated language of belonging that makes claims to the city while positioning them in an ephemeral, superior and unrooted condition where they can escape localized social and political obligations. This is not necessarily grounded in normative ideas of ‘openness’ or intended to promote universal values. Rather, migrants practically and rhetorically draw on various, often competing, systems of rights and rhetoric to shallowly insinuate themselves in the networks and spaces needed for meeting their goals. These include Pan-Africanism, human rights rhetoric, and the language of the elite cosmopolitanism: of being global players in the new age. Unlike transnationalism, which is often about belonging to multiple communities – or shuttling between them – these are more ‘decentred’ tactics that emphasize individualism, generality and universality (cf. Pogge 2002; Roudometof 2005; Vertovec 2006; also Simmel 1964). In Ongata Rongai, a rapidly growing region on Nairobi’s periphery, we are beginning to document remarkable forms of market-based cosmopolitanism.8 Although technically outside the city, the settlement’s proximity to main transport routes and the availability of land has made it an attractive space for migrants moving out of Nairobi as well as for those moving towards it. The land’s ‘original’ inhabitants were ethnic Maasai but they have largely evacuated, selling off their land and taking their cattle elsewhere. In their stead, groups from all over Kenya have moved in. Although the Kikuyu are the largest group numerically, they by no means dominate the space or make exclusive claims to it. Indeed, no one does. In stark contrast to sites across urban Kenya, there seems to be a remarkably high level of ethnic mixing and

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peaceful conviviality. Apart from Ole Kasasi neighbourhood, which had become the preferred destination for the Somalis (Kenyan and Somali nationals), access to residential housing and business premises appears to be determined almost completely by market mechanisms. In interviews with officials and landowners, they all spoke of the need to ensure ethnic mixing and some level of conviviality. This is not a form of integration or interculturalism managed by the state, nor by any other identifiable actor. Rongai’s market-driven schema does not rely on regular coercive threats to maintain the order but instead is a response to violent chauvinism seen nearby. Rather, recognizing the dangers of ethnic chauvinism in a space that no one group can effectively dominate, residents have developed a kind of liberal ethos which provides everyone equal access. This ethos is founded on unwritten and diffuse rules based largely on market principles. Although free markets notoriously and effectively disguise inequality, power and other restrictions on freedoms, in contrast to deep seated spatio-ethnic or nationalist exclusion, they reflect the kind of liberation in a Marxist sense. By allowing people to retain ethnic, religious, or forms of extra-local loyalties – both religion and ethnicity remain highly visible in Rongai – residents may also inadvertently be generating a kind of radical multiculturalism, a ‘pluralisation of possibilities of being on the same territory’ (Campbell 1998: 162). Were he still alive, Levinas would undoubtedly be pleased at what he would see in Ongata Rongai: if we all are sojourners, he argued, then on what basis can we exclude?

Final notes on the future of integration and the intercultural city If nothing else, the paragraphs above suggest some of the possible means through which long-term residents, domestic migrants and non-citizens are simultaneously finding their ways in a new (and ever-changing) social landscape. Even domestic migrants may have as little in common with the people they find in the city as those coming from across international boundaries. The rapid expansion of urban populations – and its specific geography which tends to concentrate migration and urban growth in particular urban gateway neighbourhoods – calls into question the use of the term ‘local’ or ‘host’ to talk about the destination areas and what interculturalism means in practice. It also suggests that the mechanisms through which rights to space and other resources are rationed are varied. The ethics behind them – when regulatory systems are coherent enough for them to be identified – are similarly complex, and deserving of careful consideration and attention. While extreme, the hybridity, transience and translocalism described above are also not unique to African cities. Gray (2006: 130) argues that while

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European policies typically portray host populations – in her case Irish citizens – as a largely undifferentiated ‘society’, they are in fact ‘a multiplicity of coexisting lifestyles and grouping’. Some may be the poor and marginal who, while decidedly British, no longer subscribe to a single national narrative. The riots that took place over the summer in 2011 point to this possibility. The multiplicity of lifestyles will also increasingly include previous immigrant groups whose allegiances to Britain may themselves be frail or faint. It is for this very reason that Levitt and Glick-Schiller (2007) argue for an analytical perspective on society that is not immediately bound by geography but which allows us to consider other principles as the basis for integration and belonging. This does not mean abandoning the importance of space but, rather, considering the relationships of the people occupying it to each other, to others, and to a range of territories. Given the multiplicity of trajectories and emic communal affiliations, simply mapping what is emerging is elusive and bewildering; speaking of what should be seems foolish. What I can say is that the foundations for modern ‘ontopological’ or Weberian forms of territorially bounded identity, all preconditions for a Kantian or even Derridian ethics of hospitality, are increasingly cracked and crumbling. The forms of individual or communal recognition that we depend on in talking about integration are often more ascribed fictions than identifiable social manifestations. Without a centralized authority or coercive force to direct an emergent, practical ethics, we see instead a varied range of real and existing interculturalism which can piece together stands of cosmopolitanism and communalism; or tolerance and territorial tyranny in ways that have hitherto seemed almost unimaginable. These communities of convenience need not be logically consistent since they make few claims to universalism or, indeed, to an underlying logic. They are practical and pragmatic – if not always equitable – modes of engagement. Whether these eventually crystallize or bind current and future residents of given sites (or spaces affected by them) remains to be seen. But we will only be able to see them for what they are if we shed our own normativities and begin to recognize that even the language of integration evokes elements of social and political authority that, if present, may be only fleeting. We see here what Derrida termed a ‘perpetual uneasiness’ (in Bulley 2006: 657), where coming to rest – a precondition of a negotiated settlement – is all but impossible.

Notes 1. See, for example, David Cameron’s Speech to the Munich Security Conference on 5 February 2011 (http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference/); also Buchanan, 2010; Harrison, 2008; Munck, 2008.

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2. I wish to credit Laavanya Kathiravelu for introducing me to the idea of ‘communities of convenience’. 3. This responds to calls by Skrbis et al. 2004:132. See also Beck 2009. 4. Such an approach is suggested by Dikec et al. 2009. 5. The data used here were generated through collaboration with Tufts University, University of Nairobi, and Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. The statistical analysis included here was either conducted by the author or draws on two, co-authored papers (see Landau and Duponchel 2011; Madhavan and Landau 2011). 6. For more on Diepsloot’s history, see Harber 2011 and Bearak 2011. 7. Malkki (1995) speaks explicitly of the dangerous use of metaphor in describing refugees and other migrants. 8. The discussion of Ongata Rongai draws heavily from Otieno 2011.

CHAPTER 5 NEW RELIGIOUS SPACES OF DIFFERENCE:RESOURCES AND RISKS IN THE NEW ITALIAN RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE Adriano Cancellieri

Introduction Following globalized processes of migration, the emergence of new religious groups in the European urban landscape leads us to re-evaluate the meanings of the urban texture, bringing about new, varied forms of interaction and negotiation between native inhabitants and migrants1 (Peach 2002). The ways in which migrants experience religion in European urban spaces are multifaceted: mainly through the ‘construction’ of new places of worship (e.g. Muslim prayer rooms and mosques, Hindu temples and Buddhist pagodas, Pentecostal Nigerian churches); but also through spatial practices extending beyond the ‘officially sacred’, such as rituals performed in public spaces (Kong 2005), or everyday, informal, often banal religious practices carried out in the home (Kong 2002) or in public spaces (Valins 2003). Religion forms an important context through which many migrants ‘live their lives, forge a sense (indeed an ethics) of self, and make and perform their different geographies’ (Holloway and Valins 2002: 6). Hence, in order to better understand transformations of the urban space, we should carefully consider religious practices. As Corrigan (2008: 160) highlights, ‘religion conflates the visible and invisible, the world of the senses and the world of the imagination’. It involves both the physical, material occupation of space and representations

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of space; both the lived experience of people who see, hear, taste, touch, and smell consecrated spaces, and symbolization of the space, that is the community’s investment in the imagined and invisible territories of religion. Urban studies has overlooked religion for too long, considering it a decreasing phenomenon in urban contexts and neglecting to regard religion as a transforming dimension in contemporary cities. At the same time, religious scholars have often ‘failed’ to acknowledge the city as a resource or bond for religious practices, considering urban spaces as passive frames in the background of their analysis (Cancellieri and Saint-Blancat 2012). In recent years, we have witnessed an important interdisciplinary attempt to theorize space and the religious together (Kong 2001; Holloway and Valins 2002; Knott 2005; Go´mez-Barris and Iraza´bal 2009; Johnson and Werbner 2010), as well as to focus attention on the role of religion in the lives of immigrants (Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000; Miller et al., 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2007; Stepick et al. 2009). This work falls within this line of research, underlining the importance of the interaction between space and religiousness by investigating the resurgence of religion due to migration flows and the vibrancy of new religious spatial practices from an urban perspective. In particular, it focuses on the religious diversity generated by migrants who are creating new Christian groups (Eade 2012). As recently underlined by Levitt (2012: 3): ‘Christianity is not a one-sizefits-all category’, insofar as the traditions that migrants bring with them hardly fit into one homogeneous concept of Christianity. Accordingly, this chapter addresses the ways in which new Christian groups appropriate, use and give meaning to space in the Italian context. Italy became a country of immigration at the end of the 1970s, years after many other Western European countries. The city of Padua, the location for our case study, in the north-eastern part of Italy, has a very high percentage of migrant residents within the overall population (15.7 per cent2), significantly above the Italian average (7.4 per cent3). The local Catholic Church in Padua is hosting many Christian newcomers through the mediation of the ‘Pastoral Care of Migrants’: Central and Eastern European, Asian and African migrants who are radically changing the symbolic geographies of local Christianity. In Italy, as in other European countries such as Spain or France (Flot-Fresnoza and Pe´coud 2007), the Catholic Church mediates migrants’ primary social relationships with the local context and plays a supportive role in the negotiation of the collective expression of religion. The Church’s ownership of real estate, its ‘spatial power’, implies that most religious groups looking for access to the urban space have to negotiate with it in order to find a place of worship or to celebrate their rituals in public. This emergence of religious pluralism is particularly relevant in a historically more mono-confessional

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state (Kong 2010) such as Italy, characterized by the dominant position of Roman Catholicism. The chapter examines new Catholic groups in Padua and the multifaceted spaces and spatial practices they have created, as well as their relationship with the dominant local Church and society in general. In particular it examines the risks and resources of these emergent spatialities, underlining the importance of giving visibility to both and of focusing the research and policy on the relationship between religion and space.

Pastoral care of migrants Over the past 30 years, migrants in Padua have constituted 11 Catholic groups, organized on linguistic and national bases, with the help of the local Catholic Church. Each of these religious groups has a specific place of worship, generally a local church no longer used by Italians or shared at different times with the local Italian population, and guided by a pastor from their country of origin, celebrating Mass in their own language. Different organizational forms exist within these migrant groups, from the ‘missio cum cura animarum’, in which the powers and authority of a parish priest are granted to their religious minister, even if the religious group does not have the organization and structure of a ’real’ parish; to the more commonplace chaplaincy, in which the chaplain, subordinated to a local priest, is charged with the official duty of acting as the migrants’ spiritual guide. In Padua there are small groups such as the Albanian Chaplaincy (where fewer than 100 people gather every Sunday); medium-sized groups such as the Filipino Chaplaincy, which hosts more than 200 worshippers every week and is made up of many different subgroups that gather together several different days a week; and large groups, such as the ‘Africans’, who are the only migrant group of the city organized as a ‘missio cum cura animarum’ that directly manages many educational activities. The ‘African’ group is subdivided into French-speaking Africans (200 – 300 people), who meet in one church, and English-speaking Africans (more than 500 hundred people, mainly Nigerians), who celebrate in another larger and more central church. These places, which represent a departure from the parish strategy of serving a local settled population, become a meaningful point of reference for many migrants often living in very precarious social, economic and legal conditions. In this sense, we could say that they serve to help heal physical and emotional wounds (Irazabal and Dyrness 2007). Sunday Mass celebrations in these new religious spaces often encourage lively participation through musical forms and emotional engagement. In the

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case of African and Filipino Catholic groups, during the rituals, the priest and the devoted shake, dance, lift their arms, move their hips, sway back and forth: mind, body, and spirit become one, in some ways very similar to the rituals of the Pentecostal movements, as brilliantly analysed by Butticci (2012). These expressive modes of worship, which create a ‘collective effervescence’, are very different from dominant local Catholic practices. Indeed, this sort of sacred ‘sensory’ experience tends to be perceived by official Catholicism as non-religious entertainment, or, in some cases, essentially as a ‘Filipino/Asian’ or an ‘African thing’; and not a ‘God thing’ (Butticci, 2012). These new ‘ethnically-organized’ religious spaces are also multifunctional. They are safe havens where it is possible to gather together and socialize within a general context that is often perceived as hostile, as well as places for exchanging goods, information and services, sometimes employment agencies, some others commercial spaces (Ley 2008; Paerregaard 2008; Ba¨ckstro¨m et al. 2010). A Romanian woman and weekly churchgoer clearly illustrates the broader function of these spaces beyond the religious: At first when I came to Italy I didn’t know the language, I couldn’t understand. When I went to bed at night my head was spinning, I would cry because the entire day was just stress. I couldn’t find the courage to open my mouth, I was afraid of making a mistake. I was silent for such a long time, trapped inside myself, that I thought: Am I healthy or insane? I was panicking, I was in shock, and I got out of it by coming to church and finding other Romanians. And I started talking to the others: Where are you from? Who are you? And that’s how I made some friends . . . really, I was like a wild beast! I was completely closed off. You go crazy, lose your memory, you become a wild beast in the home! (N., woman, 35 years old, 5 May 2010). These forms of re-territorialization through religious spaces are also symbols and materializations of migrants’ permanence in their new communities and their belonging to the city (Cancellieri, 2015). They can be a means of empowerment for migrant populations and a springboard for social inclusion in society as a whole. At the same time, they can also represent exclusion and/or enclavization. These religious groups are formed on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or language, and favour social relationships between people who are ‘alike’, creating an exclusive and particularistic space. Such groups are strongly connected with their homelands, through a complex interplay of centrifugal and centripetal forces (Sarro´ and Me´lice 2010). Furthermore, these religious groups often play a conservative role (see, for example, the intertwining of religion, values and gender in the

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abortion issue analysed in Frisina and Cancellieri 2012) by strengthening traditional leaderships and reinforcing strong boundaries between themselves and the local context. The Pontifical Council for Migrants, the organism of the Catholic Church whose specific task is to organize these different groups, is well aware of the risks of enclavization: ‘Unity in Plurality: the problems’ is the title of the sector of the ‘Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People’4 dedicated to these structures. The following extracts of the Pontifical Council’s Instructions for the Pastoral Care of Migrants illustrate the difficulty in attempting to reach a delicate equilibrium: Pastoral work among migrants thus becomes a service of the Church for the faithful whose language or culture is different from those of the host country, while at the same time it ensures that the foreign communities make their own contribution to the construction of a Church that must be a sign and instrument of unity in the prospect of a renewed humanity. It is this vision that has to be deepened and assimilated also to avoid possible tensions between indigenous parishes and chaplaincies for immigrants, between indigenous presbyters and chaplains/missionaries . . . In the long run this certainly means going beyond pastoral care that is generally mono-ethnic, as both chaplaincies/missions for foreigners and the territorial parishes of host countries have been up to now, this in view of a pastoral approach based on dialogue and constant mutual collaboration . . . Even in such chaplaincies/missions more and more emphasis will have to be laid on interethnic and intercultural relations. The attempt of the local Church, through the Pastoral Care of Migrants, then, is to organize and reinforce these separate groups without creating groups closed off from their external contexts: a very difficult aim to achieve.

Rituals in public space: the Filipino Santacruzan Migrant people experience and perform religion not just in their ‘safe havens’, i.e. their official places of worship, but also sometimes through public rituals. Scholars have analysed many case studies throughout Western countries: Cuban immigrants in their pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami (Tweed 1997), Sufi Muslims marching through Manchester immigrant neighbourhoods (Werbner 2003), Peruvians bringing ‘The Lord of Miracles’ in global metropolis streets outside Peru (Paerregaard 2008), Senegalese on parade in Harlem, New York (Abdullah 2009) and Tamil Hindus sacralizing the streets of London (David 2012). In all cases, migrants have publicly displayed their religious devotion in their new territories and

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transformed public spaces, for a while, in what Salvationists call the ‘Cathedral of the Open Air’. Since 1991, on the last Sunday of May, Filipinos have transformed the city of Padua into their own temporary ‘sacred space’ to celebrate the finding of the Holy Cross, ‘Santa Cruz’ (Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri 2014). The Filipino Santacruzan is a combination of the commemoration of the Empress Helen’s (mother of Constantine the Great) search for the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified (the Holy Cross-Santacruzan) and a procession depicting the Litany of the Blessed Virgin at the end of the Marian May. The festival marks Filipino historical-religious collective memory and devotion. In Padua the procession has evolved over the years and continues to be adapted. The first Santacruzan procession was celebrated by few participants, mainly women, inside the Filipino Chaplaincy’s church. It became increasingly public as the result of the activism of different people. As underlined by one organizer, the Filipino faithful wanted: To gather Filipino people by inviting Filipino communities from different cities to come to Padua to be happy sharing Flores de May and to show that our culture is alive here; that the Bishop allows ‘Catholic’ migrants to present themselves as already part of Italy in a different way than other migrants. This is the reason why we ask the local municipality to have the permission to do the procession in the city centre streets! (A., woman, 25, organizer, 20 February 2011). Since 1996, Padua’s Santacruzan procession has started from the square in front of the old cathedral (Duomo), the Bishop’s Palace, and proceeded down central city streets for about two kilometres before arriving in the Church of the Nativity. Throughout the parade, Filipino migrants colour and sacralize a specific space and time, ‘claiming a space for God and themselves in a new home’ (Tondo 2010: 219). This is a ‘glocal’ performance that has the ability to reconcile multiple belongings. It is a means to exhibit Filipino unity on a public stage (the complex puzzle of ethnic, religious and secular affiliations is left backstage), so it is an ethnic-parochial performance. The parade is also global-cosmopolitan insofar as it engenders a form of continuity between a historically imagined community and its new ‘glocal’ interpretation in its diaspora. Dancing through the streets, ‘migrants inscribe a tangible connection across space to home and family, at the same time transcending religion as private practice to assert a collective identity and public presence’ (Johnson and Werbner 2010: 25). Just as every re-territorialization of a ritual in diaspora, the Santacruzan in Padua is not the static reproduction of an identity. Ritual translocation entails

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cultural renewal and contextual innovation. The public display in central city streets encompasses entrance into an arena of negotiation regarding recognition, acknowledgement and respect. Moving from the urban and social periphery to the city centre, Filipinos can affirm, for a time, their social status and legitimacy in public Italian space, involving several symbolic and spiritual dimensions. This performative act embodies the moral right to be ‘in’ this new environment (Werbner 1996: 311), as clearly stated by a Filipino intercultural mediator: This event serves to show Italians that we are united and very religious . . . that we all have an exceptional attachment to the Madonna . . . we are showing that our tradition is still alive even if we are here, and that we can share it with them if they want to participate (P., woman, 46, organizer, 28 May 2011). The Santacruzan procession in Padua, in contrast with the more controversial expression of the Muslim faith in the public sphere, clearly shows that Filipinos have been allowed to become part of the ‘usual’ Italian Catholic sacralization of urban space. These new and fervent Catholic groups are increasingly used as exemplary devotees in the strategy of multicultural inclusion chosen by the official Church. These were the local Bishop’s relevant words prior to the start of the ritual in 2010: I’m very happy that you are here to celebrate this procession according to your faith and your Filipino tradition. I always say: you have to bring your beautiful traditions to Italy but you do not have to take on the sins and faults of the Italians! (Bishop of Padua, 30 May 2010). Many Filipinos applauded with gratified laughter. It was a highly symbolic recognition of the Filipino presence in the local Catholic Church, and seemed greatly appreciated by Filipino believers. Mainly considered as manual workers and rarely present as entrepreneurs on the labour market compared to other Asiatic populations such as the Chinese, Filipinos organizing the procession also demonstrate that they are efficient and autonomous. Organizational skills, financial competences and ability to accomplish ‘time management’ juggling through social and family schedules and domestic work are a testament to their unexpected talents. Through Santacruzan, Filipino people defy persistent stereotypes of themselves as hard workers and ‘docile bodies’ who do not create problems for Italian society at large. This ‘body transgression’ is highly meaningful and not peacefully accepted by the local population. In the Santacruzan procession 35 girls, called sagalas,

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dressed in regal and brightly coloured gowns, parade through the streets escorted by young boys wearing the traditional national costume (‘Barong Tagalog’). They walk under mobile arches decorated with flowers. The kaleidoscope of colours makes this part of the ritual more like a beauty pageant than a religious procession. The sashes worn by the girls with the titles ‘Queen of Angels’, ‘Queen of Virgins’, ‘Queen of all Saints’, remind us that we are witnessing a lived form of faith. For the Filipino devotees, beauty through fashion is a way to celebrate God, and dancing is a devotional act (Baby-Collin and Sassone 2010). The enthusiastic fervour and spontaneity of the Filipino ritual contrast with traditional local Catholic procession practices, mostly a sober recital of prayers. This gap appears to puzzle a part of the local audience and even makes some suspicious about this unusual version of public religiousness. Some people are critical and scrutinize the exposed necklines and bare backs of the young girls during the Santacruzan, considering them shocking and indecent. One of the girls confesses: Recently we have been asked to cover our de´collete´ because some Italians have said that this is a religious procession, not a fashion show [embarrassed laugh] (V., woman, 48, participant, 13 February 2011). We can say that the Filipino Santacruzan in Padua reveals that entering a public space could mean challenging a religious ‘spatial order’ which is essentially taken for granted as the ‘right way’ to do religious things. It also unfolds the fluidity of the boundaries between religious and secular. As underlined by Baumann (2009: 142) ‘analysed in this perspective, public space carries implicit norms of social inclusion and exclusion and thus ongoing disputes by social groups for conserving or for re-negotiating the status quo’.

Concluding remarks: resources and risks in the Italian new religious landscape We outlined above how migrants are imbuing Italian urban spaces with new religious meanings. These emerging spatialities in our case study concern the relationships with the local context and between local religious powers. Global migration has provided the local Church with both an opportunity and a challenge. The Catholic leadership warmly welcomes the presence of the migrant devotees, insofar as African and Asian migrants now fill up the empty churches of Europe, offering a significant contribution to their spiritual, organizational and physical revival (Eade 2012). These groups have

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embarked on their own mission activities to re-Christianize the ‘West’: the socalled ‘reverse mission’ of the formerly colonized countries. At the same time those bringing different religious and ethnic customs defy local society and ‘could prove divisive and challenge the authority of traditional religious leaders and rituals as well as the centrality of worship within the local church’ (Eade 2012: 481). The presence of these new actors and spaces highlights the complex contention between space, religion and power. It reveals the ambivalence of Italian religious space, where the porous boundaries between the secular and the religious have yet to be clarified (Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri 2014) and where the Catholic Church maintains a special position of control and interference in the presumed ‘natural’ public sphere (Pace 2007; Itc aina and Burchianti 2011). In recent years many other religious actors have appeared on the Italian stage. Romanian Orthodoxes breathe new life into unused Catholic churches, Sikh devotees meet and pray in their new temples, Muslims convene mainly in prayer rooms, since they are still fighting to obtain proper mosques, while Pentecostal Nigerians meet in ‘in-between spaces’ such as former industrial areas or sometimes find hospitality in tolerant Catholic parishes. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church maintains a powerful monopoly on the national and local religious landscape (Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri 2014). Regarding the social inclusion or exclusion of these new groups of migrants within society as a whole, the chapter underlines that they can be a means of empowerment for migrant populations (Hurtig 2000; Awasu 2012), but they can also result in greater exclusion or enclavization (Livezey 2000). The chapter stresses the importance of focussing attention on the enabling as well as the constraining forces of these religious spaces (Jonson and Werbner 2010), i.e. the resources and risks they pose for the social inclusion of migrants. These new spatial practices are largely invisible to Italian society even if they are multifaceted places for a significant proportion of migrant people. Part of the main aim of this chapter is to make this growing richness of religious spaces visible in the public sphere and to acknowledge that these new networks could be useful in building policies, and in acquiring and spreading information useful to migrants. The appeal made here is thus to consider these new spaces and networks as new social ‘players’, which become fundamental points of reference for a part of the migrant population. As noted by Levitt (2012: 3), we can say that a religion is not a stable set of beliefs and practices but is a contingent assemblage of actors, objects, technology and ideas embedded in determined spaces and ‘riddled by power and interests’. The construction of the ‘religious’ takes place on a contested

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terrain where the establishment of ‘unfamiliar’ religious sites or practices of minority groups is framed and understood against the backdrop of the local population’s anxieties regarding the embodied enactment of difference (Kong 2010; Garbin 2012). The relative boundedness of religious identities can vary across and within contexts entailing different and simultaneous social processes of inclusion and exclusion in urban spaces (Cancellieri 2013). Notwithstanding this intertwinement between space and religion, urban studies has overlooked these social dynamics for too long, ignoring the fact that religion plays a specific, growing role in the everyday processes of making the city. At the same time, scholars of religion have often ‘neglected’ considering the city as a resource or bond for religious practices, leaving urban spaces as passive frames in the background of their reflections. Territorialization processes regarding (religious) differences, however, are always articulated through the resources and constraints of urban spaces, which are grounds for action and contention and are imbued with the meanings and claims for partaking of competing social groups (Baumann 2009). Therefore, if we want to better understand some of the meaningful transformations taking place in contemporary cities, we must support the dialogue between urban categories and those usually used within the study of religious dimensions.

Notes 1. For the purposes of this study, the term ‘migrants’ is generally used to denote populations perceived as foreigners, above all people coming from so-called developing nations, whether or not they are official residents in possession of a legal permit of stay. 2. Municipal Statistical Yearbook 2012 (http://www.padovanet.it/dettaglio.jsp?id¼9840#. UsqDmNL3Png). 3. Caritas-Migrantes 2012. 4. ‘Instruction. Erga migrantes caritas Christi’ (The love of Christ towards migrants), AAS XCVI [2004], pp. 762–822, Vatican City, 2004, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p ontifical_councils/migrants/documents/rc_pc_migrants_doc_20040514_erga-migrantescaritas-christi_en.html.

CHAPTER 6 THE UP-ROOTED CITY:MIGRANTS MAPPING MILAN Nausicaa Pezzoni

Thinking about immigration means thinking about the state but it is the state that is thinking about itself when it thinks about immigration Abdelmalek Sayad

New meanings of urban spaces in the intercultural city This chapter is the result of empirical research on mapping Milan through a sample of 100 migrants, interviewed during their first period of stay in the city. The research explored the construction of a new urban imagery by transitory populations that are increasingly inhabiting the contemporary city. The study was based on the observation and analysis of the relationships that the transitory populations, especially migrants, have with the city: the un/coded forms of living within the contemporary city and the way the inhabitants who are not rooted within the city occupy the urban spaces. Migrants arriving from elsewhere need to build a new home, often being without a real house, and therefore they are forced to invent a home in areas un-appropriated for habitation, and they identify themselves with places that are not usually significant in the perceptions of permanent residents. The places in Milan transformed by migrants to carry out public activities are also observed: the square in front of the Central Station (Figure 6.1, place 1, page 97) that on Sunday becomes a meeting place for foreigners; the car park of ‘Cascina Gobba’ (Figure 6.1, place 3) that becomes the reference point for Eastern European people to send or receive parcels and to stage a market for local products; the square in front of a theatre in an area of

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reclaimed industrial buildings (Figure 6.1, place 4) that becomes a place of prayer for the Muslim population during the feast at the end of Ramadan. A deconstruction of the meaning of place and a reconstruction through new interpretations and new uses takes place in this appropriation of urban public spaces, interpreted and used in ways different from those for which they were originally designed. This process also generates new forms of the city, where a new sense of belonging to the urban space takes shape, thus showing how a collective space can be redefined in different ways by migrants. From the observation of these processes that speak about the deconstruction and reconstruction of the physical form and significance of the city, the research proposes a transition to the deconstruction and disruption in the representation of the city. It also moves from the traditional urban representation provided by a technical map, to an interpretative map of the city, and then, more precisely, to the mental maps drawn by people recently arrived in Milan, and who are trying to get their bearings in the new city.

How does a stranger build an image of a new city? Can it be accepted that knowledge is based on the exclusion of the knowing subject, that thought is based on the exclusion of the thinking subject, and that the subject is excluded from the construction of the object? (Morin 1977: 19). The hypothesis of the research is that the rethinking of the city, and any attempt to include a plan for transitional living, cannot be separated from the observation and experience of the people who live and inhabit the condition of transiency. In the representation of the city as expressed by migrants, indications may emerge about the perceptions of urban landscape specific to the observers, who see it from a mobile – not rooted – and unpredictable point of view. If so, this would be useful to guide city planning research through un-coded approaches with regard to services and urban living, which are traditionally based on an assumption of permanence. The inclusion of the migrants’ point of view is useful if we wish to understand what it means, for those who are arriving in a new urban environment, to inhabit and come to know it. It is also the intention to listen to people who are ‘guests’ of the new city and who at the same time are architects of its transformation. The migrants’ representation of the city is the instrument chosen to investigate this specific and unknown interaction between the new inhabitants

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and the city. This choice permits one to define the contours of a transitory urban living as yet unexplored but which is nevertheless very common among migrant populations and, as such, highly significant in determining developments for the future relationship between them and the city. The representation of the city is intended as a gesture of imaginative thinking by the persons who are preparing to tell their own idea/experience of the city: through the act of representing, migrants are encouraged to take a creative point of observation, using a graphic representation as their main medium of expression. A representation that is able to offer information on the initial relationship established between the migrants and the city should, above all, contain the elements that these new inhabitants consider most important in their interaction with the urban space. Tracking these elements in each person’s experience of the city – disorientating, fragmentary, full of new impressions and images, as always happens when you come into contact with an unknown environment – can be difficult and may prompt the imagining of a chaotic set of precise elements, or a failure to identify any elements. Therefore the participants in the research were asked to think about their experience of the city through the elements they considered representative of the main relationships with urban spaces that demonstrated knowledge of the city. This approach derives from The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch (1960), the most authoritative source regarding the exploration of the significance of places through the direct experience of the inhabitants. Having explored the meaning that the image of the city may take for its inhabitants, Kevin Lynch suggests some directions for future research, among them the study of urban landscape representation by foreign people. ‘How does a stranger build an image of a new city?’ (Lynch 1960: 157– 8). Our survey takes as its starting point an idea suggested by Lynch: to enquire into a subject that today appears as an emerging issue of the contemporary city, which is increasingly inhabited by transitory populations. What is the relationship between the urban landscape and its new inhabitants? In particular, our survey explores a re-reading of the elements (paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks) introduced by Lynch in order to define the contents of a mental representation, at the same time focusing on the migrant’s specific condition in today’s city: a condition where the perception of the place is aimed at finding a direction in the urban landscape, and in this strain, at taking possession of the urban space, making sense of it, and making it familiar. Lynch’s study is therefore taken both as a conceptual and methodological reference. As a conceptual reference the contemporary city model of analysis has been assumed. This model attributes a decisive and structural role to the observation of the people, who have a direct stake in the project of the space.

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As a methodological reference, its research setting based on the classification of elements characterizing the experience of the city has been followed. The intention of our analysis, however, is different: Lynch aims to bring out the imageability1 of the city; in our work on the migrants’ representation of the city, the topic is instead the relationship with the city. Our intention is to highlight the elements which migrants initially relate to, as well as those which better lend themselves to the creation of an image of the city for people who are trying to get their bearings. The transposition of Lynch’s categories for transitory inhabitants Our re-reading of the elements introduced by Lynch is developed by tuning them to the migrant’s specific condition within the contemporary city. Paths: in Lynch’s definition, ‘paths’ are: the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally or potentially moves. They may be streets, walk ways, transit lines, canals, railroads (Lynch 1960: 47). In our transposition for transitory inhabitants, paths are the usual movements in the city, the most frequently used paths by foot or public transportation. As defined by Lynch, paths are intended as ‘channels along which the observer moves’, but only ‘customarily’ and not ‘potentially’, since the element of interest is not what is perceived as a path but what is usually used as such. Boundaries: our transposition of the category of ‘edges’, which in Lynch’s definition are: the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries between two phases, linear breaks in continuity: shores, railroad curs, edges of development, walls (Lynch 1960: 47). The element of boundaries keeps the meaning of barrier, of break in continuity, as boundaries between two phases, even if in this transposition it is not meant in the sense of physical boundaries, but as elements of a border between a known (or knowable) city and a city considered off limits, where the migrant doesn’t go, or feels he cannot go; these places are considered inaccessible places, impenetrable spaces, the imaginary walls of the city. Living Spaces: derives from the category of ‘districts’, which in Lynch’s definition are: the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having twodimensional extent, which the observer mentally enters ‘inside of’, and

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which are recognizable as having some common, identified character (Lynch 1960: 47). For the migrant, however, the town is silent. There are no districts perceived from the inside. And there are not even names that speak to his experience, to his memory, profiling urban parts with a recognized individuality. The perception to be ‘inside of’ is manifested not at the urban scale but, if anything, at the scale of the building, and more specifically at that scale of the house that meets the primary need of having a place to sleep: it is there that, at least for the hours of the night, he is ‘inside’, accepted and immersed in an environment that is perhaps the first germ of familiarity with the place. ‘Living places’ are the places where the migrant lives and has lived since his arrival in Milan; for it is the phase that precedes any rootedness; often these are not places designed to be lived in, these are the spaces of everyday transient experience. Nodes: in Lynch’s definition ‘nodes’ are: points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling. They may be primarily junctions . . . a crossing or convergence of paths, moments of shift from one structure to another. Or the nodes may be simply concentrations, which gain their importance from being the condensation of some use or physical character (Lynch 1960: 47). For the migrant, ‘nodes’ are the most popular places, those where the main activities take place and where he meets other people, ‘intensive foci’, as defined by Lynch, not because of their strategic position (‘typically the convergence of paths, events on the journey’) but because they are points of aggregation, according to a meaning that does not concern the identifiability of the physical form, but that concerns the importance assigned to the nature of the activities that are carried out in that place. Landmarks: In Lynch’s definition ‘landmarks’ are: another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store or mountain (Lynch 1960: 48). In our transposition, ‘landmarks’ are the places of reference which identify the city or which are used to get one’s bearings in the city; they have the same meaning as Lynch’s category ‘landmarks’, as punctual elements, and are used

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as marks of identity, the more recognizable as their visual importance is coincident with the symbolic one. On the basis of these five elements, participants were asked to draw a map representing their perception and experience of the city.

The work method The investigation of the relationship between the city and the transitory populations through the drawing of mental maps, requires the definition of a frame within which this type of representation of the city may return significant information in order to understand transitory living – how it is lived and represented. Sample of interviewees First it was necessary to define what types of migrant populations might respond to the requirement of transience. We have defined them as belonging to the category of transitory populations, all those persons who had not yet found a stable living arrangement. Based on this classification, the sample of interviewees includes people from all over the world, who have arrived in Milan for different reasons and through different migratory routes; their common characteristic was that they had not yet become established in the city. Thus they could offer a representation of the city from a mobile point of view, due to a housing condition marked by instability. In addition to this predominant group, a secondary type of transient people was identified, composed of students of architecture and urbanism who had been staying in Milan for less than three months, interviewed in the classrooms of the university: they represent the ‘technical expert’ view, although strangers to the city. It is helpful to have such another type of ‘initial access’ requests – the expression of another level of needs, or another meaning attributed to the reception – and at the same time to study the specific representation of who is familiar with the instruments of ‘representing’ and uses it to express the strangeness. A third category is made up of people ‘no longer in transit’, who arrived in Milan a few years ago: they have a better understanding of the city and yet at the same time have recent experience of immigration and landfall. In representing the city, these people return to us the process of ‘learning’ about it, a process developed from the time of their arrival to the current date; they draw paths, boundaries, living spaces, nodes, landmarks on the basis of a critical eye. This perspective, allows analysis of the transition from a first ‘layer’ of knowledge and enjoyment of the city, composed of the elements identified by those persons who are trying to get their bearings, to a more

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conscious layer, whose elements are the result of a selection occurring after a period of relationship with the different urban spaces. Instruments The instruments used for each interview are: a sheet of A4 paper, pens, crayons and markers, which are left on the table available to the interviewees, who can choose the most appropriate graphical tools to draw their map. On the back of the map, migrants are asked to write their name, age, country of origin – and whether the original house is in a city or in the country – and the time elapsed since their arrival in Milan. In addition to the materials for the representation of this mental map, a voice recorder and a camera are used, in order to record a testimony of the implementation process of the design: this additional ‘view’, or voice, allows observation of, in addition to the final product, the act of representing, a way to approach an interpretation of the city that does not involve preconceived answers but a more active, self-reflexive action and a shift from imagining to representing. With the recorded sequences of interviews to migrants and of some significant urban spaces, a film was produced, titled La citta` sradicata (The Up-rooted City).2 Activities/where The sites considered representative of the migrants’ city, identified in order to meet the transitory populations to be interviewed, were selected according to the main activities related to the services of initial access to the city, and for each one a place of reference was analysed. With regard to ‘orienting’ activity, the Help Centre of the City of Milan was chosen, close to the Central Station (Figure 6.1, place 2), where newly arrived immigrants are given ‘very first access’ information on the city. For ‘sleeping’ activity, different types of spaces that offer night hospitality were analysed: a public dormitory for the first reception service in a municipal structure (Figure 6.1, place 5); the House of Charity for first and second shelter service in a structure that was an example of a religious foundation (Figure 6.1, place 6); the Porta Romana railway station as an example of informal housing (Figure 6.1, place 7). With regard to ‘eating’, the canteen of the San Francesco Foundation was chosen (Figure 6.1, place 8), being the most popular in Milan. Regarding help for ‘legal assistance’, reference was made to the Naga (Figure 6.1, place 9), a volunteer association that promotes and protects the rights of foreign people, and the Centre Naga Har (Figure 6.1, place 10), that in addition to providing legal and social assistance to asylum seekers and refugees, contains a library, a classroom where classes are held in Italian, a

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lounge with TV; and for these specific functions that centre was chosen as the site representative of the ‘joining’ activity. With regard to ‘health services’, the clinic of the Fratelli di San Francesco Foundation was chosen (Figure 6.1, place 11), as a centre of reference for immigrants who seek medical care across a range of expertise: general medicine, psychiatry, gynaecology, ophthalmology, ENT, dermatology, dentistry and other. Moreover some sites were identified as significant for the considerable presence of immigrants at certain times of the week: the square in front of the Central Station (Figure 6.1, place 1), on Sunday afternoon; the market behind the subway station of Cascina Gobba (Figure 6.1, place 3); and a number of urban parks at weekends.

Results As a result of the survey, two kinds of analysis were developed: the first with regard to the participants in the interviews; the second with regard to the contents of the maps. The analysis of the participants in the interviews shows great variety in the migrants’ places of origin (people of 41 different nationalities, a sample that can be considered representative of the foreign populations inhabiting in Milan), and a period of stay in Milan that is for the most less than three years, with an average of two years and a half. With regard to current living places, we can say that, referring to the three groups of the sample of interviewees, the transitory inhabitants (from 0 to 3 years) make up 91 per cent, the ‘no longer in transit’ inhabitants (who have lived in Milan from 3 to 10 years) make up 9 per cent and, considering all the interviewees, 19 per cent are students. The interview location was for the most a collective place (dormitories or schools of Italian), private houses, the street, or the university in the case of the students. The maps making up figures 6.2 – 6.6 on pages 98– 102, present a number of significant examples. In the first map (Figure 6.2) paths are the predominant elements: we can see the underground routes crossing the city, and the buses number 90– 91 that circumnavigate it. The latter appear in several maps as they are the buses used by many migrants because there are no ticket controllers on them. Besides the cathedral (Duomo), placed in the very centre of the map, other nodes are highlighted, i.e. places of living, like dormitories (via Novara, in the left), an aggregation point (Naga Har, written as ‘Nagar’), the hospital and the canteen, represented with a table and the writing ‘Caritas’.

Figure 6.1

First landing map (Source: Provided by the author)

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Figure 6.2

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Map by Kairucca Javed, Afghanistan

In the second map (Figure 6.3) we observe an attempt at reproducing a topographical map: in the original the houses divided in different quarters are drawn in black; while the Central Station, the parks, the main nodes as the hospital, the canteen (S. Francesco) and the police station (‘questura’) and other nodes are coloured. The paths are drawn with red lines ending up with an arrow, which indicate the most followed paths through the city. The third map (Figure 6.4) was drawn by a student. We can see that the stroke of the pen is very expert and there are shown urban objects like Navigli ( ¼ canals) and the Polytechnic University, which identify another kind of city, more touristic than the previous ones. We see a planimetric drawing, where the concentric shape of the city is highlighted, and where the paths are lines that correspond to the subway and bus tracks. Landmarks, living places, nodes and boundaries are represented with the zoom on the most important places of the city. The fourth map (Figure 6.5) represents paths and it is written in Arabic type. The author draws a square, as the main reference, in the centre of the drawing, a circle from which four lines radiate south: these are the streets where the places of living in Milan are identified. North of the square he traces a large circle that corresponds to the bus route number 90–91, crossed by the path of the subway, along which some stops are marked with smaller circles and the name of the stops. Along the bus route 90 –91 a number of nodes are

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Figure 6.3

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Map by Ako Atikossie, Togo

represented: these are the places where the canteen, the Central Station, and some dormitories are located. In the last map (Figure 6.6) we can see three living places: the dormitories where the author has lived since her arrival in Milan (Casa della Carita`, Cascina Baraggia, Casa Elena); three landmarks, which correspond to cultural places (Palazzo Reale and Triennale) that are the most important exhibitions in Milan, and Torre Branca, one of the tallest buildings in the town. There are also libraries, the two cubes on the left, identified as ‘nodes’: they appear in other maps, as libraries are acceded not only because there is free internet but because they are safe places to spend the day, especially in winter time. Paths are represented as colourful strokes with the subway and bus directions, while boundaries are identified with a black box that represents the ‘night centre of sex’. The analysis of the maps’ contents was developed through some keys to the interpretation of the maps. First of all, each map was classified on the basis of the most relevant category among the five elements that derive from the transposition of the Lynch’s elements. For example, if in one map landmarks mainly appear (such as the cathedral, or the castle) the category ‘landmarks’ was attributed to that map. And for each category the specific places that are indicated were identified. This analysis provides the fundamental information with which to draw the city of migrants, where all the places indicated on the

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Figure 6.4

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Map by Murat Aydin, Turkey

mental maps appear, but with different levels of intensity according to the number of times that each element has been drawn. A later step in this analysis concerned the relevance of each category in the different time periods. In the first period of stay migrants have indicated mainly landmarks, which are the urban objects that better help their orientation in the city; in the second period of stay (from one to three years) a greater number of paths is visible, and it indicates that migrants are starting to go through the city; after three years the living places and the nodes appear, signalling an initial involvement in the city. Another analysis was based on the number and variety of elements that appear in each map, which allows us to understand the different levels of knowledge of the city. Four different categories were identified: (1) the most elementary maps with only one or two places and sometimes a link between them; (2) maps with a sequence of homogeneous places; (3) the representation of places for a typical day; (4) the most complex ones, which represent the system of experienced and known places. Most immigrants (45 per cent) draw the places of a typical day, using maps that represent their daily movements and the most visited places. Another key to the interpretation of the maps concerns the approaches used in the representation of the city. Five different kinds of approaches were identified: (1) the representation of familiar places; (2) the reconstruction of

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Figure 6.5

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Map by Ramadan, Egypt

the most popular routes or everyday paths; (3) the combination of the more frequent routes and the most familiar places within the urban context, where there is an attempt to capture the entirety of the city or put in the ‘right’ position the main landmarks of the city; (4) the critical representations, which are abstract drawings, where the problematic aspects of living the town are pointed out; (5) the planimetric drawings, which demonstrate an acquisition of knowledge of the city through a technical drawing – this last approach is used mostly by students.

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Figure 6.6

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Map by Xheklina Lepri, Albania

The last approach to the interpretation of the maps is through each of the five elements that guided the representation, an interpretation that enabled a comprehensive reading of the city emerging from the drawings: (1) Landmarks reveal an ‘image of the city’ made up of just a few elements, first of all the cathedral and the Central Station, but also other elements used to find one’s bearings, constituted above all by the hubs towards the inhabiting areas. (2) Living Spaces reveal an ‘inclusive city’, able to embrace different populations and yet putting them, for an undetermined time, in a condition of impermanence, where different inhabiting solutions alternate; among them dormitories are considered as one of the most stable solutions. (3) Paths reveal the ‘city of connections’, where public transport is used by many migrants and yet a difficulty of movement emerges, due to the impossibility of buying tickets, which connotes isolation in the suburbs, where most dormitories are located. (4) Nodes reveal the ‘attractive city’, represented by the different experiences of the public space to which the migrant is attracted: (1) places connected to their initial arrival (help centre, canteen, outpatient clinic); (2) places functional to inhabiting (city hall, police headquarters, schools of Italian, market, internet points); (3) meeting points (parks, main square, Central

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Station). Each category corresponds to a different level of integration in the city. The prevalence of nodes connected to the primary needs of inhabiting, denotes a symbolic change of the role of public space. In fact public space has always been represented as the place where most abstract inhabiting activities are carried out (meetings, public discussions, exchange, etc.). In the city of migrants public space instead becomes the place closely connected to most basic inhabiting functions. (5) Boundaries reveals the ‘separating city’. This element has also received different interpretations: (1) the first consists of the locations of negative experience – dangerous places – in particular because of criminality which mainly characterizes the Central Station; (2) the second is about places that are indicated as inaccessible places because of a negative reputation – marginal places – that are the areas inhabited by many migrants, which are perceived as ghettos and thus to be avoided regardless of the fact that its population belongs to one’s own or someone else’s ethnic group; (3) the third is represented by the feared places, and these include the police headquarters and the prison; (4) the fourth are places with no access, that migrants cannot attend, in particular because of their distance.

Discussion The research hypothesis that this work is based on is that the ‘sight’ of migrants forms a fundamental factor if one is to be able to build a city plan that is truly inclusive of the instances that they introduce. In order to find a suitable instrument to contain the representation of the migrants’ city, an initial question was asked: Do we choose a cartographic, technical basis of the urban area, on which participants can track their representation of the city, indicating the most important landmarks, paths, nodes in the process of knowledge of the city; or do we provide them with a blank sheet of paper where they can draw their city ex novo? We chose the second option: to allow a free choice of urban objects and how to represent them. From the variety of interpretations that it is possible to give to the urban space, original information about the use of city environments and the meanings assigned to each of its components could be obtained; moreover, the use of blank paper was intended as an invitation to draw a different and more complex map that could reveal the invisible landscape inhabited by migrants in their first approach to the city. This hypothesis refers to Farinelli’s critical considerations on the function of mapping in the context of geographical knowledge, where the representation itself is assigned the role of producer of a particular vision of reality, in contrast to a scientific, objectifying vision, which believes the map

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is a reflection of reality. ‘Every map is primarily a plan for the world, as the various meanings of the Anglo-Saxon word plan still testifies, and the project of every map is to transform – playing in advance, that is preceding it – the face of the earth in its own image and likeness’ (Farinelli 1992: 77). To give up a topographic support to represent the migrants’ city, would mean to give up an observation of reality that wants to be objective and offer an observation where the observer’s sight is a constitutive part of the observed field. Another topography, which is not limited to the morphological appearance of urban objects, may include depictions of the ‘insurgent city’,3 which means a dematerialized representation of the city, where the life practices of the new citizens take place along with the multiplicity of points of view that each new citizen brings to the city. Through the representation of the city by migrants, the vision that they bring to the territory they inhabit is investigated: mental maps made by migrants bring to the surface the implicit transformative project underlying a description of the city ‘in its own image and likeness’. The representation of urban landscape drawn by migrants who are trying to find their bearings in the city is a gesture of self-organization within that landscape. The action of imagining and drawing the urban geography corresponds to the act of mentally inhabiting the city and in this way taking possession and transforming it from a space of estrangement into a space which is more articulated and complex, where even a person who has recently arrived can conceptualize and live within it. We can say that this gesture makes explicit the act of taking to oneself a space which, no longer pertaining to an estranging experience, changes into a space open to unpredictable inhabiting conditions.

Conclusions The exploration of the city through migrants’ mental maps, introduces a cognitive experimental mode in which the observer of the observed object (the city of migrants) is the migrant himself, and the researcher, in his turn, observes the relationship between the migrant and the city as a further observing subject. The mental map represents, in this empirical study, a device with which to know the city, involving both subjects of exploration: the migrant who observes and represents the city, and the researcher who observes, through the drawing made by the migrant, the city that emerges from the relationship between migrants and urban space. From the point of view of the migrant observing and drawing his own idea of the city, this survey offers a possibility for him to take possession of the city

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by recognizing his relationship to the urban space through his drawing of the map, and thus developing his sense of belonging to the city itself. In the gesture of drawing, a creative point of observation is suggested by migrants, which can also be considered as a planning point of view, although it deals with a participation which takes place before planning, and it is thus not focused on a direct contribution of the migrant in the city plan. From the planner’s point of view, the one who observes the city emerging through migrants’ mental maps, this exploration enables a widening of the survey, as it includes the migrants’ point of view and their creative contribution, thus going beyond a vision where inhabitants are considered as passive subjects of the city plan. It is an exploration that makes it possible to get closer to the city under transformation, by observing the city not from above, as if it were something outside, but getting into the urban space and gathering the experiences and the visions of the city as they come out while being reproduced by the new inhabitants. This survey also focuses on a specific step of inhabiting – i.e. the condition of temporariness, the moment before settling down – which the urban and migration literature does not consider a subject by itself. In this research it has been taken as the most meaningful moment to get a new sight of the city. The city that emerges from the maps is a city that takes together many different populations, and yet it puts them for an indefinite time in a dwelling area identified as the ‘first landing’ place: an area between being present in the city and not being rooted in it. This area is either represented by a series of living places already destined for people arriving, or appropriated in the city by those people who do not have a place to live. The maps of the migrants give clues about their life, showing dormitories, homeless shelters, abandoned buildings and shelters created on the road, as places of temporary dwelling, which is to last for years. They also show day care centres, parks and libraries, as places where one can spend the day; they reveal landmarks as the canteen, the health centre, the centre of assistance, all of them services requested almost every day. A stratification of the city mostly unknown to the rooted inhabitants emerges from the maps: it is the city of first landing, which draws a network whose nodes are not evident to permanent residents, places that are ignored, as they are outside the usual circuits of living for those who have a home. The city lacks infrastructures to gather migrants in more cosy spaces, with a more complex path towards autonomy: ‘second reception houses’ in which a small group of migrants may have a decorous living over a period of time. By reading the element ‘nodes’ drawn on the maps, a city emerges that attracts and welcomes people from most different conditions: a city that

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offers, in fact, services for transitory living, although outside a comprehensive project of a public infrastructure destined to this kind of living. The attractive places, at different stages of transitory living, are in fact individual key points where responses to specific needs are found: the need to find one’s bearing and to be directed to the services of the city, which is expressed in the Help Centre; most basic needs such as eating, in the canteen, medical help, in the health centre, finding proper clothes to wear, in the centres that distribute used clothing, washing, in the public showers; or any needs related to a stage of transitory living just a little bit more stabilized: drawing up the documents, in the Police headquarters, filling in the curriculum, in the libraries, learning Italian, in the schools. All these places linked to first arrival, reveal a network of services specifically targeted at those who, just arrived, find themselves in a brand new territory, looking for a first level of habitability. This network is, however, actually abstract, since the services are individual, isolated, designed for one specific need while ignoring all the others. The migrant calling at any of these places – often found after strenuous wanderings through the city – must start from scratch every time: after calling at the health centre, or at the canteen, or at the Italian school, the migrant has to call again at the Help Centre in order to find used clothes or in order to fill in his curriculum or in order to find the way to the public showers. The city that attracts people at first arrival is made up of a constellation of scattered points, without an underlying tissue holding them together. The stratification of the city that emerges from these scattered points is unknown to those who are permanent residents, but neither is it evident to those who are looking for the services, as these services constitute a set of places to be discovered, place by place, always starting a new search from scratch. Discovering the existence of these places, and finding out where they are, is for the migrant a first step in creating a frame of the actual conditions and opportunities that the city can offer. Once a comprehensive frame of the services available is created, the migrant can find out their possible connections and at least calculate their relevant distances. It is a first step towards autonomy, without having to go back to the Help Centre.4 A map with the exact name and place in the urban space, with its specific function, would represent for migrants who have just arrived the possibility of using an intelligible tool, without having to decrypt lists of addresses and phone numbers. In the ‘attractive city’ that the element ‘nodes’ reveals, the paradox emerges of a city that turns out to be rich in services for first arrivals but that are

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almost totally obscure to the public; potential users, or any operator, of a service, who is to get in touch with other operators of other facilities and services, has only his own initiative, determination and ability to create a network in the territory. A ‘first arrival map’ (see Figure 6.1), such as the one drawn in our research can, in this context, represent a first layering of the tissue that is missing to create a network of services, and to plan a city with an infrastructure for first arrival. This map could be of help, as it would create awareness and would spread the knowledge of what the city already offers. Such a ‘first arrival map’ could be adopted by the public services and addressed to migrants in many different cities concerned with immigration. This map could be designed as a versatile device, to be declined – and possibly implemented – according to different contexts. This map is intended as a tool that might answer a need that was expressed both as the necessity of creating synergies among the different services for migrant people, and as the opportunity to show to migrants the services available in the city; a tool that responds to the need for policies that are of help to local society in order to accept, to understand and to know the needs of people coming from abroad. Regarding the icon to be linked to each service, this map was drawn on the basis of the suggestions that emerged from migrant’s mental maps: the present graphical form facilitates the interpretation by migrants and at the same time enables local society to recognize the different languages and inhabiting conditions existing on its territory. Thinking of the contemporary city as a place of encounter and confrontation means finding possible new instruments to experiment with the relationship between citizens of different origins, and between citizens and the different urban spaces. Knowing and discovering migrants’ different ways of living and of experiencing urban spaces, necessarily means having migrants involved as actors and not merely as observers of the space they inhabit, so to better understand what ‘the right to the city’ means to a migrant. In this survey an unconventional approach was adopted, aimed at generating a sense of belonging to the city in a context where the relationship between the new inhabitants and the city itself is characterized by temporariness. In this way it has been possible to achieve a notion of citizenship no longer linked to the condition of permanent dwelling. The hypothesis – and the wish – of this research is that the contemporary city will actually become hospitable when it will be able to include the different ways of ‘thinking the city’ introduced by migrants – it will be able to regenerate itself so as to open up the way to inclusive politics.

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Notes 1. The notion of imageability is defined as ‘that quality in a physical object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, colour, or arrangement which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental image of the environment’ (Lynch 1960: 9). 2. http://www.obarrao.com/video-la-citta-sradicata.html. 3. ‘Spaces of insurgent citizenship’ are called, by James Holston, ‘the spaces delivered from the planned and modern dominion of the city: the land of homeless, migrant networks, gay’s neighbourhoods, self-made suburbs [. . .]. Holston considered insurgent those spaces where practices take place that disturb the consolidated narratives of the contemporary city’ (Holston 1995: 35– 52). In an article entitled ‘Insurgent City. Topography of another Florence’, Paba traces the interpretations, from Sandercock to Geddes to Mumford, of the word insurgent, to explain the research in which ‘the object of representation must be exactly the boiling world of the insurgent city [. . .]. The materials to represent were then made not by objects, but by weaving of human relationships, new intersubjective relationships and their difficult and controversial interaction with the morphological and organizational structure of the city’ (Paba 2004: 26– 29). 4. As the linguistic and cultural mediator at the Help Centre explains, the migrant that occurs at the Centre is given a sheet of paper with the address and telephone number of the service he is looking for, but often, as the migrant doesn’t speak Italian, these indications become an obstacle to overcome seeking further help.

CHAPTER 7 DIVERSITY AND INTERCULTURALISM:A CRITIQUE AND DEFENCE. GOING THROUGH MULTI-ETHNIC NEIGHBOURHOODS IN ROME Marco Cremaschi and Carlotta Fioretti

The twofold nature of diversity and interculturalism The starting hypothesis of this chapter is that the two different concepts of the diverse city and the intercultural city can be applied interchangeably to describe and govern multi-ethnic urban settings, the difference being more a matter of scale than of nature. Diversity and interculturalism share, in fact, the same duplicity: a normative content combined with an analytic orientation. The former, however, addresses mainly the ordinary configuration of places while the latter allows the discussion of rights and political principles. Are the diverse city and the intercultural city the same, then? The answer is affirmative, but conditional upon clearing both concepts of ideological deposits. Interculturalism, in particular, describes the attitude of governments towards integration intended as a process of exchange and interaction between the host and the immigrant population. At the same time, it suggests a normative model for balancing and accepting these exchanges. Interculturalism has gained greater importance recently, and has come to be seen as a response to the failure of other consolidated integration models, in particular the assimilationist one epitomized by France and the multicultural one applied in the Netherlands (and partly also in Germany) and the UK. Italy, on the other hand, having neither an explicit model nor a consistent body of regulation at the national level, does not fit into such broad categories.

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However, a hybrid attitude has been identified in its legislation, the objective of which is not one of cultural assimilation but that of providing security and avoiding conflict in the process of interaction among communities. The Italian approach has been described as one of ‘reasonable integration’ (Zincone 2000 cited in Lucciarini 2007: 45) with civil and social (not political) rights granted to regular immigrants and no recognized rights granted to those deemed illegal (a broad category sometimes stretched to accommodate Roma people). Recently, the attitude towards undocumented migrants has become even more restrictive and they are often criminalized. However, generally speaking, this categorization of different integration regimes seems to be narrow considering that policies for immigrants are implemented at the local level, and there they are influenced by processes, actors, interests and local pressures (Caponio 2006). At the local level, diversity, being less abstract and more reflective of realities, emerges as the narrative concerning cities and specific spaces. If the intercultural city is somewhat ‘prescriptive’ and top down in matters of policies and management of the complexity of cities, the diverse city is somewhat more ‘phenomenological’ in that it touches upon the domain of not just policies but that of practices as well. Social conflicts and political thought have concentrated upon these two dimensions, often bending the reality to serve party agenda or ideologies. When it comes to ordinary cities, diversity appears to be embedded in the social practices that enact the processes of change and immigration. Such practices not only acknowledge the diversity among members of society but also construct each and every member’s identity. Hence, diversity is definitely a local feature of society in strong relation to both urban spaces and daily routines. With the emergence of international immigration processes in Western cities, claims about the social role of spatial arrangement have been revised. This has been an extraordinary break with the modern tradition. The ‘recognition’ of immigrants has meant a complex political and cognitive reframing of old universal values. Informality, for instance, has been included among the form of production and use of space.1 Such a sea change has come about first in the urban policies of developing countries and later in those of Western cities, too. Since then, upgrading measures and legalization of land tenure have become part of the social history of cities. Recently another representation has emerged calling attention to ethnic neighbourhoods. The return of working-class neighbourhoods has forced market led diversity upon formerly homogenous enclaves in the context of gentrification processes started in the 1980s. This second turn illustrates the shift in attitudes between different modalities of recognition. Aside from a

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positive and progressive one, there has been an implied negative undertone to this change that has led to stigmatization and control (Yiftachel, Goldhaber and Nuriel 2009). In a misleadingly less dark nuance, the ‘cultural’ gentrification of former popular neighbourhoods has led eventually to a new market driven process of social segregation (Annunziata 2011). Finally, development policies have embraced spatial fragmentation as a way of accommodating divergent claims on public space. Prevailing attitudes in planning have supported this splintering process ignited by modernist techniques (Donzelot 2006). The resulting social zoning of cities has increased segregation and complicated the lives of international migrants. At this juncture, a new political tension has arisen from the collapse of the universal myth of the diverse European city. In reality, current cities reproduce divisions, failing to convert temporary residents into citizens (Cremaschi 2013). This being said, it seems useful to support the line of reasoning with a concrete case study. In particular, examples will be drawn from what are today considered the two most multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in Rome: Esquilino (also known as Piazza Vittorio from the name of the piazza at its core) and Torpignattara. The peculiarity of these two neighbourhoods is that they symbolize diversity in Rome not only because of the high percentage of foreign residents but also because of the high visibility of diversity in these areas, as demonstrated in the multi-ethnic population and related commercial activities to meet the diverse needs of its residents. The two cases effectively highlight the different nuances that the narrative of diversity can assume when applied to specific contexts.

The adventures of diversity The Esquilino neighbourhood epitomizes the diverse city model in Rome, at least as far as ethnicity is concerned. From the beginning, policies have dealt with its diversity with left-leaning decision makers praising it as the next ‘quartier Latin’ of the city, and right-wing politicians criticizing the same. Both groups, however, end up ignoring other issues such as those of the weaker, impoverished, original population. Esquilino shows some common traits and strong linkages with another multi-ethnic quartier – Torpignattara. However, they also display some profound differences: for instance, in their geographical typology. In fact, while Esquilino is a typical inner city district, Torpignattara is part of the first periphery of the city. The physical and historical characteristics of these areas have been quite influential in the social space (as is often the case in Roman neighbourhoods) and have determined, in different ways, the process of insertion of immigrants there.

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Esquilino has many features in common with the narratives of immigrants’ insertion throughout Europe. The neighbourhood was built after 1870 to host the government’s lower employees of the newly united Italian State, coming mainly from northern Italy. Furthermore, the area has traditionally been an arrival place for other internal migrants thanks to its location close to the central railway station and the wide availability of low-cost guesthouses and hotels for temporary accommodation. After the 1970s a process of decay, corresponding with a significant drop in the number of original inhabitants, eased the insertion of foreign immigrants. The historical urban fabric characterized by valuable architectural elements and poor construction quality started to decay. On the other hand, the development of organized retailing and distribution led to the closure of traditional retail shops, leading to the displacement of some major functions and hence urban voids. The area was additionally plagued by problems of traffic congestion. All these elements fuelled the process of urban blight, increasing episodes of prostitution and drug peddling. The neighbourhood became increasingly less appealing for Italians and became a haven for the arrival of the first wave of immigrants, mainly from the Maghreb region and later from Asia (China and Bangladesh in particular). Adopting the perspective of the intercultural city, it is easy to see that Esquilino is considered ‘the’ multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Rome, both in public opinion and political discourse. Esquilino offers a high likelihood of encountering the global within the local. For this reason it is also often analysed in migration studies. Furthermore, those who work in the immigration sector, in public administration or in the third sector generally consider Esquilino a privileged observatory, a workshop where integration policies can be designed and implemented. To a certain extent it is the place where the challenge of building an intercultural city in Rome is faced. This is acknowledged by the immigrant communities as well, and Piazza Vittorio has come to symbolize cultural pluralism in Rome, thus acquiring a positive stigma.2 If in the rhetoric of the intercultural city, Esquilino is seen as a successful example, the same cannot be said for Torpignattara, which historically is a working-class neighbourhood that hosted many immigrants from southern Italy (employed in the local industries) during Fascism and the post-war era. The fragmented building fabric in Torpignattara grew in a spontaneous and unregulated way through subsequent additions.3 The variety of building types, the presence of neglected industrial areas mingled with the dwellings, the functional mix that characterizes the ground floors of main streets; all these elements contribute to shaping Torpignattara as a ‘mixed, porous territory’ (Lanzani 2003). This porosity, enhanced by the residential,

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commercial and productive emptying that took place during the 1980s and 1990s, allowed with more ease the insertion of immigrants and the transformation of meaning of the urban spaces. Poorly connected to the city centre, lacking in services and infrastructure and with poor quality of buildings, Torpignattara today has one of Rome’s lowest real estate values. For this reason, it is a convenient place for immigrants to buy houses or business premises. Thus, in contrast to Esquilino, Torpignattara is a neighbourhood where many immigrants move to (often from Esquilino itself), having more long-term projects of settling down with their family or starting a business. Even if less renowned for its multi-ethnic composition, Torpignattara has recently been in the news in the national press for issues related to immigration, such as racism, ethnic conflict and segregation. It has been described as a periphery that can become a recruitment magnet; it has been mentioned in relation to racist raids perpetrated against the Bangladeshi community, and also for the primary school with the highest percentage of immigrant pupils, which has been described as a ghetto. What often emerges, even in newspapers, is a narrative that describes the neighbourhood as an example of an emerging Italian banlieue: [. . .] this neighbourhood is one of those more at risk. There is a banlieue risk because of a second generation of immigrants seeking its own identity. They are youngsters suffering tyrannies, and sooner or later they will respond. It is possible to feel, to touch the malaise, which can become a tinderbox. (Meletti 2010, our translation.) The comparison with the banlieue, clearly does not yet apply to its historic, economic and social characteristics, which strongly differ from the Parisian peripheries. The image of the banlieue could recall, instead, the process of stabilization of many immigrants’ families or a process of use, appropriation and transformation of the territory, which increases their visibility. This process is still scarcely known in the Italian panorama and a clear solution to the problems linked with it is yet to be devised.

A critique of diversity According to many authors, diversity is a quality that characterizes urban life. A strong tradition celebrated diversity in cities, replicating (since Simmel, at least) a broader sociological approach that impacts the vitality of the encounters with strangers. The embodiment of diversity is often reasserted by concerned planners and political actors (see, for instance, Council of Europe 2008), with plausible

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guidelines focusing upon some characteristics of communal living that should be guaranteed by spatial arrangements. For example, prescriptions may range from mixed use to mixed income, racial and ethnic integration, to widely accessible public space (Fainstein 2005). In some cases, matters have been treated more cautiously, heeding ethnic and cultural norms (Low, Taplin and Scheld 2005). However, there are at least three major problems with this line of reasoning, which will be expressed and examined more thoroughly in the following section. As regards the definition, less unmanageable traits such as status and role are overemphasized, while cultural norms and behaviour are given less weight. The causal model attaches excessive importance to the physical environment due to its origin in the US context, thereby causing a subtle determinism. Finally, for the process, encounters in public space are often expected to trigger positive answers leading to an understanding that mirrors the historical and forceful narrative of the expansion of the public sphere, while all processes of mediation are consequently humbled down to the level of an automatic response.

The definition First, as an analytical concept, urban diversity is tricky and rather unstable, one that has not always meant the same. Historically, it can be said that all cities were created diverse but some were more diverse than others. Cities have been the cradle of diversity for centuries, as opposed to the more traditional, homogenous and slowly evolving rural cultures. They have been sites of innovation in political space as well as the hubs of the new mercantile economy. The ‘porosity’ of traditional, ordinary cities draws upon volatility, permeability, change, and life-worlds that mingle across traditional boundaries (such as public and private spaces) creating ‘new, unforeseen constellation’ (as described by Benjamin). Ancient multinational city-ports and trading places like Naples, Venice, Salonniki and Marseilles had a quality in their diversity that is today lacking in modern cities. These cities, which have been conceptualized as the space of diversity, reflect the historical process that led to the establishment of cities in Europe and the transformation of the imperial Roman material and social infrastructure and the Middle Age rural economy and serfdom. The German medieval saying ‘Stadtluft macht frei’ (urban air makes you free) summarizes a positive feeling towards diversity upon which the ideological foundation of the bourgeois lay. European cities erased previous medieval communities to constitute the mass of individual labourers, yet circumscribing a range of diversity (between classes, roles and statuses) compatible with the shared

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culture, thus supporting the process of civic integration. Those cities promoted a strong identity of a comparatively small region while playing a global role. Promoting functional and economic diversity, they were not really affected by culture or ethnicity. This came into being through a lengthy process fraught with conflicts and resistance. Positive images of diversity (Sennet 1997; Fainstein 2005) overlap with the two foundational myths of the porous city and bourgeois city-state, somehow confusing their effects. In a globalizing world, diversity has taken up more radical aspects, and can neither be reduced to the controlled variety of local traits of medieval city-states nor to the exchange-oriented mind of Levantine ports. Diversity, according to some (van Laeken 2010), has ambivalent outcomes, such as coping with different, contrasting and even clashing cultures, which necessarily produces conflict and stress that only a reflexive and critical political process can successfully harness. In fact, the vast debate opposing philosophers and political scientists contrasts entirely different ranges of diversity (Touraine 2000) and addresses either different contents (political status and global citizenship, social relations and equal rights, cultural identities) or different forms (caste, group, class or individuals). Thus, if we accept that in the assemblage of the contemporary world, diversity epitomizes something more contrasting than the idealized traits of city-states, one has to revert to the outcomes of multilayered processes superimposing individualism, collective identities and forms of citizenship (Beck 1999). Cities do truly help in disentangling traditional collective affiliations, but this is not a plain, organic process and does not lead to univocal outcomes. To appreciate diversity, cities set up an open political process that selects between ‘intersecting diversities that must be addressed including differences in wealth, status, and hybridity, that is, the range of possible identities available to any one group’ (Fincher and Iveson 2008). The rhetoric of the intercultural city referred to Esquilino, even if contributing to the development of a positive bias about the neighbourhood, represents at the same time a trivialization of reality. In fact, it renders a sweetened and romantic picture of the cohabitation of difference that does not account for the everyday encounter with difference as experienced and represented by inhabitants and daily users. The same diversity that attracts external people who want to visit an ethnic restaurant can also be seen as a threat by residents and investors. The positive picture of multi-ethnic Esquilino hides a long story of distrust, stigmatization and conflict, as testified by a considerable number of newspaper articles that have appeared in the national press since the mid 1990s. These articles have also highlighted the pressing need for security in

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the area, which necessitated a constant patrol of the neighbourhood by the forces of law and order. One aspect, in particular, is perceived as the most problematic – the presence of the Chinese community. The Chinese, together with the Bangladeshis and Filipinos, are the most populous of foreign communities in the neighbourhood. Yet the percentage is not that high considering that 1 out of every 120 nationals in the area are of Chinese origin and that the total percentage of foreigners is around 20 per cent in the district. However, the neighbourhood has often been described as an ethnic enclave and as ‘Chinatown’, carrying a negative connotation. The Chinese are particularly prominent as the area has a high concentration of wholesale and importexport businesses. Rather than being deemed as a problem of bad businessplanning by the local authority, it is perceived as a problem of ethnic concentration. This view is further fuelled by the perpetration of biases towards the business practices of the Chinese. The hostility, in fact, is not restricted solely to the Chinese wholesale stores but also to all ethnic businesses, such as phone centres, perceived as ‘troublesome’ because they address a largely immigrant clientele and support multiple functions, sometimes beyond the regular commercial ones (for instance, they also serve as places for gathering, socializing and even for assistance). This conflict among Italian residents and immigrant retailers led the municipality to promulgate strict regulations for phone centres and Chinese wholesale stores, which finally caused their displacement to the outskirts of the city.4 This has, paradoxically, resulted in a mere physical relocation of the concentration of such businesses to the peripheries, as in the case of Torpignattara itself. This necessitates an examination of the kind of diversity that is accepted, as also the extent and the location of diversity accepted. Potential situations of conflict currently exist in Torpignattara that could push it to develop along the lines of Esquilino. In the last five years, a large number of Chinese wholesale and retail shops have mushroomed around public gardens in the heart of the neighbourhood. The Almagia` gardens, forming a sort of small Chinese district of commerce, are an example of this. The Almagia` gardens, one of the only green spaces of Torpignattara and holding importance for its inhabitants, are currently plagued by a lack of safety, unwanted practices (the presence of the homeless and drunks) and a general deterioration. The local residential community association (the Torpignattara Neighbourhood Committee5) has expressed concern over this and a will to rectify the same. The commercial establishments in this region may also have aroused the suspicion of its local residents owing to the physical characteristics of the establishments, which are more similar to warehouses than shops, lacking windows and connections to the exterior.

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The causal model Diversity has been postulated by early critical urban thinkers, such as Jane Jacobs, as a necessary feature of a complete and effective approach to planning, and has influenced remarkably the US planning system. Jane Jacobs’ contribution focused mainly on classical tenets of the urban sociology of Chicago, isolating spatial and ecological features that would affect social behaviour. The critique of Jacobs on the US version of post-war planning described as biased by functionalism, automotive enthusiasm and social segregation – has contributed to establishing the belief that cultural change can emanate from physical corrections. Thus, effective and practical suggestions tailored upon large American metropolises6 have influenced the way diversity is conceptualized and put to use when dealing with cities. Though it is true that international developments place stress on the modernist approach of sprawl and zoning, most cities of the world do not necessarily reflect these principles. On the contrary, in continental Europe a mix of uses with some degree of porosity prevails. However, social mix, density and spatial arrangements do not necessarily support intercultural adjustments. The concept of diversity in planning also gave rise to the myth of mixedneighbourhoods as an instrument of integration. This concept has characterized many urban programmes and plans since the 1980s, which aimed at promoting immigrants’ integration and contrasting segregation processes. In fact, the creation of socially and ethnically mixed communities can be attributed to polices of control and displacement, which led to the renewal of neighbourhoods and buildings, tenure diversification and establishment of a maximum rate of people of certain categories per neighbourhood. The rhetoric of mixed-neighbourhoods, risks fuelling certain environmental determinisms, implying that integration automatically happens thanks to the cohabitation of diverse people in the same physical space. Furthermore, the concentration of ethnic communities in specific areas cannot be considered a negative factor per se, and desegregation measures could have possible negative effects, such as isolating more vulnerable members of the community from informal social networks (Fioretti, 2010). Neither Esquilino nor Torpignattara are ghettos or ethnic enclaves. The meaning and dimensions of the ethnic concentration and segregation in these areas are different from those of US inner cities. The rhetoric of concentration still permeates the imagery of native inhabitants and politicians, often without serious reflection upon the risks of social exclusion and marginalization. In reality, this rhetoric mainly materializes itself as a fear of the stranger and the transformation that he brings with himself. Even if

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there is a lack of veritable policy for the creation of mixed-neighbourhoods, there are some actions that move towards control and displacement, council regulations for ethnic businesses being an example.

The process The social process which translates diversity into social richness takes for granted that diversity leads automatically to social learning. The ideal of a beneficial and tamed diversity implies an internal ‘mechanism’ with burdensome assumptions. Though the public sphere – the discursive space of the public opinion – is often confounded with public space – the material space of free encounters – the distinction has to be kept in mind (Low, Taplin and Scheld 2005). Communication technology as well as contemporary urbanism led to consistently diverging paths. The cleansing of public space, the web of physically interrelated public places, through policing or privatization, is often reputed to have a shrinking effect on the public sphere. Whether this holds true or not is a matter of research. However, part of the confusion is due to the untenable conviction that private and public spaces are at opposite ends and never overlap. On the contrary, the distinction between the two realms is much blurred. Furthermore, a more reasonable and modest link can be expected between the space of encounters and the sphere of opinions. In the words of Amin: ‘the city’s public spaces are not natural servants of multicultural engagement’. In fact, social processes do not automatically grant positive outcomes and require instead norms to be enforced. For instance, Nussbaum (2000: 6) contends that a threshold level of capabilities should be granted before any social process develops (i.e., the potential to ‘live as a dignified, free human being who shapes his or her own life’, Nussbaum 2000: 72). When talking about diversity in the urban space it is important to refer not merely (and in particular) to public space in the strictest sense. Many scholars studying ethnic diversity have focused their attention on public spaces because of their intrinsic freedom and openness and being by definition the places where an urban civic culture is built. However, in reality, public spaces seldom support a veritable interaction between strangers. At most, they lead to what Blockland calls public familiarity (2008). Furthermore, it seems important to differentiate between the magniloquent public spaces of the European city tradition, epitomized by ‘the square’, and more banal, ordinary public spaces (such as the street) where the majority of daily practices actually occur. The traditional public space constituted by the gardens located in Piazza Vittorio plays a key role as the intercultural place of the neighbourhood. These gardens have been, in fact, the venue of many initiatives organized by

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the local administration, and by some political parties and associations, to promote the intercultural city (see, for example, the many editions of the Intermundia initiative). Furthermore, the gardens are used by different ethnic and religious communities for the celebration of public events, such as the Chinese New Year, the Bengali Boishakhi Mela, or the Ramadan Eid al-Fitr. The public space of Piazza Vittorio’s gardens acts as a symbol and an interface of a process of openness and melange of different cultures, and is functional to the process of institutional recognition of ethnic and religious minorities. However, the gardens are also a place of spatial and functional segregation by the different groups who use them, for there are few veritable interethnic exchanges (in a positive or negative sense). The street space is particularly important both in Esquilino and in Torpignattara, as it is the one area that many immigrants’ businesses look onto. It is the space where one can read signboards in different languages, where products are displayed, where people of various ethnic origins pass each other. The street is also the space where are written and rewritten different spatial grammars of various communities (Semi 2007), who in that way affirm their presence and negotiate their diversity.

Defending diversity Interculturalism as an analytical approach addresses the process of construction and mutual understanding of the identities of hosting and immigrant populations. As a normative ideal, it settles the ambivalence between indifference and curiosity, offering a realistic conception of possible agreements. Interculturalism is often overburdened with idealized features, like the cosmopolitan ideals, which might be difficult to achieve. Diversity, too, is overloaded with normative expectations and theoryladen assumptions. Once wiped clean of these expectations, however, its relevance starts to shine through again. There are, however, some warnings and conditions. First, cultural differences and the ambivalence of having to deal with new, unexpected behaviour should not be underestimated. It is a matter of debate whether dealing with unfamiliar practices is a benefit or not. What is apparent, however, is that considerable effort is required to adapt contrasting common sense and habits to cognitive and practical expectations. This is an intrinsically political process in the sense that both individual cognitions and collective feelings are involved. Left to themselves, these feelings can be exploited to incite notions of threat and fear (van Leeuwen 2010). Second, the normative ideal of living together cannot be enforced as a spatial and universal rule, or considered opportune and desirable in all

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situations. Only a restrictive notion of diversity could sustain such a ubiquitous rule, which presumes the existence of some degree of closeness or shared symbolic framework. Worse, the notion of diversity is blurred by romantic regrets of long lost communal living, or the examples of cities in the age of multi-ethnic empires. This is not to say that space does not have a role to play. Quite the opposite, space plays the role of supporting encounters in practical contexts and thus assumes a central role in shaping the experience of living together. This very practical experience unfolds in banal and ordinary spaces, which are at the core of everyday life (Cremaschi 2012). Taking care of these spaces is crucial, yet only a preliminary condition, to the deployment of more far reaching processes of mutual recognition and understanding. Finally, public space should also be reassessed as the privileged locus of interethnic relations. Far from that, public space, which includes an extensive set of interconnected places, serves as one among many stages where encounters take place. These places – either streets, community and welfare spaces, or places of work and worship – contribute to framing the overall inventory of social opportunities. Intercultural policy should then look at the variety of these spaces instead of focusing solely on traditional public spaces, such as the square or the park. In the reality of multi-ethnic Rome there are some positive signals of veritable intercultural processes, but these are not coming from official immigrants’ policies, rather from the practices of the civil society and other non-institutional actors. One example is that of immigrants’ businesses. Both in Esquilino and in Torpignattara, there is a concentration of ethnic shops that seems to be inaccessible to Italian customers and form closed ethnic enclaves. However, this phenomenon occurs in well-defined spaces (a street, a square), beyond which ethnicities mix and businesses experiment with various grades of hybridization. So it is possible to find shops which, even though having a strong ‘ethnic’ appearance, serve a diverse clientele, in some cases mainly Italian. Some of them are adopting Italian traditions, mixing styles or hiring Italian personnel. The role of these shops is important because the commercial exchange, the bargaining process and the building of customer loyalty necessitate face-to-face interactions that facilitate the intermingling of cultures. Furthermore, as already mentioned, shops have an important role with respect to the street they overlook. Appreciating this, the Torpignattara Neighbourhood Committee together with the Italian Institute of Bengalese Culture brought together Italian residents and immigrant businessmen in an initiative of collective cleaning of Maranella Street, which has the highest percentage of Bangladeshi commercial premises. This project is a particularly relevant example of collective care of the space shared by residents and

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retailers. The problem of urban decay, which is often associated with the presence of immigrants, is seen through another perspective. The belief of representatives of the Torpignattara Neighbourhood Association is that the decay is caused by the poor quality of the territory, which is already ridden with the historical lack of public facilities, infrastructure and services, and poor maintenance of public spaces. Rather than being viewed as the cause of the problem, the immigrants are seen as allies who are as interested as the residents in the upkeep of their living environment. In conclusion, as shown by the examples, policies of diversity can be political enactments for the intercultural city, the condition being the improvement of the assumptions in defining, modelling and processing diversity in an urban context (Briata 2013). Ironically, the lack of a national model either of assimilation or multiculturalism sustains, if not consistent results, then at least a varied array of practical experimentations, once more stressing the relevance of a local approach in Italy.

Notes 1. The empirical material used in this chapter mainly comes from studies carried out at the PhD program in ‘Territorial policy and local project’ of the University Rome Tre. In particular, the doctoral thesis of Fioretti (2011a and 2011b) has been consulted. Some insights also comes from Mudu (2003), Lucciarini (2007), Cremaschi (2008). Though the responsibility for this chapter is held jointly by the two authors, Fioretti wrote the initial version of the first, second and last paragraphs, plus most of the examples; Cremaschi drafted the other parts. 2. This is evident in different assets and initiatives based in this neighbourhood, concerning: the music scene (the famous multi-ethnic band ‘Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio’); literature (the popular novel, also made into a movie, Clash of Civilization Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, by Amara); cultural events (the Chinese New Year); religious practices (a mix of places of worship, including Christian churches, a Buddhist temple, a mosque, and a Chinese Evangelist church); ethnic cuisine (the most renowned Chinese restaurant in Italy, besides many other ethnic restaurants and a popular ethnic-food market); sports (the Piazza Vittorio Cricket Club). 3. Borgate were traditional self-built neighbourhoods that grew in the periphery of Rome in the first half of the twentieth century, replaced by post-war speculative developments with recent infill. The lack of a master-plan is mirrored also in the poor quality of the built environment and general lack of public space. 4. Several councils’ directives have forbidden certain kinds of retail and wholesale shops since 2003. 5. The Torpignattara Neighbourhood Committee is a very active community association formed by long term residents, mainly Italians, engaged in the promotion of the urban quality of the neighbourhood through a number of initiatives. 6. Jane Jacobs’ famous book The Death and Life of Great American Cities advocated a mix of activities to sustain a vibrant street life; short blocks allowing pedestrians to permeate urban space; the mixed quality of buildings to prevent social segregation through market mechanisms, etc.

CHAPTER 8 INTERCULTURAL PUBLIC SPACE AND ACTIVISM:LEARNING FROM TORONTO Michail Galanakis

From multi- to inter-culturalism This chapter is based on my research in Toronto in 2011. It consists of an examination of the physical and social characteristics of intercultural public spaces in one of the most diverse cities in the West.1 In Canada, multiculturalism has been institutionalized since the early 1970s, giving shape to the cultural mosaic which is Toronto (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009: 86). Burman (2007: 258) describes Toronto as a diasporic city: [. . .] in which the circulation of peoples, cultural influences, and objects have transformed the site to the extent that any idea of a shared history of place is displaced by overlapping call-and-responses reaching outside national borders. Recent revisions of Toronto suggest that Canadian multiculturalism has in fact created socio-spatial injustices and polarization in the city (Boudreau, Keil, and Young 2009; Sandercock and Attili 2009; Hulchanski 2010; Ryan 2010). In response to this vision, a dynamic discourse on social grievances has developed, as has a call for improvement in the distribution of resources and services in Toronto. This, in turn, has given rise to a thriving public sphere with voices and practices of dissent in which public-space activism takes part. This chapter presents findings from 19 semi-structured, open-ended reflexive interviews, as well as a focus-group discussion with 13 young men and women, all of which were conducted in Toronto in 2011.2 The participants

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in the focus-group described their ideal public spaces as places that would bring together different groups of people. These young people were enthusiastic about the possibility of bridging ethnocultural groups to gain greater understanding and appreciation of one another; however, this was not their everyday experience but rather something that they aspired to. These still-unrealized hopes for inclusiveness and social cohesiveness in public spaces cast doubt on how well urban planners and decision makers have been able to include equality and diversity in their agenda. Multicultural policies require social inclusion and participatory processes at all administrative levels. Planning departments, as well as the Division of Parks, Forestry and Recreation, responsible for shaping public spaces in Toronto, make use of processes which include public consultations (Frisken and Wallace 2002). However, Kane-Speer (2011), a planner and NGO leader based in Toronto, has asserted that these public consultations are cursory; planners are, she argues, largely unprepared to engage the community. The focus-group discussion, which was conducted in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto, was particularly instructive.3 In keeping with Wood and Gilbert (2005: 685), the words of the racialized4 young adult participants indicated that Canadian multiculturalism had not met expectations regarding public spaces for people to come together, to negotiate their ‘multiple cultural identities’, and ‘engage in debates and discussion’.

Interculturalism Good (2009) demonstrates that, in Canada, multiculturalism primarily addresses the integration of non-white immigrants. This approach has given rise to criticism and, hence, to a search for alternatives. The notion of interculturalism has been developed as an alternative to a myopic view of integration. It has largely been perceived and applied as the French-speaking province of Quebec’s answer to multiculturalism. Notwithstanding this, the municipality of Richmond in English-speaking British Columbia has adopted the concept of ‘interculturalism’ as a normative framework for policy making, one that better expresses the desire of residents and leaders for cultural bridging (Good 2009: 51). In addition, according to Good (ibid: 71) the term ‘multiculturalism’ in Richmond had become associated with division. Uzma Shakir (2011), equity and diversity manager for the City of Toronto, argues that: . . . my problem with multiculturalism always has been precisely . . . that it focuses so much on our differences, but differences that are mild in power differentials. So it’s not just that I’m different from you, but that your difference

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is more normal than mine . . . not only am I different, I’m also ghettoized. So, the problem is not that multiculturalism ghettoizes you, the problem is we don’t deal with the power differential within multiculturalism. It assumes that we’re all culturally different, which is just not true, some of us are more different than others, so the ghettoization is not a choice I make, ghettoization is a place I end up because nobody else wants me, and this is the safest place I can be. But even within that, I would suggest to you there are intuitive moments of interculturalism that come up. In Where Strangers Become Neighbours, Leonie Sandercock offers a brief review of multiculturalism as ‘a variety of political strategies and processes that are everywhere incomplete’ (Sandercock and Attili 2009: 218). She then goes on to formulate a theory of interculturalism in the following terms: Given this 21st century urban reality, we need to find a way to publicly manifest the significance of cultural diversity, and to debate the value of various identities/differences; that is, to ask which differences exist, but should not, and which do not exist, but should. Far from banishing the concept to political purgatory, we need to give it as rich a substance as possible, a substance that expands political possibilities and identities rather than purifying or closing them down (Sandercock and Attili 2009: 219). Though Leonie Sandercock (Sandercock and Attili 2009) envisions interculturalism as improved multiculturalism, many of the research participants5 in Toronto were not convinced. In a self-proclaimed multicultural society, concepts gain substance when concerted efforts are made for the redistribution of power and resources. Otherwise, interculturalism, too, can be seen as an excuse to postpone the political and material redistribution that Sandercock considers to be a pre-condition (ibid: 222). Following Siemiatycki (2011), I argue that if political redistribution of power is not carried out, then interculturalism will be as flawed and incomplete as multiculturalism. However, in societies that already define themselves as multicultural it is more likely for interculturalism to flourish, than it is in societies that resist acknowledging heterogeneity and the advantages of diversity.

Intercultural public space In increasingly diverse cities, the conditions under which people co-inhabit space determine the extent to which that co-habitation is convivial.

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Communication between different groups of people is vital and authorities, as well as grassroots organizations, need to work to make such communication as multi-layered as possible. Disregarding the day-to-day realities of coexistence and the need for diversity and inclusiveness in communication leads to a form of urban schizophrenia (see also Castells 2010: 3) whereby different groups do not communicate or come to understand one another, and have little opportunity to bridge what Ian Shapiro (2002: 119) calls the ‘empathy gulf’. Shapiro goes on to speak of economic polarization and the segregation it brings by which the rich and the poor do not develop empathy for each other. This is aggravated by the racialization of poverty, that is, when economic polarization and ethnocultural divisions affirm one another. From an intercultural perspective, cultural bridging takes place in public spaces. Geographers Hracs and Massam (2008: 74) write: Places/spaces can play significant roles as locations for citizens to gather and feel secure and able to share views about the world, and their wants and needs. Can planners design such places/spaces so that citizens from different ethnic backgrounds feel equally secure to mix and mingle in a shared place/space? Hracs and Massam highlight the need for places where civic conversations are facilitated so that diverse groups and people can safely express their concerns. Wood and Gilbert (2005) argue that, in a diverse society, public spaces are the places where negotiations amongst different groups take place. Incidental public spaces are the most promising non-institutionalized spaces in which to effect cultural bridging; these are the kinds of spaces most of the participants in this research project talked about. Hracs and Massam (2008: 67) describe incidental places as areas ‘. . . where people interact informally on sidewalks, at the market, in backyards. Here people bump into one another’. Hajer and Reijndorp (2001: 89) argue: The core of successful public space thus lies not so much in the shared use of space with others, let alone in the ‘meeting’, but rather in the opportunities that urban proximity offers for a ‘shift’ of perspective: through the experience of otherness one’s own casual view of reality gets some competition from other views and lifestyles. That shift of perspective, however, is not always a pleasant experience. It is not, then, due to incidental encounters between strangers that conversation occurs in public space, but that such encounters are capable of causing a shift in perspective and creating the need or desire for conversation

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and interpersonal contact. Such a process requires time and perseverance but the social solidarity it yields is transformative (Putnam 2007). Acknowledging the importance of incidental spaces means recognizing that, in a diverse society, different groups have different aspirations and perceptions of what is public and what is private. Valentine (1998) has demonstrated, for instance, that in the West eating in public was frowned upon until, thanks to enculturation, it became a norm. Still, loud picnics in parks are often cited as examples of the immigrants’ unruly use of public spaces. Alex Shevchuk (2011), project manager at the landscape architecture unit of the City of Toronto, talks about stereotypes and misunderstandings concerning the ways immigrants use parks: . . . here in Canada, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, . . . you go to a park, you walk around, but, oh my God, you’re going there to cook, and your mother and grandfather and kids are playing and we’re eating and playing music . . . That’s so different. But that’s also the reality . . . and are all those things allowed in parks? . . . maybe not. Planning Some research participants alluded to the differences between the respective perceptions of authorities and of grassroots organizations about public space, its definition and use. As a result, processes that include as many stakeholders as possible would be more beneficial to urban planning and the development of public space. Park planner Netami Stuart (2011) asserts that to plan for diversity: ‘. . . is to have planning done by a diversity of people . . . [s]o to be as consultative as possible.’ In Toronto, mechanisms for consultative processes of this sort exist. The boards that approve planning projects hold planners accountable for the effectiveness of the public consultations that they carry out with local communities. Planner Jo Berridge (2011) says: . . . in the Ontario context, you have to do it (public consultations] because of the Ontario Municipal Board, because the risk of getting an objection is very high on any project, and if you haven’t had a process of consultation, your case at the municipal board will be much less successful. So what the municipal board will want to hear is that you’ve talked to people. Not that you’ve agreed with them, but that you’ve heard them. Consultations are often criticized as inadequate and disappointing, and accused of being cursory and tokenistic. Despite their failings, though, in Toronto the synergies are there to turn planning into a platform for intercultural dialogue.

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In reflecting on her work, Cheryl MacDonald (2011), policy officer for social development in the City of Toronto, speaks of ‘proactive planning’ and the ‘social development plan’ that brings people together, regardless of their background, to work on issues of space and facilities. For MacDonald, interculturalism empowers people to engage in the planning and redistribution of public spaces and resources. In this process, building trust between stakeholders in planning processes is crucial. Burayidi (2000) and Sandercock (2000) consider trust a prerequisite for planning in a multicultural society. Furthermore, Sandercock (2003) argues that although processes of rigorous public consultation are time consuming, their results are long lasting. Building trust is the springboard for developing interpersonal relationships important for fostering intercultural dialogue (Unemoto and Igarashi 2009). Alliances are built and groups are formed that actively push for specific agendas regarding the design and management of urban space, as well as the redistribution of resources and services. Public-space activists have a hands-on attitude to issues pertaining to the use, design, and management of urban space.

Public-space activism In Toronto, the institutionalized participatory processes for planning have failed to yield the expected results: they have not increased engagement or managed to include diverse communities in planning processes (Frisken and Wallace 2002: 264). However, a dynamic public sphere, which I argue is a by-product of a multicultural legacy, has created the need – and the opportunity – for grassroots activism. ‘Public-space activists’, as Pask (2010) has called them, often contradict official planning and attempt to push legislative and regulative boundaries. It is, therefore, in public spaces that activists, authorities, local residents and old and new immigrants negotiate their rights, needs and aspirations about living ‘together in difference’ (Young 1992: 155) and sharing a common ground: namely the city and its resources. Pask (2010: 234) argues that public-space activism is not sporadic, coincidental or anarchistic: In fact, public space activists have made a habit of using various statedriven mechanisms to advance their causes: deputations, encouraging participation in public workshops, etc. . . . Indeed, some of the major work undertaken has enforced regulation that is already in place. Public-space activism is multifaceted, and it is through this diversity that activists have been able to express the need to be hands-on, to effect change,

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to make public spaces really public through their actions that heed these pressing needs. How do the authorities in Toronto respond to such activism? The research participants from the authorities reported a positive response, though they were also unsure about what it would mean for the legal framework and the distribution of responsibilities and resources to actually include public-space activists as players in the development of urban space. Shevchuk (2011), referring to some people’s hands-on attitudes about public spaces, has stated that: . . . to me that’s going to be the reality of the new age . . . I don’t think our funding and our resources are going to get better. There are more people out there, there are more park spaces, there are more expectations. So how do you bring in the resources to keep those parks up to a certain level? . . . And to me that’s the local communities . . . so I think people take an interest in their neighbourhoods, and they want to be hands-on with things like that . . . there’s a whole new kind of model developed for how you manage your public spaces in a very interactive kind of way . . . theoretically I can see, I’m not sure how you . . . implement it. Shevchuk captures the reality on the ground regarding the maintenance of public spaces and parks in a time of economic crisis and of shrinking public resources. However, beyond the crisis, Shevchuk also addresses social diversity and how this translates into expectations of more, and more varied public spaces. Lawson and Sorensen (2010: 263) demonstrate that public-space activism in the US is a response to ‘. . . structural inequalities that both create a disproportionate need (versus desire) for civic activism in low-income communities of colour, as well as an unequal access to public resources and support for their sustainability’. They go on to argue that activism cannot replace government agencies in providing services in the context of budget cuts, especially not to those in greatest need. Indeed, the revitalization of public spaces will continue to be only a dream unless local communities ‘assume leadership and ongoing care’. Lawson and Sorensen (2010: 264) justify the need for what they call ‘community action’ in localities with problems, but caution us that: to assume that grassroots activism is a form of ‘community empowerment’ often ignores the pervasiveness of structural inequalities and unequal access to resources; in other words, power. Although public-space activism is not a panacea for social injustice, its potential for redistributing resources should neither be disregarded nor romanticized.

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Don Mitchell (2003: 35) argues that people make spaces public with their actions, not authorities with their dictates. One assumes that public-space activists would agree with this bottom-up definition of public space, as their activism often seems to defy propriety. However, according to Rahder and McLean (2013: 159), public-space activists are more preoccupied with ‘genuine “public space”’ and ‘dismiss’ commercial spaces where presumably no potential for publicness can exist. Regardless of the strong views and rhetoric of some public-space activists, the case of Dufferin Grove Park demonstrates that the various practices – some of which are insurgent – activists use cut across categories such as public, private, and commercial. Therein lies the potential for expanding public space and pushing authoritative boundaries. Still, there is no guarantee that the authorities will heed the needs and demands of public-space activists. However, even when activists do not initially enjoy a great deal of political leverage, they may eventually be able to oblige authorities to take a position. Furthermore, public-space activists can make the broader public as well as decision-makers aware of the concerns of underrepresented communities. While public-space activism has the potential to influence policies, its influence is not exercised in a straightforward or expeditious fashion. The effectiveness of public-space activism depends on how

Figure 8.1

Dufferin Grove Park (Source: Photo by the author, 2011)

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well activists are able to use the media, personal networks and resources to negotiate and exert pressure.

The case of Dufferin Grove Park Public-space activism in Toronto is substantial in scope and, in certain cases, widely recognized. One of these cases is the revitalization of Dufferin Grove Park (Figs 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3) carried out by a group of volunteers led by park activist Jutta Mason. According to Mason (2011): I wanted there to be an opportunity for people to get to know each other to the extent that they want, which is not always so much . . . but on the other hand they can also be very lonely and so on, so it seemed like a park was a pretty good place to try and make it a little friendlier and a little more interesting. Because if people are going to be enjoying each other, they need to have interesting stuff to do . . . I asked them [Jutta did a survey over the phone] what they would like to see at the park. And so, basically, all the things that they wanted to see, then, I thought, okay, so we’ll make those things happen. And I thought the Parks Department would make them happen, the civil servants. That’s why we have them, but of course they don’t. I found that embarrassing, that I had talked to

Figure 8.2

Dufferin Grove Park (Source: Photo by the author, 2011)

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Figure 8.3 Dufferin Grove Park during a Friday night supper. The fact that most attendants are white Anglos6 has been cause for criticism (Mason 2011; Stuart 2011). Mason (2011) argues: ‘. . . okay, so they [immigrants] don’t come to Friday night supper, but they make their own picnics’ (Source: Photo by the author, 2011)

all these people and said, oh, yes, we can try and get these things and then nothing happens. So I just started to try and work on it myself. Almost everything that people wanted – food in the park, there wasn’t any food, because they don’t do that so much in Canadian cities, you know, eat outside, and all that, they wanted music, and the arts, they wanted there to be more flowers and also more native plants. They wanted there to be more interesting stuff for older kids to do, not just little baby playgrounds . . . They wanted there to be stuff also for youth . . . then we said, well, heritage. Multicultural heritage. We need to have some demonstrations of multicultural ways of cooking. So we got my friend Isabel, who’s Guatemalan, and she loved the idea, and so we got that little bit of money that the mall [the nearby Dufferin mall] gave us, a bit more money then to pay some people. She needed money, and she loved to cook over a fire – but then we just ate the food . . . we didn’t talk about that when we asked for permission, they just said it had to be a demonstration project . . . But what are you gonna do with the food? So, gradually, it just sort of slid in. And that’s one of the things that drives them (the authorities( crazy, around here . . . because it’s against the rules! You can look at the rules and it says NO food selling in the park. And

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also Public Health has all that stuff, although Public Health has been really quite okay with us. But you have to use all the rules against each other . . . well, you have to use one against the other. So heritage, yes . . . against the no food regulation . . . And the other thing that I learned myself, and I think people generally understand now, that almost everybody from everywhere likes to have a picnic. Outside. So, you don’t have to make these things, you have to remove the barriers. So one barrier is if there are no trashcans, or if there are no picnic tables, it’s the worst, so we tried very hard to get like, old benches, anything we could find, from the Parks Department. And they were . . . they were interested in that . . . But also, in the winter time, there’s an ice rink here. Mason (2011) is not a city employee. This gives her more room to manoeuvre, as rigid bureaucracy does not confine her: ‘. . . in my tiny little thing, I’m powerful, but only informally, in the sense that there’s no formal power. . . Not at all. And I’m not hired by the city or nothing.’ Mason has been confident and agonistic due to the fact that Dufferin Grove Park had indeed been transformed into a lively place. However, some argue that if one group is excessively active others may feel excluded. Karen Sun (2011), the executive director of the Toronto Chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council, has expressed scepticism about how inclusive a case like Dufferin Grove Park is: . . . I’ve certainly worked in other parks where this sort of thing happens, where a volunteer group will get together and they’ll start to do things, and they have their own personalities and their own ways of doing things, and depending on who is in that group, it can be easy or it can be hard for new people to join. In Dufferin Grove Park there is no explicit agenda on inclusiveness or diversity, but multiculturalism does appear to be an operative reality on the ground. Mason (2011) suggested that if the park is made available to more people through activities, design and management, those from a range of ethno-cultural backgrounds appreciate it and feel empowered to use it. Mason encounters many immigrants in the park: All the time! . . . But mostly after, in the evenings, because that’s also more cultural. And also, if they were working in the day! . . . But it’s hot in the apartment in the summer. And then in the winter there are lots of people who come skating, right? Like the demographic of the rink is very, very mixed . . . We’re just full of newcomers skating. Including the grandmothers . . . and the teenagers, and so on. And especially some Tibetans, big, big, now that’s a winter country too, right? . . . Uh, Cubans . . . Chinese . . .

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Mason’s activism is not always polite or subtle; she has, at times, upset the authorities by using contradictory regulations to implement plans that she and her peers think would improve the use and experience of the park. Mason is a member of the Centre for Local Research into Public Space (CELOS). On CELOS’s website there is extensive material on policies, laws and regulations relevant to public space; there is even information about court cases pertinent to public spaces.7 Mason raised one more interesting point, saying that while city authorities plan costly projects, she and her peers think ‘. . . cheap, cheap and small and now’. As far as the struggles with the authorities are concerned, it would be simplistic to perceive Dufferin Grove Park just as a case of victorious publicspace activism. Jutta Mason stated (personal communication on 10 May 2013; electronic communication on 11 May 2013), that the current situation at Dufferin Grove Park had entered a precarious phase. Mason spoke of a recent campaign to reveal how certain authorities have attempted to ‘unmake’ the park.8 In a recent report covering two decades of Dufferin Grove Park, Mason argues that instead of parks becoming the ‘commons’ to ‘foster patient and trustful public discussion’ (Mason 2013: 61), officials in the City of Toronto prefer bringing ‘the park into compliance with [the City’s] centrally devised rules’ and burying ‘experiments that used to be fun . . . in paperwork’ (Mason 2013: 53 – 4).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have presented some of the findings yielded by interviews and a focus-group discussion that I conducted in Toronto in 2011. Those conversations demonstrated that multiculturalism and the coming together of ethno-cultural groups to create social cohesion, based on deeper mutual understanding and appreciation, is an unrealized dream and something to aspire to. Intercultural public spaces are intended to be venues where people from different cultures can express themselves and learn to live together in difference. My research in Toronto revealed that regardless of whether we endorse multicultural or intercultural politics, while working for socio-spatial justice, political redistribution is necessary. For this reason places for civic conversation are indeed important. Within these places people chat about the mundane as well as negotiate the redistribution of political power and resources. The design and management of public space for civic conversation would facilitate the interaction between different individuals and groups, and thus intercultural communication. Grass-roots organizations actively engage in initiatives that address urban space, diversity and intercultural or cross-cultural communication,

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while at the same time they make spaces public. Indeed, the public-space activism evident in Dufferin Grove Park illustrates that people define spaces as public with their actions, not authorities with top-down decisions. When, through their actions, a group of people makes a public space its own, it appropriates that space. If this appropriation is not tied to corporate commercialization, it is more likely to be inclusive. This is particularly true when, in contrast to top-down policies, grass-root communities appropriate public spaces, making them relevant to their members.9 There is no single formula for intercultural public spaces; however, publicspace activism expands the meaning and function of public space. When we, in our increasingly diverse cities, design, manage and use public spaces, we are, in fact, negotiating our understandings of what is public and what is private. It may be sensible, then, for planners and decision-makers to focus on the concept of public life and its messiness rather than on public space (Banerjee 2001: 19, 21) and its ordinance. In this context, the kind of publicspace activism that I have discussed is a social act open to debate; it cannot be dismissed. Engaging it means re-examining the laws, policies and norms that shape our conceptions, perceptions, and lived experience of public and private. Dufferin Grove Park teaches us about the open and experimental nature of intercultural public spaces that are designed and managed to cater to the needs and aspirations of the local communities without necessarily excluding residents from other parts of the city. Recent revanchist top-down decisions regarding Dufferin Grove Park demonstrate that public-space activism, like the pursuit of intercultural dialogue, can only be an ongoing struggle. As Mason (2011) said: . . . parks are [public], because the citizens insist that they are, right? And people say you can’t do this, you can’t do that, and there’s always going to be a fight over it. So for example they [authorities] say here that in order to bring your friends and play some music you have to have a permit, you have to pay. And so we say, no you don’t, don’t listen to them. It’s not costing them anything, it’s our joint space, you don’t have to pay. And so that’s the fight. But it’s an ongoing struggle, it’s interesting eh?

Acknowledgments * A fuller account of this work was published in the Canadian Journal of Urban Research in 2013 under the title ‘Intercultural Public Spaces in Multicultural Toronto’. I would like to express my gratitude to all the research participants, whose testimonies are a source of knowledge and inspiration. I thank the reviewers of

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this chapter and the participants in the conference The Intercultural City: Exploring an Elusive Idea, which took place in Venice on 29–30 November 2012; their invaluable comments helped me hone my arguments. Thanks to Jane Brodie, Dina Fuad-Luke, and Paul J. Cottier for their proofreading and thoughtful comments. Last but not least, I would like to thank Liette Gilbert and my colleagues at York University for their help and encouragement. This article is based on research made possible by the Academy of Finland (Decision No. 137954).

Interviews Berridge, Joe. (2011). Urban planner, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 24 May. Focus-group. (2011). 13 youth participants from Jane-Finch Area, conducted by the author, Toronto, 16 June. Kane Speer, Alexis. (2011). Urban planner and founder of STEPS, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 19 May. MacDonald, Cheryl. (2011). Policy officer, Social Development, City of Toronto, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 15 June. Mason, Jutta. (2011). Public space activist, member of CELOS, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 20 May. Shakir, Uzma. (2011). Equity and diversity manager, City of Toronto, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 21 June. Shevchuk, Alex (2011). Project manager, Landscape architecture unit, Parks, Forestry and Recreation Division, City of Toronto, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 24 May. Stuart, Netami. (2011). Urban planner, interviewed by the author, Toronto, 13 June.

Notes 1. According to the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS), 51 per cent of the inhabitants of Toronto were born outside Canada (City of Toronto, 2013). 2. The interviews, as well as the focus-group discussion, were digitally recorded, then transcribed, and analysed manually. The Ethics Committee of York University (decision: 2011– 124) approved my research. I obtained written consent from all research participants. None of the 19 research participants chose anonymity, while all the young adult participants in the focus-group are to remain anonymous. All the transcripts of the interviews and the focus-group discussion are available from the Finnish Social Science Data Archive of Tampere University (http://www.fsd.uta.fi/en/). 3. Jane and Finch is one of Toronto’s 13 priority areas in need of special attention as identified by the City of Toronto (City of Toronto 2006). 4. The focus-group participants were mostly Black from various ethnic and social backgrounds. Racialisation here refers to the socio-spatial marginalisation inflicted on

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visible minorities. Galabuzi (2006: 251) defines racialisation as a ‘process by which racial categories are constructed as different and unequal in ways that have social, economic, and political consequences.’ One of the premises of this paper is that racialisation as a discriminatory process has spatial consequences (Galanakis 2008). The stakeholders who were interviewed for this research are purposefully referred to as ‘research participants’ because they were instrumental in reorienting the principle researcher’s approach. On many occasions, research participants used the term ‘Anglo’. Though it is often a derogatory term, there did not seem to be any intention to offend. http://celos.ca/wiki/wiki.php?n¼LawAndTheJusticeSystem.FrontPage http://publiccommons.ca/library/widgets/9074?instanceid¼ 22385&path ¼ 5685-,852422491&perpage ¼ 30 I have described this phenomenon elsewhere as ‘domestication’ (Galanakis, 2013: 83).

CHAPTER 9 PARENT CAFÉ :A RIGHT WAY FOR SCHOOLS TO BECOME A TRULY MULTICULTURAL SPACE? Alexei Medvedev

Introduction: international, national and regional context The current situation of immigrant children within the triangle of migration, education outcomes and career opportunities in most European counties is not acceptable. According to the Migrant Integration Policy Index few education systems in Europe are adapting to the realities of immigration (cf. MIPEX 2011: 16–17). Another important finding of the studies that has become known outside academia is a direct interdependence between students’ school performance and the socio-economic status of their families (cf. PISA studies from 2000 on, TIMSS & PIRLS assessments et al.). In the EU comparison the aforementioned finding is applicable to Germany’s system of formal education to a very considerable extent. It should be mentioned in this regard that we are not talking about a statistically marginal group: immigrant students amount to 10–20 per cent of the student population in many OECD countries (OECD 2010). In cities like Hamburg – which I will focus on in this chapter – these figures are almost three times as high: between 40 and 50 per cent (DESTATIS 2010). Over the past decade a number of large-scale surveys managed to get across to the public mind, at least in Germany, the fact that better cooperation between (migrant) families and educational institutions contributes to a better school performance by students. From the first PISA 2000 results we know that family-related effects on student’s performance are almost twice as strong as those of educational institutions (OECD 2001: 312f.). According to various nationwide and regional polls parents have traditionally played a key role in the career planning of their children.

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Depending on the particular survey, between 50 and 90 per cent of the youth interviewees in Germany indicate their parents to be the most influential career choice guides (Einstieg 2006: 10; Hamburger Sparkasse 2011: 15). In the region of Hamburg such a trend seems to be confirmed to the point that the Hamburg branch of the UniCredit Bank reduced the annual number of contract cancellations among successful apprenticeship applicants by approximately 75 per cent by involving parents during the period of signing the training contracts (Medvedev and Wazinski 2012: 19). As for migrant parents, they remain advisors, co-educators and career co-planners, despite experiencing a lack of practical knowledge about the receiving country, and in particular its system of education. This is why the Council of Europe (2009) advocates development of partnerships with local communities and migrant associations, including families of pupils with a migrant background, thereby contributing to the development of schools as learning communities. The 2008 NESSE report (2008: 83) recommends among all, strong parent involvement as well as proactive policies toward immigrant parents as a part of the general school quality improvement. Looking at the German context, it should be added that each of the 16 German provinces (Bundesla¨nder) is responsible for its school system, and Hamburg is one of them. Hence, parent involvement is an integral component of the corresponding provincial Education Act (Schulgesetz). The home-school policies basically imply organizing parent meetings (Elternabend) in every school class, elections of parent representatives (Elternvertreter) as well as establishing parents’ school councils. This way of involving parents functions more or less well at pre-school age and in the primary school phase. In secondary school it rapidly decreases and is carried out irregularly, which depends to a high degree on the school type (gymnasium vs. other school types); socio-economic and socio-demographic situation of the school neighbourhood (affluent communities vs. areas of social hardship; ethnically homogenous white middle- or upper-class population vs. ethnically mixed socially disadvantaged populations); particularities of school leadership; and, last but not least, individual teachers’ attitudes towards parents (parental involvement understood as a duty vs. parent engagement understood as a resource and value). Those who know everyday school practice in Germany would probably agree that all instruments mentioned above are tailored to, and reach, German-born middle and upper class populations. The actual situation of parent involvement among other groups of parents, including foreign-rooted families is, with the exception of some islands of good practice, rather insufficient, especially in the non-gymnasium types of secondary school. It reaches its negative climax by the end of compulsory schooling and dominates the so-called school-to-work transition, where

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teenagers (and in fact, their families) have to decide whether they continue their education in the (upper) secondary school, having rather an academic career in mind, or leave the school for a two- or three-year course within the system of vocational education and training – for instance, a private-public run apprenticeship at a company (Duale Ausbildung). Different measures are being (under)taken in schools in order to improve home-school policies, primarily to attract more migrant parents. In most cases we deal with a patchwork of overlapping short-term projects, more or less spontaneous initiatives, or enthusiastic actions of single teachers or principals, rather than systematic and coordinated long-term programs towards a more culturally responsive and sustainable cooperation between parents and schools as a part of school development processes. Besides, there have been no reliable longterm studies on the impact of parent involvement on secondary school students’ performance yet, at least not in Germany. Nevertheless, in recent times a trend towards a better evaluation and a more systematic analysis of measures taken by stakeholders at all system-relevant levels – from ministries and national foundations up to local practitioners and their networks – is emerging. This trend seems to be significant and merits, therefore, becoming the subject of an in-depth meta-analysis within a separate contribution. Just a few years ago Brater et al. advocated claims of individual parents for more informal ways of parent-teacher communication and parent evenings with coffee and cake (Brater 2007: 209). In 2013 these ‘informal ways’ became more and more state-of-the-art, or at least a part of the school development agenda. Many such measures taken by educational institutions – initially in primary and secondary schools – include, inter alia, the establishment and running of regular informal meeting points for parents. These meeting points are often called ‘parent cafe´s’ (Elterncafe´s). This is a very remarkable sociocultural phenomenon that has begun to emerge in Germany in recent years and it deserves closer examination. Meanwhile, school development practitioners, specialists on cultural diversity, foundations and other stakeholders have become accustomed to this term. Here are some recent examples. Along with workshops, school events and project days, parent cafe´s appear in the draft version of the ‘Common Declaration on Educational Partnerships between School and Families’ of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the La¨nder in Germany (Kultusministerkonferenz) and representatives of immigrant communities, to be approved in the near future. In the spring of 2013 the Vodafone Foundation Germany presented a policy paper on quality standards of parental involvement in schools. On this occasion a short cartoon was produced. One of the visual symbols of newly refurbished home-school policies was, again, the parent cafe´ (Vodafone Stiftung 2013). Nationwide the parent cafe´

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model finds more and more supporters across all school types. One of them is the Europa Schule Gymnasium Hamm in Hamburg, Germany. In presenting this case, this chapter provides an example of how this particular school managed to establish its parent cafe´ in cooperation with migrant parents, trained parent facilitators, and the BQM (Beratung Qualifizierung Migration), a Hamburg-based think-tank, whose programme ranges from practical activities such as providing training courses on cultural diversity issues for different target groups up to consulting authorities and enterprises on aforementioned issues as well as developing concepts and managing projects. The chapter reflects my positive experience from a practitioner point of view and proposes in conclusion a number of principles for a school-based parent cafe´, taking into consideration possible limits and challenges to this promising practice.

The school-based parent cafe´: a first approach to definition and description Searching for examples of the Elterncafe´ in Germany today, a great variety of parent cafe´s shows up, covering at first glance the complete repertoire of parenting and its needs: from nursery to university, from cafe´s for young parents, to cross-cultural services for migrant mothers. The parent cafe´ as an idea and a tool of parental involvement has rapidly spread throughout Germany, although most parent cafe´s in schools emerged only in recent years: the oldest are about five, the majority not even three, years old. There is no parent cafe´ theory as yet, and as a consequence no universal definition of the parent cafe´ as a species. Nevertheless, we need a starting point in order to describe the parent cafe´ as a type. The following description can be found on the website of the Lutheran church-run charity organization Johannes Diakonie, in the town of Mosbach in the south of Germany: The parent cafe´ is a regular forum for parents and relatives, which facilitates mutual exchange and dialogue with professionals. It takes place every seventh week on the premises of the pediatric ward [. . .] (Johannes Diakonie 2012). A step towards a more profound description and reflection on emerging parent cafe´ practices in Germany was made by four EU-funded projects on intercultural parent involvement in Hamburg. Four project teams had been working simultaneously for three years and established a network. One of the aims of this network was to document the project practices. As a result, the network produced a paper with recommendations for practitioners and

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decision makers based on their own field experiences together with running a parent cafe´ in one of the secondary schools in Hamburg. This paper included, among other things, a table giving an overview of a school-based parent cafe´ with objectives, recommended frequency, possible activities and structural preconditions (Engst et al. 2011: 9). The overview sheds light on the questions of What is a parent cafe´ good for? and How can it look? and is worth close examination. According to Engst et al. the purpose of a school-based parent cafe´ from the parents’ point of view consists in achieving barrier-free access to school; meeting other parents and school staff on an informal level; obtaining information on all important school events and school life in general; feeling encouraged to ask questions and exchange their own experiences on such issues as school life, education, parents-children-interrelations, communication, career guidance, etc.; expressing parents’ need for advice; being present at school as well as feeling motivated to take advantage of further activities. A primary aim of parent cafe´s would be to address parents who are supposed to be hard to reach. In their introductory chapter the authors mention that schools in Germany have serious difficulties in reaching migrant parents, so one can draw from this fact that this group of parents may be considered very large: ‘Taking the target audience and the way it is being addressed into consideration the parent cafe´ offers a suitable framework especially to those parents who are difficult to address through traditional parent involvement’ (Engst et al. 2011: 9). Furthermore, the paper indicates the following attributes of access to a schoolbased parent cafe: low-threshold, culturally responsive, gender-conscious, voluntary, no majority language command requirements with respect to free language choice policy, consideration of orality, option for gender- or topicoriented settings depending on concrete needs. As for frequency, the paper suggests organizing parent cafe´s on a weekly or a monthly basis at least. The repertoire of activities should be oriented to the wishes and needs of parents: The primary aim is to establish a positive contact with parents and to raise their interest for what comes next. In the cafe´ parents get informed about upcoming events and news of the school and community. Parents get acquainted with relevant educational, social and cultural institutions, also by visiting them in the context of field trips. Thematic meetings and information workshops on relevant topics regularly take place. Parents who need low-threshold advice or mediation between them and the school have time and place to take advantage of it all. Parents feel motivated to attend courses tailored to their needs: i.e. parent-child courses, information sessions, qualification activities (Engst et al. 2011: 9).

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According to the paper one of the structural preconditions of a well functioning parent cafe´ is cooperation with culturally responsive non-school professionals as neutral players and facilitators, who, nevertheless, should be integrated into the school system, have access to relevant information, maintain contact with the teaching staff and have a profound knowledge of school life. As mentioned in their introductory chapter the parent cafe´ model finds more and more advocates across all school types nationwide. In the author’s view there is a number of possible adaptations that could be made, that could be developed by further research. One refers to the sphere of psychology and has to do with the appeal of the word ‘cafe´’ and its connotations: a warm, cosy place, feeling secure, well-being, pleasant pastime, etc. In comparison with the traditional forms of parent involvement in Germany, such as the parent chamber, the parent conference day or the parent advisory board, which may sound complicated and serious, the parent cafe´ may sound rather easy-going and clear. Another adaptation refers to the socio-cultural sphere. The parent cafe´ is probably the only legitimate participation niche for conservative or socially disadvantaged populations (or both), especially women, who – for many reasons – have no regular occasions to participate in social life outside their homes. A social space or community-based approach would place the focus on schools as closed shops or teacher republics and the role played by them in German society or, to be more precise, in local communities. Supposedly, the school-based parent cafe´ could be therefore attempt to open this institution towards the outside world.

The parent cafe´ at the Europa Schule Gymnasium Hamm, Hamburg, Germany In 2007 the BQM launched a pilot project with the aim of improving the involvement of parents with other than a German cultural and linguistic background into school affairs, especially career planning of their children and post-secondary education. Within the framework of this project the BQM began annual basis peer-to-peer training courses for active migrant parents. All parents who successfully complete one of these courses become so-called Elternmoderatoren (parent facilitators) and get the opportunity to disseminate their knowledge on education issues to other parents in their migrant community and/or their neighbourhood. From the very beginning the BQM has been constantly reflecting experiences of, and with, the parent facilitators (cf. Gonza´lez 2008). Taking into account project results after six years the following conclusion may be drawn. There is a high demand for information across all groupings of

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migrant parents. The substantive demands of the parents depend on the age of their children. Despite this fact all parents want to know how the school system works and what (career) chances it offers to their children. Traditional formats and methods of addressing parents with other than German cultural and linguistic background practised by schools, such as parent letters or parent evenings, do not reach the target group to a satisfying extent. Obviously, there is a strong need for other, more culturally responsive, approaches. Both the physical and mental distance between schools and parents is often based on reciprocal stereotypes. These can be bridged by longterm educational work on both sides and building trustful interrelations. A successful parental involvement in schools can only benefit from extraqualified facilitators among parents. Their personal networks and social skills can play the key role in addressing and reaching other parents. The reasons why many migrant parents still remain hard-to-reach are not automatically related to the language barrier: it is also about schools learning to give the parent involvement issue more space, commitment and regularity. From the author’s practical experience it is known that migrants choose school venues for meeting other parents outside official school parent involvement activities, too. This phenomenon is known by the name parent engagement undercover, which apparently means that migrant parents have no fear of the school as a location. This observation refutes a widespread opinion existing in educational institutions that migrant parents have a fear threshold in regard to schools. Both approaches – contacting parents in schools as well as reaching them in private settings – are promising and implementable. In order to provide an insider’s point of view, the author refers to authentic experiences of the Europa Schule Gymnasium Hamm in Hamburg. Here is the voice of Ayfer S¸engu¨l-Loof, a teacher at this school and one of the active facilitators and initiators of the parent cafe´:1 Our school decided one day to set up a parent cafe´. This decision resulted from the idea to create a pleasant atmosphere for parents by giving them opportunities to meet other parents, not only teachers. The exchange among parents is particularly valuable because they believe they would play “in the same team”, unlike the school teachers who play “in the other one”. To break up with this idea was a precondition of any good cooperation between parents and schools. During the first meeting in the cafe, we asked parents to explain the reason for their participation. Without that we would not have been able to find out why they came. Astonishingly, the majority of parents would have been ready to support the school before that day; however, either because of language barriers or other obstacles, they had not been able to fulfill this. Before the first meeting we tried to resolve the language barriers by sending out invitations to parents in their first

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languages. The majority languages chosen were German, Turkish, Russian, Persian, and Chinese. Since the start four years ago the parent cafe´ in our school is being run by a core team, which combines a whole range of backgrounds, biographies, motivations, etc. We have a father, who is a parent board representative in his daughter’s class and meanwhile was elected to the City Parent Advisory Board. There is a mother, who was a teacher in her home country and knows both perspectives. There are other mothers who discovered a new role for themselves through a regular participation in the cafe´: they improved their confidence and motivation for the interests of their children and learnt to shape everyday life at their school. Our experience of the last years has shown that even simple things matter. A good example would be the welcome barbecue for the families of the 5th grade. The idea behind it was just to help the newcomers and their families get first orientation in our school in a different way. It turned out that the parents experienced the beginning of the school year as an exciting and unsettling period at the same time. The barbecue evening organized by the parent cafe´ members gave new parents opportunities to get to know each other and the school. Starting the first parent meeting at the new school with introducing parents to each other can create a relaxed atmosphere and make the parents and children feel welcome from the very beginning. The feedback from the parents during the enrolment for the 5 th grade, also their question “Are we gonna have the barbecue evening this year?” – motivated us and showed how easy it is sometimes to establish things. Another important aspect to be mentioned in this regard: the positive reaction of the parents who made this event happen with the support of the school administration. They were apparently proud to represent the school and tried in personal conversations with their peers not only to promote their network but also to take away the anxiety of the newcomers by talking about their experiences at school. Our basic idea was to use facilitators among parentsas a first contact point for parents who need counseling on their children’s school career opportunities. One of their main tasks would be to mediate among schools, parents and school authorities. According to this idea our school started involving parents who attended the BQM peer-to-peer training program. The complexity of the part played by the trained parent facilitators is about the double perspective they represent. On the one hand, they are parents themselves and may have similar experiences. On the other hand, they represent the school with all its obligations, but also demands. So they have to respect the perspective of parents and schools alike to provide a basis for an amicable solution. Doing this job the multipliers always can count on the support of teachers, who established the cafe´ together with them.

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It is encouraging to see parents’ efforts rewarded by successful actions. The network, growing by individual backgrounds and biographies, contributes to the fact that parents’ concerns can be spoken out loud to the school administration as well as to the School Authority. In such situations, parents learn how much they can move and how meaningful their voice is. Those, who initially had language barriers, begin to adopt the German language, because it is definitely more fun to be able to discuss things without having to get the contents translated by others all the time. We give them time and support them in uttering their oral contributions. Multilingualism does not mean in this context teachers must speak many languages. It is what parents can do, if insufficient command of German would become a conversation hurdle. Looking at our experience with the parent cafe´ we realize that first of all, it’s all about the school that parents perceive as a place of wellbeing. Shall we, however, consider the parent cafe´ as a workshop, the focus automatically will be shifted to results to be achieved in teamwork. Though, this should not become a streak of successes, at least not as the main product. The school should rather accompany parents, show them ways how the school can be addressed with all the parents’ requests and troubles. During our discussions we try to stay as practice-oriented as possible by drawing conclusions from an individual case and applying it universally. So, the cafe´ can serve as a place of (self)-reflection. In our everyday life, also in our cafe´ we experience how differently people interact. This experience should be appreciated. We learn to confront conflict situations adequately and keep an eye on communication rules. Therefore, the parent cafe´ can be looked at as a place of learning and participation, where parents have a voice and see themselves as part of the school institution. Besides, the parent cafe´ can also be viewed as a place of emancipation. Parents, who have their say in the organization of school life, become more and more aware of their duties and responsibilities, feel needed and can transfer these skills to other areas. This case convincingly demonstrates how cooperation between a school and a non-school institution, in our case a migration-related project, can be facilitated in the best way. From many years of experience with the BQM and other projects, it is possible to claim that cooperation like this is not the general case. In the terms of community and social space orientation, many schools in this country still remain closed shops. However, in the face of new demographic, social and other school system-relevant challenges, Germany’s schools, stronger than ever, are urged to redefine the role they used to play in the German society and – which is even more important for the issues of this chapter – in local communities (cf. Medvedev 2012: 40 ff). It is very likely that school-based parent cafe´s may be one of the steps towards this

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redefined role. Krummacher (2004: 286) considers local communities to be the essential level of integration and identity building in the social space. One can agree with that, taking into consideration that the local community is not the lowest level of social space. Social space is not only geographical (a district, neighbourhood, etc.) but is also corporative in the sense of an institution such as school. This broader understanding of social space would be an appropriate tool in achieving the goal of making parents feel they belong to their children’s school as their place, which rather corresponds to the statement by Klus: In terms of social infrastructure, collaboration between the stakeholders of public social work and the traditional pillars of the community (clubs, churches, political parties, neighbourhood associations, etc.) is of particular relevance for the integration. [. . .] School, kindergarten and local community are central axes, where integration processes can be localized (Klus 2006: 140– 142). However, the triad of school, family, community, excludes the school system from the (local) community paradigm, which cannot meet the intention to foster schools as places of integration. A similar approach demonstrates the theory by Epstein et al., which is based on the idea of overlapping spheres of influence, namely school, family and community, whose interaction affects the educational success of the child or the adolescent: All students and their families live in communities, whether close to or distant from schools, that are diverse in geography and history and in economic and social characteristics. Wherever they are located, all communities include individuals, groups, and organizations that care about children; share responsibility for children’s futures; and are potentially valuable resources for children, families, and schools. Children, families, and schools also are valuable resources for their communities (Epstein 2011: 4ff). A critical thought here is that the tripartite model of overlapping spheres of influence demonstrates again that the community system excludes the educational sphere and considers it as a parallel system to the systems community and family. Therefore, the system community can be visualized as a socio-geographical space, a meta-system where the system’s school, family and school partners (individuals, groups and organizations) interact. This approach leads us to the conclusion that community is a framework that enables interrelations among the three aforementioned stakeholders.

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Conventional cafe´ vs. parent cafe´ While school development practitioners, specialists on cultural diversity, foundations and other decision makers rapidly became accustomed to the term ‘Elterncafe´’, the question remains as to how the prototype of the (schoolbased) parent cafe´, with its specific features, corresponds to or differs from the conventional street cafe´ and the way it has existed over the past 400 years in the Western hemisphere. The normal definitions of the word cafe´ or coffee house as given in dictionaries – such as ‘a place where coffees and cakes are served’ – are apparently not enough for a profound comparison. Answering this question requires an understanding of the cultural history of the cafe´ as a species. Brought to Europe by the Ottomans, cafe´s started their incredible career in Europe and became an important public space, a crucial element of Western urban public culture. When considering European coffee houses as a sociocultural phenomenon one should keep in mind two facts. Firstly, the cafe´ is not an urban prerogative. It also plays an important role in the social life of rural areas in Europe (cf. Photiadis 1965). Secondly, apart from cafe´s in European cities, there exist(ed) other species of social get-together, like salons or table societies (Habermas 1989: 30). Waves of twentieth-century migration to Germany enriched this canvas and created such post-modern hybrids as the Tadschikische Teestube, a traditional Central Asian tea-house, originally located in the premises of the noble Palais am Festungsgraben in one of the central districts of Berlin or the Burg am See in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district: a mixture of a German beer garden, a Turkish tea-house and an Arabic water-pipe smoking parlour. Despite these post-modern fusion trends, the cafe´ as a species has preserved its characteristics. The main attributes of the conventional cafe´ can be identified according to its functions. The primary purpose of the cafe´ has always been a place for coffee consumption. This purpose has been widened over the centuries, so that nowadays we have a much greater variety of consumer goods making up the cafe´ repertoire. However, this core function must not be ignored. Without this centrepiece the cafe´ would lose its origin (and name!). The function of a socializing space became more important over time. In this regard, the cafe´ still maintains its role as a place of discussion, exchanging or just consuming news and expressing private views in public, even when transformed into today’s virtual spaces of cafe´s with free Wi-Fi access and visitors sitting around with their open laptops on the tables. The last example demonstrates that the option for a social get-together provided by cafe´s does not necessarily include group activities. In contrast to the clubs, political and other associations, the cafe´ offers the opportunity to find an individual balance between participation and non-participation without the

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thread of exclusion. Probably, the crucial feature of the cafe´ is its physical existence within a regular time and place setting, which enables the participation in it as such. This characteristic is connected with what Habermas calls the principle of universal access (Habermas, 1989: 85), considering coffee houses to be open institutions. The claim to being open, in terms of inclusiveness, is rather controversial, given that different social groups traditionally used to gather in their cafe´s. In this context Philo assumes that today’s coffee houses are much more straightforwardly inclusive, with less of a penchant for excluding certain groupings (. . .) and fewer barriers, formal or informal, to entry and, in effect, to membership (Philo 2004: 17). At first glance all features of the conventional cafe´ described above are applicable to the school-based parent cafe´, although taking a closer look would make certain differences visible. These differences relate primarily to the factors time and place. Both provide the backbone to the organization of any social activity. Compared to the conventional cafe´ – supposed to be open as often as possible, school-based parent cafe´s, as the author knows from his experience, have a lower frequency. Most are open on a weekly, monthly or even a quarterly basis. There may be many reasons for this. The conventional cafe´, as a business, mostly privately held, has a strong interest in operating profitably. Usually, this economic motivation does not apply to the parent cafe´ as a non-profit enterprise. The parent cafe´ has a rather social orientation and is driven by a school’s intrinsic values and motivation. This fact is behind the next important difference. The conventional cafe´ is mostly an integrated and, at the same time, a separate element of the urban or rural landscape. It is, therefore, visible, accessible, and consumable on site. The school-based parent cafe´ is – as the name implies – spatially and institutionally seen as a part of the school institution. Both features – a lower frequency and a quasi hidden location – may be a barrier to potential visitors. This barrier threat can be successfully resolved by matching communication ways, incentives and target groups. The crucial difference between the school-based parent cafe´ and the conventional cafe´ is the role supposed to be played by the cafe´ personnel. As a rule the staff members operating the conventional cafe´ are meant to be more or less invisible. They fulfil the function of welcoming, serving food and beverages, as well as creating a pleasant atmosphere. As indicated above, the parent cafe´ is aimed at mutual exchange and dialogue with professionals, meeting other parents, teachers and administrative staff on an informal level. This objective requires special educational and organizational skills from the team involved in launching and running such a cafe´ in their school, at least in the initial phase until parents are in a position to organize by themselves all services required. In this context using peer-to-peer formats, like training parent facilitators, may become supportive or even decisive.

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School-based parent cafe´s as a promising practice: challenges, limits, results The issue of parent involvement is anything but new; so is the issue of migration. Nevertheless, schools look for new ideas for parent cooperation and take inspiration from the positive experiences of other schools. No school needs to reinvent the wheel. There are numerous opportunities to exchange ideas with other schools and pick up new know-how, although it is essential to keep in mind that adopting good practices requires reflection on both the abstract model (project theory) and its variants in individual time and place settings (project practice). In our specific case, the conditions for successful implementation of a parent cafe´ depend on the specific school situation and school environment, which may have nothing or little to do with those of the good practice school. Success in one school does not necessarily mean the same in any other school just because of the good practice label. In addition to promising practices from schools, there are always those who have had rather bad experiences and have failed in their opinion, because of the lack of parents willing to participate. In such cases we all need to understand that the success of collaboration and having a good school concept of parental involvement should not necessarily depend on the number of participants. The goal should be to overcome the fear of failure and the ‘We have already tried it all’ philosophy. Just as student groups of the same age differ from each other, so do parents, even from one and the same ethnic group or social background. Therefore, it is important to revise one’s own experiences and opinions to be able to see them in a new light, set in a new context. One should give new visions a chance to grow and not just capitulate at the first hurdle. Thus, organizing a parent cafe´ is not a conjuring trick. It may take time. For example, it took the Gymnasium Hamm nearly two years to establish the parent cafe´ the way it works. Within the limits of this chapter, and considering the lack of researchbased data, it would be erroneous to offer any far-reaching practical recommendations. The issue of transfer and reproducibility of so-called best practices in new socio-cultural contexts remains, in our opinion, the biggest challenge. Kalev et al. (2006: 590) remark, concerning approaches to promoting diversity: ‘at best, “best practices” are best guesses. We know a lot about the disease of workplace inequality, but not much about the cure’. When recommending practices there is always, on one hand, the threat of overestimating the general pattern (sample, recipe, know-how, etc.) and, on the other hand, a risk of underestimating the specific person-, time- and placerelated constellation. The preconditions for the success of any project should be defined as variables depending on the given social context, which does not

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necessarily have anything in common with the original project. Along with common standards, schools should be encouraged to define the scope and way of measuring the success or failure of their extra curriculum activities, such as the parent cafe´, by themselves. Such variables as time, place, advertising and communication strategies, language, ethnical or gender compound, involving key persons as well as personality features of parent cafe´ facilitators, not to forget the famous X-factor like forgotten keys or low outside temperatures: all of this can be decisive for the success or failure of the project. There are settings that just take a longer time before they start functioning due to personal interrelations or need more than just one attempt. Other settings have a cyclical nature (i.e. school holidays vs. school term, Ramadan or Christmas time vs. holiday-free time, warm vs. cold season, etc.), and should be promoted by word of mouth rather than by print advertisements or may achieve better results in cross-cultural/gender mixed groups (or vice versa), etc. If schools and their partners do not realize this, one may confront frustrated school teams desperately trying to organize parent cafe´s that are – in their terms – not developing as quickly as desired or are even failing. Every agenda has to decide for itself what exactly success or failure means. Neither category is absolute: the same outcomes could be a success for one project yet a failure for another. The fact is that despite the strong interest of the stakeholders to implement this format throughout the school system it is not a success in every single school at all! Some initiatives just need more time to be kicked off or have a special life cycle, are driven by oral propaganda rather than print advertisements, function better in linguistically or gender homogeneous groups, etc. There are no ready-to-go recipes or best practices. It is about format, method, or technique – ingredients to be blended in an individual mix and to be customized by each school depending on special local (regional, national, etc.) requirements and – above all – the needs of the parents. More than applying techniques and methods it is about elimination of discriminatory structures and attitudes. Mutual respect, options for open dialogue as well as thorough preparatory work, are essential for the successful long-term implementation of such a project, regardless of the aforementioned framework preconditions. Looking at the school-based parent cafe´ as part of the agenda, how to bring more cultural diversity from outside into the school and, as a result, open the school to migrant families, is a question still to be resolved, whether schools are able to carry out a series of long-time change processes by themselves. The author’s strong belief is that nowadays schools are increasingly reliant on cooperation with non-school actors like parent associations, migrant communities, institutions of vocational education and training, local businesses, religious and faith communities, counselling centres, (youth)

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training agencies, single volunteer mentors, etc. Depending on the specific school and community constellation, this list may vary. A well functioning parental involvement needs suitable facilitators. Their personal networks and social skills are key factors for achieving the target audiences. The challenges of the issue of migrant parent involvement are far from being merely language-dependant. One conclusion might be said to be the insight that designing programs for certain population groups – migrants for instance – requires from policy makers and practitioners consideration of in-group diversity in order to better meet the demands of people, to avoid possible threats or backlash effects and, finally, to enhance the impact of the program designed (cf. Kalev et al. 2006). Single events are not sufficient enough to meet existing needs and empower (migrant) parents to take their own actions in a long-term perspective. Information on any school-relevant issues should always be coupled with real opportunities for the parents to act. At the same time it is also about schools that should learn to give this issue more space, commitment and regularity. It is too early to claim that school-based parent cafe´s have finally achieved the long-awaited breakthrough in home-school policies and replaced out-ofdate structures of school-parent communication in this country. Nevertheless, the fact is that parent cafe´s have become more and more normative. Parent cafe´s seem to be a promising format for cooperation between (migrant) parents and schools, an attempt to attract more foreign-born parents through establishing an institutionalized but at the same time easily-accessible setting that combines both Oriental and Occidental traditions of coffee houses and tea rooms. The parent cafe´ as a model has the chance to become a new interaction and communication platform for school stakeholders, first of all teachers and parents. To prove (or to disprove) this statement one definitely needs evidence-based research and, of course, years of project practice. As a final conclusion, seven principles of the school-based parent cafe´ are proposed by the author as a step towards the issue of how it can be established institutionally. (1) The focus of any cooperation between parents and schools is the child. This does not mean, however, that such cooperation has no other effects! (2) The possible impact of the parent cafe´ is complex. If the school truly seeks to use the skills of every single parent, the parent cafe´ can become a place of wellbeing, of (self-)reflection, empowerment, participation and learning with, and by, other parents. (3) In addition to the questions of How often? and Where? there is still a difference between a school-based parent cafe´ and a street cafe´, especially regarding the role of cafe´ facilitators. A parent cafe´ is about mutual

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exchange – meeting parents, teachers and school administration on an informal level. The school-based parent cafe´ can be considered as a project aimed at bringing everyday life (also cultural diversity) into school and opening this institution to the outside world. To carry out this project as a part of a long-term change processes, schools are reliant on cooperation with a number of non-school actors, both institutions and individuals. There is no universal recipe for a successful parent cafe´ but many single experiences, ideas, methods and principles to be customized by each school depending on its own requirements and – above all – the needs of the parents. Along with certain common standards, schools define the scope and way of measuring success or failure of their extra curriculum activities, such as the parent cafe´, by themselves.

Notes 1. Quoted and translated into English from the following German original paper: Medvedev, A. and S¸engu¨l-Loof, A. (2013), ‘Vom Elterncafe´ zur Elternmoderation – zwischen Modell und Alltag’, in Hartung, R. et al. (ed), Interkulturelles Lernen. Ein Praxisbuch, Schwalbach/Ts, Debus Pa¨dagogik Verlag, pp. 146–54.

CHAPTER 10 CREATING MEANINGFUL CONTACT:BOUNDARIES AND BRIDGES IN THE INTERCULTURAL CITY Gill Valentine and Lucy Mayblin

Introduction: intercultural contact in the city A recent Council of Europe report to investigate the resurgence of intolerance and discrimination in Europe (Report of the Group of Eminent Persons of the Council of Europe 2011) identified a concern that rising intolerance might also cause the creation of parallel or segregated societies within European cities, the loss of democratic freedoms and possible clashes between the perceived rights and freedoms of different minority groups (especially between freedom of expression and religious freedom). In this context there is increased recognition, in both academic and policy contexts, of the need for strategies to develop intercultural communication and understanding across difference (e.g. Meer and Modood 2012). The contact hypothesis is a foundational theory for addressing and reducing prejudice. It originates from the work of Gordon Allport (1954), who recognized the potential of bringing people from various groups together in ways that might develop mutual concern and respect (see also Pettigrew and Tropp 2006; Valentine and Sadgrove 2013). His ‘contact hypothesis’ is predicated on the principle that, under the right conditions (i.e. the necessity for participants to have a sense of equal status and a common purpose or activity, for the engagement to be realistic rather than artificial, as well as for such encounters to have the sustained support of the wider community within which they occur), intercultural encounters can potentially facilitate good

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relations between diverse social groups. Indeed, a recent review of a diversity of policies and practices designed to promote cohesion across 31 European cities argued that policy makers need to engage more ambitiously with ways of creating intercultural dialogue (European Foundation 2010). While human geographers have paid recent attention to the city as a site of everyday contact, this work has primarily focussed on banal everyday or incidental encounters (e.g. cafes, markets, parks, and public transport) which are presumed to produce cosmopolitan sensibilities and competencies as a byproduct of socially diverse individuals rubbing along together as they go about their normal lives (Laurier and Philo 2006; Wilson 2011; Watson 2009). Yet, while visible diversity may give the illusion of contact (Wessel 2009), it is unclear to what extent proximity alone has the potential to bring about social transformation, and to break down prejudice (Valentine 2008; Valentine and Waite 2012) rather than merely facilitate banal civilities. If contact is to reduce prejudice and promote intercultural understanding it must be meaningful, that is it must ‘actually change values and translate beyond the specifics of the individual moment into a more general positive respect for – rather than merely tolerance of – others’ (Valentine 2008: 325). In other words, it must lead not just to cultural exchange but also to cultural destabilization and transformation (Amin 2002; Sandercock 2003). In thinking about contact we are influenced by the writing of Mary-Louise Pratt (1992), who developed the idea of a contact zone as a way of thinking about colonial and postcolonial encounters. Her approach focuses on what emerges when groups of people previously separated meet, in other words, on ‘how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other’ (Pratt 1992: 7). A number of scholars have taken up the concept of the contact zone in theorizing intergroup contacts, particularly in educational contexts (e.g. in terms of classrooms or the campus), in order to develop relations between people groups already in banal everyday contact with each other (e.g. van Slyck 1997; Singh and Doherty 2004; Kenway and Bullen 2010; Hemming 2011; Andersson et al. 2012). Amin (2002: 959) argues that contact is best achieved in what he terms the ‘micro-publics of everyday social contact and encounter’. These ‘micropublics’ include: sports or music clubs, drama/theatre groups, communal gardens, youth participation schemes and so on. They represent sites of purposeful activity where people from different backgrounds come together in ways that provide them with the opportunity to break out of fixed patterns of interaction and learn new ways of being and relating (Amin 2002). Rather than leaving to chance the emergence of openness to otherness, some writers have argued that the commercial hospitality industry (Bell 2007) and also design (Fincher 2003; Fincher and Iveson 2008) can play important potential

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parts in fostering integration between different groups. Fincher and Iveson identify the characteristics of particular spaces where they believe this productive activity can be produced or facilitated. Libraries, they argue, are spaces of encounter that have a redistributive function. They offer free and – facilitated by design – equal access and a safe space for individuals and groups. The information resources and provision of areas to sit and read or drink coffee can enable users mutually to negotiate their common status as library users and to build social capital. Community centres in contrast are spaces which emphasize recognition. Social encounters in these spaces are relatively informal and can quickly become familiar or home-like through repeated visits. As such these encounters are not completely incidental like meetings on the street, but neither are they as organized and purposeful as ‘micro-publics’ such as sports clubs and drama groups. They can also operate as therapeutic spaces because they provide the chance for individuals to show an interest in or support for the well-being of others. In this chapter we extend this analysis further by looking at the possibility of engineering meaningful contact by bringing together artificially groups from different cultures, communities and with different life experience, who have limited opportunities to meet in everyday life. In doing so, this chapter draws on a case study of an interfaith project which sought to bring young Jewish and Muslim people together across religious difference in a northern British City, which was undertaken as part of the LIVEDIFFERENCE research programme funded by the European Research Council. This study involved an intense period of fieldwork between 2011 and 2012 including: semi-structured interviews with the interfaith project leaders, and interviews and focus groups with both Jewish and Muslim participants (who were all male and ranged in age from 17 to 19 years old), as well as extensive participant observation of the events organized as part of the interfaith work.

Boundaries: geographies of difference The Jewish and Muslim communities in the city where the research was conducted are divided by history and geography. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of both Zionism and Arab nationalism led to emerging tensions in the Middle East region. At the heart of the conflict is the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, which is historically understood to belong to Palestinian Arabs and therefore to be Muslim land but which is also regarded by the Jewish people as their historical homeland. The political and nationalist dispute over these competing territorial ambitions – fuelled by the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 – has

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come, however, to be represented by some as a religious war between Jews and Muslims (with each perceived to be dedicated to the eradication of the other). This despite the fact that Islam and Judaism are both Abrahamic religions with considerable shared theological aspects. As a result the contemporary conflict between Israel and Palestine is potentially a source of irritation between Jewish and Muslim communities at a local scale. At the same time, the Iraq War, the 9/11 terrorist attack in the USA in 2001 and the bombing of the London underground in 2007 have also been identified as events which have the potential to mobilize prejudice and fear between these different faith communities. Indeed, Pain and Smith (2008) argue that fear, although materialized in different ways in different places, can affect not only a personal sense of self but also a sense of everyday well-being and belonging at the neighbourhood scale. In particular, negative national discourses of difference that fuel everyday prejudices can be particularly difficult to disrupt (Valentine 2010). Moreover, because the Jewish and Muslim communities are located on opposite sides of the city where the research was conducted they are spatially segregated. This limits the opportunities for banal everyday intercultural exchanges to occur that might facilitate good relations between these social groups. This geographical separation also reflects a class difference between these two faith communities, which further exacerbates the perception of social and cultural distance between them: It’s quite difficult, it’s quite unlikely for your kids growing up in [area where Muslim participants are from] or other areas of south [of the city] to have come into contact with suburban, young, secular, Jewish kids living in . . . [the] northern suburbs. There’s a . . . different culture, different lifestyle . . . so there’s a bit more mystery around that community, yeah definitely (Muslim organizer). To address the limited opportunities for encounter between these two communities an interfaith project (hence forth described as ‘the Project’ in order to protect the anonymity of the organization) was established to create a contact zone that might build bridges or connections between these two groups. It was funded by Faiths in Action (a £4million grant programme provided by the then government to support inter faith projects) with small additional grants received from a mobile phone company and the Prevent fund (a controversial initiative by the then government in response to the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings, which developed interventions in Muslim communities with the aim of stopping young people becoming radicalized). The organizers of the Project – a leader from each faith community – did not draw on formal instruction manuals or well established methods used in

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diversity training for organizations (see Wilson 2013). Rather, they felt they had an intuitive sense of what might work, and together with professional facilitators, who brought in some principles from conflict resolution and mediation, they developed what they framed as an experimental scheme that involved different forms of contact.

Bridging across differences: the act of translation The first set of activities to bridge the two faith communities involved intentional strategies to generate ‘meaningful contact’. Santos (2005) characterizes the ‘collective meanings’ that emerge from contact as the act of translation. He writes that translation in the contact zone is ‘a dialogical and political work’ which involves both ‘recognition of the limits of one’s own knowledge and culture, and an openness to the ideas, knowledge and practice of others’ (Santos 2005: 20). For the Project the assumed commonality of faith provided the basis for the work of translation. For the organizers faith was initially identified as a way of potentially also speaking across other differences such as ethnicity and class. Interfaith groups are more successful than their secular equivalents according to one interviewee because: ‘if the Muslims are dealing with someone who takes faith seriously they respect that and vice versa’ (Jewish organizer). Cooper (2004: 96) has observed that historically inequality is secured through particular forms of differentiation and segregation being read as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. Prior to coming together both the Muslim and Jewish young people reproduced rather stereotypical or cliche´d representations of ‘us’ and ‘them’. For example, one Muslim focus group participant said that the only thing he knew about Jewish people before being involved in this project was ‘that they are stingy’. In turn the Jewish participants believed that the Muslims would be so devout and narrowly focussed on their own religion that they would not be interested in taking part in dialogue with people from different perspectives. Here, the participants negative perceptions of the other faith were attributed to the media (cf. Hudson et al. 2007): Yeah because all the stuff that you hear on TV . . . about Muslims and Jewish people but when you come here and get along with them it’s totally different to what you get on the news (Muslim participant). The Muslim and Jewish young people were brought together in a series of regular activities as well as time spent together on a weekend away. These activities were predicated on exploring the two faith groups’ religious and cultural practices: including sharing readings from holy books, discussing

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festivals, foods, weekly rituals. The young people were charged with the responsibility of representing their religions within this context and were expected to be able to explain what it meant to them to be Jewish or Muslim to the other group. Through this process the participants identified a number of commonalities. For example, these young Muslims observed: Basically we pray a lot. We pray . . . like we go to the mosque on Friday and we don’t have dinner on Friday [like the Jews do]. Jews are having a special meal on Friday and we have a special prayer on Friday. There are a lot of similarities. On the weekend away together the young leaders had a question and answer session where they were able to ask anything they wanted about each other’s religions. One of the Jewish interviewees commented: I think some of the interesting things was how they saw all the other prophets as being – all the other leaders of the other religions as being prophets as well, like Moses, Abraham and Jesus. Our focus group participants described how this contact had served to minimize their understanding of differences, and see beyond the conflicts between Muslims and Jewish people. Rather they stressed their recognition of a mutual understanding and respect predicated on their newfound commonalities. Indeed, some of the Jewish participants stated it was their intention to feed back what they had learned about Islam to their faith communities. For example, two teach in the Saturday School at their Synagogue and said that they had been passing onto the children what they had learned about the connections and similarities between Judaism and Islam. In this sense, the contact zone established by the organizers of the project was successful at enabling the participants to bridge their difference, disrupting their stereotypical pre-conceptualizations of each other and hinting at the potential for understanding to be translated beyond the immediate space of the encounter. Alongside these initiatives to bridge the differences between the Jewish and Muslim participants, the organizers also sought to bond the young people around a shared interest. Here, the sport of cricket was chosen, a game which has the advantage of taking a long time to play and involves the tradition of having tea together as part of the unfolding event. This activity in effect addressed the evidence of psychological research (e.g. Brewer and Miller 1984; Wilder 1981), which has argued that the most effective methods of

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intergroup dialogue are those of ‘decategorization’. In other words, these are activities that do not focus on group differences but rather on shared interests which undo the categories through which such encounters are normally approached. Here the young people identified how this time together playing sport also enabled them to make connections around other shared interests in, for example, video games, television programmes and films while they were hanging out (cf. Kelly 2013). These shared interests bonded them as young men because ‘translation’ was not necessary as they were all speaking the same ‘language’ of popular culture. In this sense, their identifications as teenage boys rather than as members of faith communities, were to the participants – although not the organizers – the most significant identifications through which these purposeful encounters with difference were approached: So it was quite good just to get to know each other more, and spend more time together, and do activities together as well, which got us talking rather than just sitting around. It was productive.

The limitations of the contact hypothesis: sustainability and scale-ability However, for contact to be truly meaningful it must transcend the specificity of the encounter. Here, the geographical distance between the communities within which the Jewish and Muslim young people live mean they had very different time-space routines and so had little opportunity to have any sustained contact beyond the organized activities described above. As such, the participants’ friendships and connections did not endure beyond the lifetime of the Project as they had not become habitualized or routinized through repetition in other spaces of proximity (cf. Wilson’s 2013 study of familiarity generated between parents through repetitive meetings at the school gate; and Valentine et al.’s 2013 observation of acceptance of diversity produced through shared domestic routines within the spaces of family life). Though all raised anxieties around socio-economic disparities amongst participants, the organizers, including the professional facilitator, and the young people, appeared to lack a vocabulary with which to discuss class. For example, the two young Jewish people interviewed articulated class difference in the following terms ‘we live on opposite sides of [the city] and so I don’t know if any of them are going on to university’ and ‘we’ve had quite different upbringings’ and ’we are quite suburban where we live and that [The Muslim area] was quite built up.’ While difficult issues around religious difference were regarded as bridgeable, class was not readily addressed in a space characterized by a rhetoric of equality. In this sense, as Askins and Pain (2011: 811), found in a

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participatory art project with young people, ‘divisive social relations that were problematic for young people in their everyday lives were fully present on site’. This was equally true of the interfaith youth project described here. For example, the facilitator commented: I mean there’s also the obvious thing, is also just class. The Jewish community are from a much wealthier suburb part of [the city], that’s part of the detachment as well. So it isn’t about people growing up against each other, it’s about people being distant, I guess. The intersection of religious and ethnic identities with class particularly raised anxieties for the organizers because of the implicit association of this issue with anti-semitic stereotypes about the wealthy of Jewish communities. For example, one of the Jewish organizers, whose son was involved in the Project, explained that: He goes to the grammar school, which is a private school, and there are quite a few Muslims at that school but they’re clearly middle class Muslims . . . Whereas coming to [the Muslim area], there are still Muslims but they’re largely well working class or whatever’s the right term. And for him, he wasn’t sure whether to comment on that. Because the danger with that is that it meets the stereotypes of . . . which is still prevalent unfortunately, that all Jews are rich, and wouldn’t feel very positive. So I actually think it’s getting to the point where we need to discuss that. The intersection of religion and class was also apparent in an interview with a police officer who had helped with some of the organization of the Project. Her work, based in the area where the Muslim participants live, involved two aspects: work around the ‘Prevent’ scheme, which targets Muslim communities to intervene in or prevent radicalization, and work around anti-social behaviour, which she intimated was a working-class problem of this particular area. In this way, attention to class also risks activating misconceived negative representations of young Muslim men as untrustworthy or threatening, which might open some unspoken divisions or incivilities between the faith communities. As a result of both the geographical and social distance between these two faith communities the connections made in the contact zone were therefore not sustainable beyond the time-space of the Project. Moreover, because of this – beyond the example of two Jewish participants’ account of sharing their experiences with other young people in the synagogue – we found little evidence that the young people involved in the Project were able to translate or scale up their experiences within their

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own communities. Rather, many of the young people reported hearing or observing prejudice about the other faith from adults in their own families and communities. When asked if they now challenge these prejudices one Muslim participant said, ‘I try, but there is only so much one person can do’.

Conclusion: intercultural relations and the significance of inequality This chapter began with the premise that meaningful contact between diverse social groups has the potential to facilitate intercultural relations in contemporary cities. The seminal work of Gordon Allport (1954) identified that the optimum conditions for such contact between groups to be effective should include: the necessity for participants to have a sense of equal status and a common purpose or activity, for the engagement to be realistic rather than artificial, as well as for such encounters to have the sustained support of the wider community (including authorities, law or custom) within which they occur. Using the example of a project to bring together young people from the Muslim and Jewish faith communities this chapter has examined the effectiveness of the contact hypothesis. The evidence of this chapter is that contact zones can be effective in translating difference. In this example, through participating in engineered encounters supported by community leaders, members of two faith groups recognized the limits of their knowledge of, and were open to developing their understandings of, ‘the other’. In this sense, the contact zone, established by the organizers of the Project, was relatively successful at enabling the participants to bridge their differences, disrupt their negative or misinformed pre-conceptualizations of each other and enabling them to find points of commonality (e.g. through understanding commonalities between their faiths and through their shared identifications as young men). Here we identified a number of important ingredients to facilitate such understanding beyond Allport’s focus on a common purpose or shared task. Firstly, the importance of the intensity of the common activity. Here time spent together was critical in allowing participants to develop genuine personal connections beyond those engineered through the shared tasks set up by the organizers. For example, the participants reported that within the context of the Project, which lasted a year, a weekend away was the most productive in establishing intercultural understanding between the faith groups because of its intensity. Secondly, the significance of sociality. It was during time spent ‘hanging’ out during or around the purposeful activity that the participants identified their own natural affinities and found particular shared identity positions which have mutual salience or resonance and which have destabilized the significance of their differences beyond those the Project sought to address.

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However, the research found little evidence that these connections were sustained or translated at scale beyond the specific time-space of the contact zone. Rather, geographical and social differences in the material circumstances of the young people meant that the structural inequalities of class and power – which create physical and socio-cultural distance between the Jewish and Muslim communities – limit the repetition and therefore sustainability and scale-ability of such connections. As Torre et al. (2008:25) observe the contact zone is always a ‘messy social space’ inhabited by ‘differently situated young people’. As a consequence initiatives to create intercultural understanding and relationships will only have limited impact unless they are embedded in longer-term, structural interventions to address questions of social-economic inequalities and power as well as cultural diversity.

Acknowledgments Gill Valentine is grateful to the European Research Council which funded this research through an Advanced Investigator Award (grant agreement no. 249658) entitled Living with Difference in Europe: making communities out of strangers in an era of supermobility and superdiversity.

CHAPTER 11 CULTURAL POLICY IN SINGAPORE: COSMOPOLITAN COMPETENCIES ASIAN STYLE Peggy Levitt

When the Singapore government decided to make Singapore into a global city, attracting the world’s best and brightest was a key part of the plan. To recruit transnational corporations and their high-powered executives, you needed to offer economic incentives: lower taxes, customs duties, and rent. And to get those high-powered executives to stay, you needed to provide them with the lifestyle to which they were accustomed: good roads and public transportation, top-quality schools, well groomed golf courses, and state-ofthe art cultural institutions. A symphony, theatres, and museums were just some of the basic amenities these global capitalists would expect. And their wives? How could the government keep them happy once their children were busy with school and soccer practice? Said Dr Kenson Kwok, the founding Director of the Asian Civilizations Museum (ACM), One way to make Singapore a more attractive place to live was to bring water to what was a cultural desert. The government wanted big companies to come to Singapore. For that you needed good transportation, good infrastructure, and schools. And male executives have wives, wives like to go to museums, they like to become volunteers, they like to go to the theatre, etc. I remember they were trying to recruit a very big medical name from Stanford University, and they came to us and said, “Please look after Mrs So-and-So, show her around, tell her about the volunteer activities.” And we did. And these people did come. Dr Kwok is right. He and his colleagues created all kinds of volunteer opportunities at Singapore’s museums. As I waited in the lobby for the

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‘Highlights Tour’ at the ACM, a friendly young Asian-American woman approached me and asked where I was from. ‘Me too’, she replied, when I answered ‘the United States’. Hannah Wong relocated from Cleveland with her husband and two children about three years ago. While she worked previously as a management consultant, in Singapore she had taken time off to dedicate herself to her family. Once everyone was settled, she started looking for things to do and found the Friends of the Museums. She enrolled in a training course and soon began volunteering as a docent once a week. Once enough visitors gathered for the tour, Hannah Wong welcomed us and directed us up a long staircase leading to the second floor galleries. She stopped in a narrow hall just outside the gallery door. A map of the region extending from Japan and Papua New Guinea in the east to Lebanon and Yemen in the west adorned the wall. The far left-hand corner of the map was labelled ‘West Asia’. ‘I majored in international politics’, Hannah began after welcoming us, ‘so I like using maps to get grounded’. This is the Museum of Asian Civilizations, she reminded us, and Asia extends from the Middle East to the islands of the South Pacific. But what we call each part of the world depends upon where we are standing. In the West, the Arabian Peninsula is the Middle East, but from the perspective of Singapore and Asia, it is western Asia. ‘A stark reminder’, she said, ‘of how where you are colours what we see.’ And Singapore is all about location. At some point, in almost every conversation I had during my visit, the talk turned to how geography shaped Singapore’s destiny. Up until the introduction of airplanes and the Suez Canal, almost all cargo travelling from India to China passed through the Singapore Straits, located at a crossroads between the East and West. As far back as the days of Vasco De Gama, sailors rode the monsoon winds, which change direction every six months, in and out of Singapore’s harbour. And that is at the heart of the message visitors get in all of the ACM exhibits: connection, connection, connection. But who are visitors supposed to feel connected to, and from what standpoint? The ACM is one part of a sophisticated government policy that uses culture to create Singaporean art and Singaporean residents who can appreciate it, to ensure Singaporeans know who they are and where they stand in the world, and to promote economic development. Singapore’s museums tell a clear story about the nation, its place in the region, and its connection to the globe. They do so, some say, in a uniquely Singaporean way, by simultaneously reinforcing the city-state’s four demographic group identity framework and highlighting its history of hybridity and mixing, and by promoting a regional list of allegedly universal values. What gets left out is any discussion of the assumptions underlying the country’s diversity management regime or the

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absence of human rights protections and political voice in the country because talking openly about such issues could challenge the government and the status quo. In essence, cultural institutions in Singapore create global competencies, such as curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to engage with difference, but stop short of articulating a political project or an action plan for achieving it. They create cosmopolitans without cosmopolitics, an approach that moves beyond cosmopolitanism’s ethical and aesthetic dimensions to create an actual transnational public that can together take on global challenges as citizens of the world.

Migration, globalization, and museums Cultural institutions both respond to and constitute the backdrop against which nations diversify and reposition themselves in the geopolitical hierarchy. Nations perform themselves differently (McClellan 2007; Coombes 2004; Dias 2008) and museums are central stages where these imaginings are articulated and disseminated (Preziosi and Farago 2004). In fact, in the late nineteenth century, the creation of many of the world’s premier museums coincided with the birth of the nation-state. To be a bona fide ‘people’ or nation, you had to have culture. It required a great deal of imagination to create a unified ‘family’ or ‘team’ out of millions of people who would never meet (Anderson 1983). The new nation’s emergence and strength depended on its ability to perform itself to its members using knowledge, rituals, and practices that complete strangers could understand. Museums played an important role in the effort to project connection and belonging, although the scope of connection stopped definitively at the national border (MacDonald, n.d.). While opening up the former royal collections to the broader public was a way to democratize art and create more cultured publics, this was never a completely egalitarian project. Universal survey museums functioned primarily to pass on society’s most revered beliefs and values to their visitors (Duncan and Wallach 2004; Dimaggio 2004; Coombes 2004; Zolberg 1986). What was included in a museum’s collection and who had created it sent clear messages about who belonged to the nation and what the nation valued. The ordering of objects and how they were displayed in relation to each other legitimized a particular social and political hierarchy that privileged some ways of knowing while excluding others (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, 2000). Because the nation was defined in opposition to other nations and ethnic groups, people who were out of place, such as migrants or non-Christians, were automatically depicted as backward or morally inferior. They were unlikely to see themselves represented or, if they did, without serious biases.

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These tensions persist today and museums are actively trying to address them (Mason 2007). But how should collections and institutions created under one conception of nationhood be reinterpreted in light of another? How do newly emerging nations acquire and exhibit collections today? A large body of work responds to these questions by challenging Western museums’ conventions and practices and bringing to light their underlying assumptions about culture. As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1991: 434) wrote: Exhibits, whether of objects or of people, are displays of the artifacts of our disciplines. They are for this reason also exhibits of those who make them, no matter what their ostensible subject (see also Bennett 1995, 2006; Duncan 1995; Philips 2004). Despite more than two decades of critique, however, these display paradigms persist. This, according to Ruth Philips (2007: 10) is ‘evidence not only of their continuing authority, but also of a desire for the kinds of experiences they promote that now extends beyond the “West”.’ The broader study on which this chapter is based contributes to these debates by examining empirically how museum staff in different countries think about the kinds of citizens they are creating and why they do so the way they do in particular national contexts. What combinations of identities, from the very global to the local, do they reflect, and who is embracing them? What is it about the culture and history of particular cities that produces certain kinds of cultural institutions? What can we learn from the choices curators make about how nations respond to immigration and their changing position in the globe? The findings presented here draw on first-hand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policy makers; accounts of past, current and future exhibits; observations of gallery talks and educational programming; and on the stories I’ve collected about famous paintings, eccentric benefactors, and iconic objects that define their institutions. In the United States, I compare museums in seemingly provincial Boston with their counterparts in the alleged centre of the cultural universe, New York. In Europe, I focus on Denmark and Sweden, two former bastions of tolerance that are now both compromised by anti-immigrant sentiment. I then ask if museums in Singapore and Qatar create Asian or Muslim global citizens: how does the tension between globalism and nationalism play out outside the West? Finally, my encounters with curators at the Guggenheim and Hermitage Museums in Bilbao and Amsterdam explore if and how a new generation of museums creates global citizens without a nationalist agenda.

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Singapore is a particularly interesting site to ask these sorts of questions. Throughout its short history, the government has used cultural policy strategically to achieve national goals. First, culture helped to build a thriving, cohesive independent nation by using art to cement multiculturalism and by creating ‘homegrown’ art and audiences who could appreciate it. Then, cultural production and institutions helped locate the nation within the Southeast Asian region, in part by stressing Singaporeans’ connections to their ancestral homes. They created Singaporeans rooted in Asia in what some would say is a uniquely Asian way. More recently culture is being used to further Singapore’s goals of becoming a global economic and cultural hub. But while the government wants its city-state to become an important global economic and cultural player, at the same time, it aspires to its own brand of global politics. It fosters Singapore’s global economic and institutional connections in the context of limited rights and political voice. In March 2012, I travelled to Singapore and interviewed 30 past and present museum curators, educators, and directors, policymakers, and academics; visited all the major museums in the city-state; listened to audioguides; and attended guided tours and education sessions. My conversations concern what these respondents think they are doing, not how well they do it. They work at all types of museums, both art and ethnographic, and not just official ‘national’ institutions, because all of these are sites where the global and national might be explored. I am interested not only in the authorized, emblematic version of the nation but in all the places where it gets represented and how they fit together. For that reason, I treat museums as embedded in urban organizational fields where they may or may not make decisions in relation to each other. Although I could not study all the museums in Singapore, I did explore the extent to which each institution saw itself as part of a larger museum community and who its conversation partners were. While my findings are not generalizable to the larger museum universe, they do shed light on whether staff in particular places at a particular time see themselves as creating citizens, what kinds and in what combinations, and what their rights and responsibilities might be.

Creating a nation, in a region, in the world On 16 September 1963, Singapore joined Malaya and the former British territories on the island of Borneo to become the independent Federation of Malaysia. But the merger failed. Singapore did not achieve the economic progress it aspired to, and political tensions escalated between Chinesedominated Singapore and Malay-dominated Kuala Lumpur. Fearing that Singapore would dominate the federation and that violence would erupt

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between the Malay and Chinese communities, the government of Malaysia expelled Singapore, forcing it to become an independent republic (Purushotam 1998). The Chinese population became the majority of the new city-state, where they had been economically dominant but socially marginalized. How would Singapore, a small island with few natural resources and little industry and surrounded by wary Muslim neighbours, create a viable independent economy? And how would it create a unified nation that also included Malays, Indians, and people of Eurasian origin, all groups whom the British had purposely kept apart? Between 1819 and the end of WWII, immigration drove most of Singapore’s population growth (Purushotam 1998). By the end of the nineteenth century, the seeds of the city-state’s Four Ms – its multiracial, multilingual, multi-religious, and multicultural character – were already sown. The British colonial stamp also left its mark. The colonial authorities relegated each group to separate enclaves (Lai 2004). Schools segregated along racial, religious and linguistic lines shored up these divides. In response, the rulers of newly independent Singapore created a constitutionally multicultural state (Chua 2003, K. Tan 2004). The Chinese still make up the overwhelming majority. Nearly 77 per cent of Singapore’s 4.02 million people are Chinese, 13.9 per cent are Malay, 7.9 per cent are Indians, and the rest, e.g. Eurasians or Armenians, are labelled ‘Other’ (Ooi 2005). All Singaporeans are assigned to a racial group at birth, based on their paternal lineage through the famous, or infamous, CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian or other) scheme. Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong summarized the government’s position on race and national identity as: an extended family forged by widening the common area of the four overlapping circles in our society. The four circles, each representing one community, will never totally overlap to become a stack of four circles. . .The overlapping circles approach maximized our common ground but retains each race’s separate identity (as qtd. in Quah, 2000: 84). To make this work, the government proactively put in place policies to manage diversity and to prevent ethnic conflict. Campaigns promoting cultural roots and values, public housing estate policies that allocated apartments according to racial quotas, and the creation of governmentsupported ‘self-help’ organizations were just some of its initiatives. Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew also made English the official language to level the playing field by not allowing any one ancestral language group an advantage over the others. In short, the state follows a multiracial model of the nation that allegedly treats all races equally.

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Under the strong hand of Lee Kuan Yew (1965 – 90), Singapore experienced nothing short of an economic miracle (Purushotam 1998). Over the two decades following independence, the country enjoyed sustained growth, earning the label – along with Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan – of an Asian Tiger. By instituting strong centrally controlled economic and social policies, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) created a stable, business-friendly environment that attracted investment. By providing housing, transportation, health, and education to its citizens, the government won their support, despite its paternalistic and at times repressive policies. Limited freedom seemed a small price to pay for the lifestyle Singaporeans now enjoyed (Purushotam 1998). But Singapore’s almost overnight economic success was not without social and political costs. The CMIO scheme requires citizens to embrace essentialized racial identities that gloss over enormous within-group differences based on class, region-of-origin, or language. Critics claim these classifications prevent interethnic interaction and reinforce differences (E. Tan 2004). Moreover, Singaporeans have had little political voice and little access to civic organizations that were not government supported. The PAP reigned without serious opposition for nearly five decades. Anyone voicing antigovernment sentiment risked swift retribution. It was only during the 2006 election that the opposition gained any meaningful political foothold. Today, new diversity is being layered onto Singapore’s already diverse landscape. The proportion of Singapore’s residents born outside the country increased from 18.1 per cent in 2000 to 22.8 per cent in 2010. New immigrants challenge Singapore’s carefully constructed racial harmony. According to Yeoh and Lin (2012: 7), social integration has been far from smooth: to some locals, newcomers – particularly the ubiquitous Mainland Chinese – are commonly seen as uncouth and prone to objectionable behaviours like littering, eating on public transit, and talking loudly on the phone. Similarly, South Asian construction workers and Filipino domestic workers have also been singled out as targets of public backlash. The native-born blame immigrants for rising crime, deteriorating public services, and high unemployment and question the need for foreign labour.

Enter culture In 1990 Lee Kuan Yew stepped down as Prime Minister, and Goh Chok Tong, the first Deputy Prime Minister and first Minister of Defence, took over. The

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country rebounded fairly easily from the Asian economic crisis compared to many of its neighbours, but there was also a sense that Singapore needed to head off future economic downturns. The Strategic Economic Development Plan (MTI 1991) set the stage for repositioning Singapore as a global city by transforming it into a ‘total business hub’ for Asia and the Pacific. Singapore would attract high-tech knowledge intensive industries. When Malaysia unexpectedly expelled Singapore from its union in 1965, the government bet on the economy for the new nation’s survival. Art and culture only figured in when it came to nation building. According to Chong (2010: 132), in the early days: cultural policy [was] taken to mean the ideological role prescribed by the state for arts and culture in the greater nation-building project, in which the state defines the meaning of art and culture and their relationship to society. In this sense, cultural policies are not sympathetic to art for art’s sake but subordinate to the ideologies, values, and interests of the ruling elite. At least initially, then, the state supported art to create a strong national identity and to weaken communal divisions. Not only should literature and theatre drive forward multicultural goals by inspiring patriotism, optimism, and responsibility, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Goh Keng Swee in April 1967: they must discard the crazy, sensual, ridiculous, and overly materialistic style of the West. In the same way, the feudalistic, superstitious, ignorant, and pessimistic ideas of the East are also undesirable (as ctd. in Chong, 2010: 134). According to Chong (2005: 137), the state performed multiculturalism through arts and culture. Often these enactments included someone from one of the three main CMIO categories doing a traditional ethnic dance that audiences could easily recognize as a neat, unproblematic representation of Singaporean multiculturalism and as a metaphor for racial harmony: The role of the arts and culture in manufacturing this ‘instant Singapore multicultural identity’, Chong writes, ‘may also be thought of as the visual and symbolic disciplining of races, where the imaginary on stage allowed for the animation of a multicultural utopia. Through repeated performances in public spaces, the formulaic presentation of styles and costumes eventually naturalized the essentializing of ‘race’ to support

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the orthodoxy of racial categories imposed by the PAP government (2005: 137– 138). But by the 1980s, Singapore had achieved enough economic and political confidence that culture could take on new functions. The government, needing new economic sectors to retain its economic edge, singled out culture and entertainment as promising arenas (Kong 2000). Once the culture sector was anointed, the state began investing in state grants and scholarships to train what Benson Puah, CEO of the National Arts Council, calls cultural workers: arts administrators, artists, curators, conservation experts, and art critics. It initiated educational reform to develop more artistic and creative talent, not just professional and technical skills. The 1989 Report on the Advisory Council for Culture and the Arts (ACCA) set forth the state’s first coherent arts policy (ACSR 2012). It also paved the way for the creation of the Asian Civilizations and the Singapore Arts Museums. But even more importantly, the Report laid the groundwork for the 1991 ‘Global City for the Arts’ project by depicting Singapore as an ‘International Centre for the Arts’ that would serve as an ‘international exhibition centre and a market for works of art and a regular performing venue for world-class troupes’ (ACSR 1989: 5). Those drafting these documents had several things in mind. First, they realized that by now Singaporeans had been socialized to consume culture, and they needed institutions that could produce it (Chong 2010). They wanted the government to take the lead in developing and funding the arts and culture sector. They also wanted to reposition Singapore globally, away from an economy based on low-skilled industries that were particularly vulnerable during economic downturns to one based on higher value manufacturing, research and development, services, and high-tech and creative industries. And they continued to see culture not only as a tool to strengthen the nation but also to root the nation in the region, by virtue of its ancestral ties to India and China, and ultimately in the world. To do this, Singapore needed to find residents with graduate training and to attract foreign talent. Arts and culture became not just a means of creating citizens and luring tourists: it also, as Kenson Kwok implied, became a tool for attracting the world’s most accomplished workers. World class arts and cultural activities, including performers and exhibits brought in from abroad, would create a more congenial environment for investors and professionals to live in and for tourists to visit (RAAC, 1989), eventually transforming Singapore into a global cultural hub. The culture sector would generate income on its own but also produce income in other sectors (Kwok and Low 2002; Wee 2002; Chong 2005).

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While the 1989 report recommended creating institutions like museums and the Esplanade Theatre by the Bay, The Renaissance City Report (2000) described the kind of citizen needed to drive and benefit from the ‘Asian Renaissance’. The ‘Renaissance Singaporean’, according to the report, is ‘an individual with an open, analytical and creative mind that is capable of acquiring, sharing, applying and creating new knowledge’ while ‘attuned to his Asian roots and heritage’. He ‘has a strong sense of identity and belonging to his community and nation’ that ‘gives him the confidence to pursue activities beyond our shores’ (ACSR 2000: 38– 39). The Renaissance Singaporean embraces these values and helps his country at home and abroad because he is cosmopolitan in mind but Singaporean at heart (Chong 2010).

The global dance The global in Singapore is clearly on the museum community’s mind. It is a way to showcase Singapore’s national origins and its deep connections to the region and beyond. It is the stage upon which Singapore wants to triumph economically and culturally. And it is a source of the values that Singapore wants to selectively embrace. But while Singapore’s deep cultural structures have always been about trade, exchange, and hybridization, they have also always been about boundaries: between ancestral groups; between Asia and the West; between heartlanders and cosmopolitans;1 and between ideas and values that safeguard the greater good and those that challenge the government. In essence, Singapore’s leaders want their city-state to become an important global economic and cultural player that practices its own version of global politics. They want to create Asian cosmopolitans without cosmopolitics – not just dreaming of a time when people recognize that they inhabit the same world but actually taking on the next to impossible task of creating it. Singapore, said Tan Boon Hui, the former Director of the Singapore Art Museum: wants people who are open and able to meet the outside world with strength and grace, but who chose carefully what they bring back. In other words, it wants its own brand of Asian cosmopolitans – people who can engage with and compete on the global economic and cultural stage, but who do not introduce values that challenge the status quo. Indeed, most curators felt that what they did helped create identities but not the rights and responsibilities associated with them. As one curator reflected, ‘In Singapore, museums tend not to mix political identity and political issues. Museums

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have not been active sites for calling into question the received wisdom.’ Dr. Lily Kong, Vice President for University and Global Relations at the National University of Singapore, said, ‘The business of museums has been solidifying the local and the regional. They have not taken on disrupting these categories or the even trickier issues of global values and so forth’ (Kong, personal communication, 2013). That is because moving from a global economic and cultural strategy to being politically global is not where the government wants to go. Not only would it challenge social and political limits, it might also unearth conflicts the government has, until now, successfully repressed. While it can do something when trains run late, the government is less confident that Singapore’s social glue can withstand racial or religious conflicts. Said Benson Puah: There is a rumbling underneath that is part of our DNA. It arises from our genesis. Our neighbours have always threatened us. Malaysia said they would turn off our water. Indonesia said they would flood us with a million immigrants. Taiwan calls us a little snot2 . . . we need to build on certain strengths. Social resilience is a strength that comes from people who want to stay together. So you don’t introduce issues that could create rifts. There are no alternative lifestyles here. Most Singaporeans are very conservative. This is like a Midwestern state. In the United States, you have New York and California. We don’t have the same latitude. Critics say you cannot talk about cosmopolitanism in this context. Cosmopolitanism is based on certain basic, allegedly universal values that include free speech, meaningful political participation, and human rights. Others say that Singapore encourages cosmopolitan capabilities but only for a select few. Says Brenda Yeoh: Singapore was trying to reinvent itself – to become something other than a cultural desert,. It has made great strides. But the rhetoric has not gone hand and hand with political will. For that, we would have to recognize the rights of domestic workers, foreign wives, and construction workers. Cosmopolitanism stretches upward but not sideways. By that, she means that highly skilled professionals and international hires, as well as elite Singaporeans, get all the benefits. But for people on the bottom rung of the ladder, it’s a different story. There cannot be, says Kenneth Tan (2007), ‘a new society without new politics’. The government infantilizes and underestimates its citizens. The ‘heartlander’ is an ideological construct it uses to sustain its old politics of

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fear, materialism, patriotism, and conservatism. The PAP deploys this age-old divide and conquer strategy by appealing to: the moral and patriotic sentiments of the ideologically constructed heartlanders, and warning the ideologically constructed cosmopolitan that heartlanders cannot handle change. At the same time, it hopes to reap the economic gains from a more open and liberal elite workforce that is clearly separated from the heartlands (Tan 2007: 4). Saying that museums stay out of politics is a clear choice because politics cannot be sidestepped altogether. What’s more, while the government might want people to believe that clearly defined ancestral groups coexist easily with images of Rojak salads,3 that is not what the average citizen feels. One critic said: If you take as your starting point the idea of ancestral cultures, you have not asked what culture actually means. How these are treated at the ACM is not that far removed from the old colonial ideas of race – that all Indians or all Chinese can be lumped into one category. It perpetuates old, politically acceptable stereotypes that conflate biology, culture, language, and identity. This is what the old generation and the political elites are comfortable with, but it seems to me to be a major form of social control. Singapore needs real critical thinkers, who are allowed to make their own choices about who they are and with whom they want to mix. Becoming more global economically, he says, must be part and parcel of adopting more global values that often look a lot like the West. These critiques echo in the art world. Money cannot buy creativity. You have to allow people free reign and reform censorship policies that limit artistic expression. Right now, artists in Singapore enjoy only bounded creativity (Ooi 2006). If the government truly wants to reap the economic benefits of creative industries, than the ‘existing “paternalistic” and authoritarian modes of rule must eventually give way to more liberal and permissive political exchanges’ (Leo and Lee 2004: 214). Singapore needs a real public square, where ideas are shared, discussed, and debated, freely, openly, and among equals.4

Notes 1 Heartlanders, conventionally speakers of ‘Singlish’ (an English based Creole language) rather than English, are seen as more parochial and inward looking than cosmopolitans but also as the guardians of Singapore’s core values.

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2 As recently as 1998, in an article in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal, the former Indonesian President B. J. Habibie called Singapore a little red dot, referring to its overwhelmingly Chinese origin population and their alleged sympathies toward their ancestral home who could not be trusted by the over 200 million Muslims in Indonesia (Borsuk and Chua 1998). 3 A rojak salad is a mix of fruits and vegetables topped with a thick sweet and spicy sauce. The sauce gets everywhere, but the flavor of the original fruits or vegetables remains. In Malaysia and Singapore, rojak is a colloquial expression for an eclectic mix, referring to the multiethnic character of Malaysian and Singaporean society in which all groups stay discrete but come together under the rubric of the nation. 4 These debates speak to questions about whether creativity can flourish in a society with limited freedoms, where the government, to varying degrees, still regulates what citizens do and say. How much the government actually controls artistic production is a key piece of the answer, which is hard to come by. The state increasingly turns a blind eye to political challenges. Censorship regulations have softened, film classifications have broadened, and using art as a platform for political commentary is more common. These changes, writes Chong (2010), began in the 1990s, under Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who wanted to create a ‘kinder, gentler society’ that differed from the iron hand of Lee Kuan Yew. Yet, we should not, he warns, forget about the deep ideological role culture still has to play in addition to its economic role. All too often, critics charge, talk of creativity is equated with talk about ‘industrializing creativity. The government talks this talk to prove to mobile business talent that Singapore is a good place to live. But real creativity and new ideas can only flourish where people are allowed to challenge conventional ideas and perspectives. A place that still fears for its survival, that depends on the government to provide, and that defines achievement only in economic terms is not particularly fertile creative ground’ (Chong 2010; Ooi 2011). In March 2013, several important figures in the art community offered ‘A Manifesto for the Arts to the Public’, which declared that ‘Art is fundamental; Art is about possibilities; Art unifies and divides; Art can be challenged but not censored; Art is political.’ Art, its writers asserted, cannot be separated from politics. The authorities should not play the role of critic. It must be Singaporeans who decide what they want to watch.

CONCLUSION TOWARD A JUST INTERCULTURAL CITY SPACE Elena Ostanel

The aim of this work was to explore applications of the intercultural paradigm to urban fabrics on the ground. Our intention was not driven by a predetermined political choice to exalt the intercultural paradigm as the best alternative for urban analysis in the context of migration; we wished to contribute to the ongoing academic debate, taking into consideration the ‘crisis of multiculturalism’, particularly in Europe, and inquiring into possible strategies that could be devised to manage superdiverse (Vertovec 2007) urban societies in the ‘post-multicultural’ era (Kymlicka 2010). As mentioned in the introduction to this volume, the book did not intend to discuss different states’ approaches towards their cultural minorities, which is perhaps the principal concern of multiculturalism (Levey 2012: 218), but to adopt a more pragmatic approach by concentrating on the urban scale in different national contexts in a domain where often nebulous declarations of good intentions and statements of general principles prevail. Interest in the intercultural paradigm served to excavate a new narrative, usually used to replace ‘multiculturalism’, which, as Levey (2012) observes, appears to be a somehow exhausted term. At the same time, the intercultural paradigm was thought to embed a potential for encouraging actions at the local level to be taken either through urban policies or practices. This reminds us that the intercultural city is not yet a reality but rather a goal to strive for. The need for renewed pragmatism finds support early on in the volume with Ruth Fincher’s contribution, in which she argues that norms such as the intercultural or multicultural city need to be grounded and interpreted in particular settings and practices, rather than solely asserted in the abstract as

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political or ethical aspirations. In her view, the real matter is not choosing a normative ethos among different possibilities, but exploring how difference is experienced and negotiated on the ground, as well as how social relations and social actors’ identities are shaped and re-shaped in the processes of urban inclusion and exclusion. As she highlights, ‘specifying which urban policies are those in all cases that best move cities towards some defined state of interculturalism or multiculturalism is difficult; it is impossible, really’. Through these reflections, my intention is to suggest a need to move beyond a normative approach in analysing processes of urban inclusion and exclusion. The contributions collected in this volume somehow respond to Wise and Velayutham’s observations on how existing theoretical approaches to multiculturalism have generally tended to be abstract, failing to adequately engage everyday life in cities rich with difference (Wise and Velayutham 2009). Spanning different territories, the texts presented here transcend the normative approach, to reposition everyday experience in the city of difference at the centre of analysis. The lived experience shared by urban residents (i.e. ordinary routines and practices, such as commuting, working, relaxing, moving through city streets and down city sidewalks, shopping, etc.) provides crucial information about how the processes of appropriation and making sense of space occur within the contemporary urban context. This process is a complex realm of social practices, a mix of accident, desire, and habit. The urban experiences of new migrants, and their struggle to redefine the conditions of belonging to their new society, are reshaping cities, as Leonie Sandercock (1998) highlights. Migrants are spatial actors who continuously use and re-signify urban spaces to gain access to symbolic and material resources (Cancellieri and Ostanel 2015). To this extent, Gotham takes us beyond the space-as-container ontology, affirming that a full understanding of human actions requires the recognition of the spatial nature of human agency (Gotham 2003), since space is an assemblage of spatial uses, practices and representations ‘involved in the production and reproduction of social structures, social action, and relations of power and resistance’ (Gotham 2003: 724). Urban space is at the core of the construction of difference. Space and environment are no longer passive fragments of the city because they provide resources for various groups constructing themselves differently within the space (Amin and Thrift 2012). Space is neither a romantic container for otherness nor a battleground among diversities: it is a specific element forming social interaction and, as a consequence, shaping identities through its use. Urban space is multidimensional – specific representations of the city disguise the clear text of the planned city.

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In actor network theory (Czarniawska and Hernes 2005), space becomes an ‘actant’ within a network of different agents (Latour 2005): human and non-human elements are able to become actors in the precise moment of an action. In order to specify the nature of urban space actorship, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (2015) writes that space is made of an exchange between both material and immaterial bodies and ‘bodies are space, with differing concentration densities of “materiality”’ through them. Reporting these approaches based on the sociology of innovation, I intend here to highlight the very nature of urban space as much more than a mere container for social interactions. On the same line, the chapters in this book have a common approach which considers urban spaces as representing a variety of boundary constructions, conceptualized by users in a dynamic process. Acknowledging everyday urban space as reciprocal dynamic relations rich with symbols and power, where differences such as gender, class, and ethnicity are imbued in representations and social constructions, offers a new perspective through which to examine the relationship between society and space. These reflections could also be helpful for the policy making process, considering evidence indicating that policies encouraging the acceptance of difference should be broad and accept intersectionality (Valentine 2010), rather than focusing on one particular identity or equality group such as immigrants (see Fincher, Chapter 2). When we talk about policies promoting encounter among differences or the recognition of otherness, Fincher asks, are we referring to policies explicitly targeting immigrant newcomers so as to improve services available to them or their integration into local settings? Are we referring to policies raising the issue of living with difference as relevant for everyone? Do these policies seek to create universal urban service provisions and a right to the city for everyone? These reflections open a wide debate on the role of urban policies in the city of difference. And if national policy framework and implementation strategies vary in time and place within dissimilar political and economic contexts, local governments must de facto face the complex challenges that migration poses to urban coexistence. Though inevitably related, immigration (national) and migrant (local) policies often follow quite different paths. The former, in Italy specifically but also in Europe more generally, increasingly focus on security and control measures leading to an excess of regulations (Cancellieri and Ostanel 2015); in contrast, the latter, often have to respond directly to the daily needs of migrants and their ‘demand for the city’ (Balbo 2009). In general local

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policies seem to struggle to move beyond top-down assumptions able to recognize the contribution migrants offer in making city spaces more livable (Colantonio and Dixon 2010). As many contributions in this volume point out, migrants often represent the ‘adaptive capacity’ of the city through their performance of social practices and input of new resources which ensure the physical and economical survival of certain city spaces. As Khovanova-Rubicondo highlights (Chapter 3), if appropriately managed, diversity can enhance productivity, innovation and growth, demonstrating by this its economic and social value for communities and society as a whole. In most cases local policies and regulations are simply not ‘listening’ to the social and spatial needs of migrants, pushing them toward solutions on the borders of legality (Lascoumes and Le Gale`s 2011). And national policy often plays an active role in this process of exclusion. Levitt’s depiction of the process through which the Singaporean government endeavoured to make Singapore into a global city by using arts and culture to ‘perform multiculturalism’ (Chapter 11) is a highly pertinent example. Here national identity was essentially defined from the top down, in opposition to other nations and ethnic groups considered out of place, such as migrants or nonChristians, and automatically depicted as backward or morally inferior. Marcello Balbo (Chapter 1) affirms that if specific policy actions are not taken in order to avoid rendering parts of the urban population invisible within the city of difference, the impact will inevitably be a fragmented city where some residents exist and others are compelled ‘not to count’. Balbo illustrates how many migrants in this situation live surreptitious lives, conducted almost exclusively in the places that make them feel safe: home and work. Their minimal use of public space is mainly limited to those activities that they themselves create and consider as taking place in relatively protected conditions, such as walking with toddlers, chatting in small groups or holding a community feast. These excluded migrants shape communitarian spaces able to serve the interrelated dual functions of rendering themselves invisible and allowing ‘more visible citizens’ to feel as if they make up the entire public. This sort of semi-invisibility echoes certain circumstances in the city of Padua1 (Italy) examined elsewhere, where migrants can only partially identify themselves within the hierarchy of places and their uses inherent in residents’ perceptions (Ostanel 2014). These spaces act as comfort zones where migrants can find symbolic as well as material resources to help them cope with everyday life. They are communitarian spaces, however, that might be inaccessible to others. Likewise, in a completely different context, I have born witness to how Mozambican migrants in Johannesburg try to make themselves invisible in

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their everyday lives in both public and semi-public spaces as a consequence of being subject to deportation. In the absence of a proper policy response to the immigration phenomenon, these migrants have created a specific ‘zone of exception’ (Ostanel 2012; Agamben 2003) to cope with their desire and necessity to live in Johannesburg. The construction of a transnational space between South Africa and Mozambique and a continuous search for invisibility in Johannesburg exemplify but a few among many of these everyday practices. If the allocation of space somehow mirrors disparity in access to social, economic and political rights, it also triggers a process of domination of certain areas (and the groups located within them) over other parts of the city. This process becomes particularly relevant if we concede that cities remain the strategic arena for the development of citizenship (Holston and Appadurai 1996). As Balbo (Chapter 1) points out, the needs of everyday life put the priority of migrants on urban citizenship as membership in the city community, that is, their recognition as a constituent part of the cultural and physical space they help make work, actually converting cities into the genuine space of citizenship. By discussing Beck’s (1999) words, Cremaschi and Fioretti (Chapter 7) say that ‘if we accept that in the assemblage of the contemporary world, diversity2 epitomizes something more contrasting than the idealized traits of city-states, one has to revert to the outcomes of multi-layered processes superimposing individualism, collective identities and forms of citizenship’. Local policies seem not to acknowledge how the city of difference reshapes both traditional hierarchies of urban spaces (i.e. residential, commercial, public and private space) and creates the tactical forms of citizenship (Ostanel 2012) – what Loren Landau (Chapter 4) has defined as urban estuaries: city spaces where varied migrant trajectories intersect to generate novel forms of social interaction and authority. Other contributions to this volume take the same basic direction, conveying the notion that migration usually shapes peculiar territories where the bases for integration and belonging are not geographically or administratively bounded. As an example, Landau discusses forms of ‘tactical cosmopolitanism’ (Landau and Freemantle 2010) – where one is neither host nor guest – while describing the power of Pentecostal churches in sub-Saharan Africa to generate a set of trans-local and, often, antipolitical tenets for belonging. Cancellieri (Chapter 5) has similarly pointed out the ambivalence of places of worship in Padua, Italy: they actually represent both a resource and a risk in the socio-spatial inclusion of migrants. Potentially a means of empowerment on the one hand, they are also highly secluded comfort zones on the other,

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which could result in greater exclusion and enclavization. Places of worship are at the same time a safe haven for socialization among ‘equals’, where it is possible to feel at home and apart from a perceived ‘host’ environment, and territories where the right to be a visible part of the city can be asserted. Various chapters in this volume thus analyse how migrants draw on a variegated language of belonging, which makes claims to the city while positioning them in a complex un-rooted condition in which traditional social and political obligations are questioned. The title of Nausicaa Pezzoni’s contribution specifically describes Milan as ‘the un-rooted city’: her research explores the construction of a new urban imagery put in place by transitory populations3 who are increasingly inhabiting the contemporary city. These populations do not identify themselves with places that are usually significant in permanent residents’ perception. Here in this appropriation of urban public spaces, a sort of deconstruction of the meaning of place occurs, accompanied by reconstruction through new interpretations and uses differing from those for which the space was originally designed (Pezzoni, Chapter 6). Thus repeatedly in the contributions in this book, public space seems to be the locus that best epitomizes the capacity of migration to question traditional spatial hierarchies and forms of belonging. In this way, the contemporary city traces the construction of peculiar territories where newcomers enlarge their ‘portfolio of places’ and search out the symbolic and material resources allowing them to feel at greater ease (Ostanel 2013). Public spaces in the city of difference are neither intrinsically places of fear nor automatically places of encounter. They are open social and political fields, where physical and symbolic dimensions both play a fundamental role. Public spaces are filled with signs, symbols and markers, which are variously interpreted by socially positioned, culturally distinct people. As a result, ‘public spaces might mean completely different things for different groups’ (Lownsbrough and Beunderman 2007) and can become a reference point for a specific population (spaces of comfort) from which others perceive they are excluded. Michail Galanakis (Chapter 8) describes how different groups can have different perceptions of what is public and what is private in urban space. The centrality of public spaces in this kind of inquiry also emerges in Cremaschi and Fioretti’s contribution as they focus on the role of migrants’ shops in the Roman neighbourhoods of Esquilino and Torpignattara, where ‘commercial exchange, the bargaining process and building customer loyalty necessitate face to face interactions that facilitate the intermingling of cultures’. Their chapter points out that the geographical concentration of ethnic business activities fosters a specific form of sociability in city spaces: ethnic shops and services are no longer confined inside the walls of the store

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but form a continuum in which the streets and footpaths, as well as traditional public spaces, are embedded (Ka¨rrholm 2012), thus questioning the traditional dichotomy between public and private space. Restrictive measures conceived by local governments pose themselves in stark contrast to this new ‘ethnic texture’ of cities as a place of sociability where material and symbolic resources can be found (Semprebon 2012; Semi 2004). In the name of governing what are seen as particularly problematic areas of the city, they close ethnic shops and services considered as a concentration point for undocumented foreigners and even criminals. In this context, ethnic shops arouse attention through negative publicity, thus challenging the ontological notion of public space. In fact, what seems to most strongly characterize public debate about the presence of migration is the issue of its hypervisbility: in the process of manipulating urban spaces migrants are accused of surpassing the ‘upper threshold of correct visibility’ (Brighenti 2010). As a consequence, the level of visibility of their unconventional uses of urban space increases as well as that of their bodily presence, to defy a spatial order which is essentially taken for granted as the right way (Cancellieri and Ostanel 2015). Ash Amin coined the term phenotypical racism to describe the contemporary European xenophobia that divides pure bodies from impure bodies concerning the right to use and even be present in public spaces. According to the author, this form of biopolitics is a biopolitics of catastrophism, able to personify migrants as the ones producing social disorder and economic insecurity. At a local level the perception of this sort of sociogeographical transgression occurs when migrants are considered to be out of place (Cresswel 1996): the visible nature of difference becomes hypervisible and public discourse creates periods of moral panic (Cohen 1973) in which dominant social groups act out hysterically, depicting migrants as a threat to the appropriate use of urban space. Local policies and the local mass media stir up each other reciprocally, both playing an influential role in this process (Cancellieri and Ostanel 2015). Local policy makers must become aware of this perceived sociogeographical transgression because, if space is an actor, it is both a potential bridge-building feature and a boundary creator dense with symbolic representations capable of having material effects on social relations. On the one hand urban space has perhaps too easily been considered a site of everyday contact, of banal incidental encounters which are presumed to produce cosmopolitan sensibilities and competencies; on the other hand, this space can become a place of exclusion, both from the inside and the outside (Valentine, Chapter 10). In other words, space is a constitutive element of boundary construction with both visible

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barriers (such as walls and spikes) and invisible barriers (such as certain communitarian spaces that become a reference point for some groups and inaccessible to others). Valentine (Chapter 10) reminds us that ‘while visible diversity may give the illusion of contact (Wessel 2009) it is unclear to what extent proximity alone has the potential to bring about social transformation, and to break down prejudice’ (Valentine 2008; Valentine and Waite 2012). She opens the vast question as to the role of urban policies in shaping real processes of encounter. Returning to Ash Amin’s reasoning, we should bear in mind that urban space is able to transmit a sort of ‘emplaced prejudice’ which reinforces the process of boundary definition within the city. It is in this sense, urban policy makers should be aware of the destruens and construens potentiality of spaces. I will now return to Ruth Fincher’s questions, which I used to open this conclusion, namely: When we talk about policies promoting encounter among differences or the recognition of otherness, are we referring to policies explicitly targeting immigrant newcomers or policies that seek to make universal urban service provisions and a right to the city for everyone? This vital question, in my view, if answered may well be able to shed light on a kind of policy approach for the better governance of a true ‘intercultural’ city of difference. First of all, usually paradigms, such as the inter- or multi-cultural city, have tended to focus mainly on the cultural element as the proper dimension for action through policies and practices, thus avoiding the potential of considering how every individual belongs to multiple groups (i.e. those of gender, age, class, etc.). These ‘multiple belongings’, as mediums for regulation, could potentially strengthen meaningful social interactions across cultures. The governance of difference at the local level cannot be confined to a festivalization of cultural elements nor to the reinforcement of individuals’ belonging to specific ethno-communitarian groups in the name of intercultural contact. The contemporary city witnesses specific processes of individualization (Melucci 1998) that lead us to consider a reality where the individual dimension becomes the centre of social action, no longer produced by defined collective social actors. As a consequence, the right to be different, defined as ‘the right not to be classified forcibly into categories which have been determined by the necessarily homogenizing powers’ (Lefebvre, 1976: 35) is a very contemporary request, which challenges the role of traditional policies in the governance process. Working only on the cultural dimension of

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the self, means neglecting the other, multiple, belongings that make up an individual identity. Ruth Fincher (Chapter 2) also highlights how a number of urban planning policies have viewed ethnic diversity as being positive if it gives rise to commercial and market-based outcomes as a part of the neo-liberal vision of entrepreneurial cities. This vision thus can foster gentrification processes which cause the displacement of poorer minority communities rather than contributing to the well-being of urban populations as a whole. In such conditions, cultural diversity becomes a sort of showcase for visitors or tourists, thus emphasizing the risk of considering migrants as mere bearers of cultural differences. To this point, another controversial contribution entitled Contro l’intercultura (Against Interculture), edited by Italian sociologist Walter Baroni (2013), describes how, when dealing with immigration in the Italian context, the focus on cultural elements might serve the need to justify a purely assimilationist approach without promoting equal citizenship rights. To avoid this, a first step is to consider the relevance of space when shaping local policies toward the intercultural city. As Valentine and Medvedev (Chapter 10) highlight, urban spaces can be an effective medium for shaping meaningful contact. Quoting Santos (2005), Valentine indicates the importance of working on the collective meanings that emerge from contact as an act of translation. Translation in the contact zone is dialogical and political work, which involves both recognition of the limits of one’s own knowledge and culture, and an openness to the ideas, knowledge and practice of others (Santos 2005: 20). Valentine further reminds us that evidence from social psychology studies (Brewer and Miller 1984; Wilder 1981) has shown the effectiveness of decategorization: in other words, not focusing on group differences but rather on shared interests, cross over the categories through which encounters with diversity are normally approached. Similar to Medvedev in his analysis of parents’ cafe´s, Valentine describes the significance of sociality in the encounter process: ‘it is during time spent “hanging” out during or around the purposeful activity that the participants identified their own natural affinities and found particular shared identity positions’ (Valentine, Chapter 10). The Parents’ Cafes described by Medvedev (Chapter 9) are in the same sense micro-publics that facilitate migrant families’ participation in school institutions, together with other non-school actors, thus creating a new communication platform, above all for children with migrant backgrounds. Various contributions in this book concentrate on the importance of this sort of micro-policies of encounter. But, at the same time, many of them warn that circumstances such as structural class and power inequalities can

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reproduce physical and socio-cultural divisions limiting the sustainability of micro-connections. As a consequence, ‘structural interventions addressing questions of socio-economic inequalities and power’ in cultural diversity should be framed (Valentine, Chapter 10). These reflections open up a vast debate on the issue of material conditions in the shaping of urban policies for good governance of the city of difference. This debate reflects the supposed insufficiency of the local policy making as concerns the structural dimension of inequalities. To this end, Amin has stated that ‘people have to enter into public space as rightful citizens, sure of access to a means of life, communication and progress’. Without this guarantee, speaking about the right to be in public spaces will amount to no more than tinkering on the edges of meaningful discourse (Amin 2008). Considering the example of the Italian case, today migrants are definitely deportable subjects (De Genova 2004). The immigration law currently in force leads them into a precarious relationship with the territory, their work and their human relations, as they are constantly afflicted by having to maintain a regular permit of stay.4 Many scholars have emphasized how this law has the effect of producing greater ‘illegality’ in the country (Chiuri, Coniglio and Ferri 2007) and local governments suffer from a complex situation where local policy is insufficient to guarantee rights in the absence of a consistent national response. Bearing in mind deportability as a potentially common trait of different European and non-European countries, the local dimension of policy making might play a relevant role in the governance of the city of difference. Here I am not alluding to a measure toward politics of redistribution nor about the simple recognition of cultural diversities, but about the acknowledgment of the role that local policies can play in the construction of more inclusive societies where justice is at the core of the policy making process. Clearly, the national level must also be taken into consideration if our goal is to establish more inclusive local societies. To this extent, the question of justice should be strongly repositioned in the scientific debate. Beginning from a discussion on what justice could be helps escape the culture trap in policy making in favour of discourse and practice towards the promotion of the rights and capabilities of individuals in a multicultural city space (the city of difference). Furthermore, this seems to respond to the need for renewed pragmatism (and contextualization) in both scientific research and policy making. The just city by definition does not exist and different forms of justice may be played out at the city level, depending on conditions on the ground. In this sense, the just city is not meant to be a normative concept substituting for that of the intercultural city, but a frame capable of positioning the inquiry within a more pragmatic dimension.

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Talking about justice in the city helps consider other identity traits, such as gender, age and class, together with any migrant background, giving space both to more universal policies targeting a set of differences and migrant policies where ethnicity is considered one specific trait of many and not a cultural essence as a fixed condition. Debate about the ontology of social and spatial justice has been taken up by many authors in past years with specific consequences on how the policy dimension is conceived. Momentarily ‘banalizing’ the distinction among physical and social space (Pile 1996; Doel 1999; Amin and Thrift 2012), I will use the concept of spatial justice in order to recognize the potential of its analytical perspective attentive to the spatial dimension. Dikec (2001) tells us that the concept of spatial justice is better able to take the structural dynamics of spatialization within local policy into consideration. The organization of property markets, housing distribution, taxation and subsidies, are some domains in which unjust measures mobilize to dominate minority groups. Not interfering in dynamics that draw rigid boundaries, and that cause or contribute to the domination/repression of certain groups, means ignoring structural spatial dynamics of injustice. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (2010) uses the concept of spatial justice to posit his analysis in a non-anthropocentric, spatial rather than cryptotemporal, contextualized dimension (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, forthcoming). Spatial justice in this view is the move to possess the right to space, even though this space seemingly belongs to others, in the hope that this move will be held up by the space itself (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, forthcoming), or, I would add, through the creation of a proper policy response. In this sense, Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos recognizes the relevance of spatial agency as a means to asking for recognition in urban society. Emergent spatialities thus represent the ways in which citizens imagine spaces that will house the life they fight for. If we recognize that the social production of space is inherently a process involving conflict, we must admit that it not only exposes various forms of injustice, but it actually produces them. To this point, I concord with Ash Amin and Stephen Graham, who state that a project seeking unity and solidarity across the diverse fragments and complex relational webs of the contemporary city needs to restore social justice in such a way that it ‘[. . .] unlocks social capabilities through the empowerment of autonomous groups’ (Amin and Graham 1997). Within the framework of the ‘just city’, certain issues raised within a view towards the ‘intercultural’ city are quite relevant. As an example, the intercultural city has promoted an idea of urbanity as the power of shared spaces to combine individual identities with a sense of collectivity. This idea

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responds to the need to stop ethnical anesthetizing of urban spaces, an intent which appears to be quite popular nowadays. The intercultural city framework can help spur actions for the promotion of more livable societies. But these actions must be rooted in a set of citizenship rights granted to disadvantaged groups in the host society. Accordingly, the importance of promoting justice, considered both as a form and a social process, is essential. The aspiration to give rise to the just city within the paradigm of the intercultural city must be moved by a drive to transform the ways in which identities and differences are produced (Fincher and Iveson 2008), rather than by a need to affirm class, race, gender, sexuality and abilities as traits of difference. In this sense, justice is not conceived politically as a re-distributional force, but as support to the enhancement of citizens’ capabilities so that each individual can ‘live as a dignified free human being who shapes his or her own life’ (Sen 1992). If this goal is not met, any attempt towards distributional justice will be sacrificed. Local governments play an important role in the provision of the social and political basis for this step forward. Their rethinking of the just, intercultural city is thus urgent if we ever wish to see this theoretical paradigm become a concrete reality.

Notes 1. Research conducted between 2011 and 2012 in the city of Padua (Italy), funded by the European Integration Fund. It was part of the Project ‘Mediare.com. Percorsi di comunita` attraverso la mediazione’, conducted in collaboration with the Padua and Venice Municipalities. 2. Cremaschi and Fioretti use the term diversity instead of difference in this volume in order to stress the (spatial) outcome of the notion. 3. According to Pezzoni ‘transitory populations’ describes all individuals who have not yet found a stable living arrangement. 4. According to the Bossi-Fini law, (TestoUnicoImmigrazione) non-EU immigrants are allowed entry into Italy only if they have a ‘residence contract’ (contratto di soggiorno) – i.e. an employment contract signed by the employer (a firm or a family) and the immigrant worker. The contract must provide for accommodation and the payment of travel expenses for the workers to return to their country of origin. Italian embassies and consulates will issue entry visas only on these improbable conditions. When the contract expires, immigrant workers must return to their country of origin.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Marcello Balbo is Professor of Urban Planning, at the University Iuav of Venice and holds the UNESCO Chair ‘Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants: urban policies and practice’. He has directed a number of research projects on urban policy and international migration. He is the author of articles and books on urbanization and local development in the South and edited the book International Migrants and the City. Adriano Cancellieri is a sociologist at the University Iuav of Venice and a member of the SSIIM UNESCO Chair on the Social and Spatial Inclusion of International Migrants. His main fields of interest and research are: spatial concentration of minorities, urban religion, home-making practices, qualitative methods and public spaces. He is author of ‘Towards a progressive home-making: The ambivalence of migrants’ experience in a multicultural condominium’, Journal of Housing and Built Environment, 2015; co-author of: ‘The struggle for public space: The hypervisibility of migrants in the Italian urban landscape’, in City, 2015, with E. Ostanel; and ‘From invisibility to visibility? The appropriation of public space through a religious ritual: the Filipino procession of Santacruzan in Padua, Italy’, in Social and Cultural Geography, 2014, with C. Saint-Blancat. Marco Cremaschi is Professor of Urban Planning, Sciences Po, Paris, and Director of the Cycle d’Urbanisme. He has published extensively on housing, urban policies and the European Union initiatives for the regeneration of cities. He has also taught and researched in Argentina, Germany, India, Italy, the UK and the USA as Fulbright scholar. He has acted as consultant for local authorities, UNCHS-Habitat, the EU Commission and NGOs. Ruth Fincher is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. With research and teaching interests in the

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urban outcomes of immigration and multiculturalism, diversity and difference in cities, inequality and locational disadvantage, her most recent book is Planning and Diversity in the City: Redistribution, Recognition and Encounter, co-authored with Kurt Iveson (2008). Carlotta Fioretti is post-doctoral researcher at Roma Tre University, Visiting Critic at Cornell University, Cornell in Rome program, and a founder member of ETICity. She holds a Masters in Urban Regeneration (HeriotWatt University) and Phd in Urban Policy (Roma Tre University). From 2007 onwards, she has conducted research and acted as a consultant in urban policy and planning for different public and private institutes, such as Architecture and Design Scotland and Censis Foundation. Her research interests include neighbourhood regeneration, social inclusion, immigration and the city. Michail Galanakis is interested in the intercultural capacity of urban public space and the design and management opportunities that interculturalism presents. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Galanakis was affiliated to the Faculty of Environmental Studies of York University, and funded by the Academy of Finland. His Doctor of Arts degree for the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, culminated with the publication of his book Space Unjust (2008). Galanakis conducts research, writes scientific and general interest articles, and teaches. Kseniya Khovanova-Rubicondo holds a PhD in Public Affairs from the University of Chicago and is a policy expert in the fields of culture, intercultural dialogue, public economics and innovation, and information and ICT4D. She has held policy advisory, management, teaching, research and consulting positions at a number of leading international organizations including the Council of Europe (CoE, France), the European Commission (EC, Belgium), European Investment Bank (EIB, Luxembourg), the US Agency for International Development (USAID, USA) and the Government Financial Officers’ Association in Chicago (USA). Loren B. Landau occupies the South African Research Chair for Migration and the Politics of Difference, a part of the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. With a background in political science and development studies, he has published widely in the academic and popular press, exploring the relationships between human mobility, development, and sovereignty. He has served as the chair of the

CONTRIBUTORS

207

Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), is a member of the South African Immigration Advisory Board and of the editorial boards of International Migration Review, Migration Studies and the Journal of Refugee Studies. He has been a consultant to the South African Human Rights Commission, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the French Development Agency (AFD), and Oxfam amongst others. Peggy Levitt is Chair and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College and a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. She is also a co-director of the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard. Her most recent books include: Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (2015), Religion on the Edge: Decentering and Recentering the Sociology of Religion (2013) and God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (2007). Giovanna Marconi, has a PhD in Urban Planning and Public Policy, and is a contract researcher at the SSIIM UNESCO Chair of the University Iuav of Venice and Contract Professor at the Venice International University. The main focus of her research and teaching is on south-to-south international migration, transit migration and urban inclusion of international migrants. She collaborated on a number of international research projects on these issues and authored many book chapters and scientific articles on the urban dimension of international migration. Lucy Mayblin is a postdoctoral research associate with the European Research Council funded project Living with Difference, at the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK. This ERC-funded doctoral research took a historical institutionalist perspective in analysing current British asylum and refugee policy. Lucy is co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Diaspora, Migration and Transnationalism Study Group, and a member of the editorial board for the journal Studies in Social and Political Thought. Alexei Medvedev is a programme director at the KWB, a non-governmental agency in Hamburg, Germany. He is an expert in the field of migration, intercultural education and school development. Medvedev works as a trainer and counsellor for authorities, schools and other institutions in Germany and abroad. He studied German language and literature, management in tourism and education in Perm (Russia), Zagreb (Croatia) and Mu¨nster

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(Germany) and holds a doctoral degree in German Literary Studies from the University of Linguistics, Nizhny Novgorod. Elena Ostanel holds a PhD in Urban Planning and Public Policy, and is postdoctoral fellow at the SSIIM UNESCO Chair of the University Iuav of Venice and visiting fellow at the Open University (UK) Oecumene Project. Her recent researches deal with the analysis of migrants’ access to housing and public space, in cities of both the Global North and South. Among her most recent publications is Zone di comfort. Lo spazio pubblico nella citta` della differenza’ (Archivio di Studi Urbani e Regionali, 2013). Apart from her academic work, Elena is a consultant in the field of International Cooperation and Development. Nausicaa Pezzoni, architect, holds a PhD in Territorial Design and Government. She works as a planner in the Metropolitan City Authority of Milan and collaborates both in research and didactics at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Polytechnic of Milan. She is a member of Centro Studi Assenza, a multidisciplinary research centre mainly concerned with hard sciences and humanities and involving care as a whole in a range of aspects such as the territory, the community and the individual whereby new approaches to the issues of contemporaneity can emerge. Author of several scientific articles and contributions on urban survey and representation, site specific art interventions in the landscape, and the relationships between migration flows and spatial transformation, she has recently published La citta` sradicata. Geografie dell’abitare contemporaneo. I migranti mappano Milano (2013). Gill Valentine is Professor of Human Geography, University of Sheffield, UK, where she is also Pro-Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Social Science. Gill’s research interests include social identities and belonging; childhood, parenting and family life; and urban cultures of consumption. She is currently leading a European Research Council programme of research titled Living with Difference. She has (co)authored/edited 15 books and more than 100 journal articles.

INDEX

acceptance, 8, 36, 37, 40, 42, 159, 178 accessibility, 50 accommodating differences, 8 activism, 11, 18, 45, 84, 122, 127, 128– 30, 133, 134 African cities, 15, 65, 74, 76 agency, 51, 177, 186, 207 ambivalence, 87, 119, 180 Amsterdam, 48, 166 Armenians, 168 arrival cities, 67 arts and sports, 60 Asia, 74, 112, 164, 167, 170, 172 Asian Civilizations Museum, 163 Asian Renaissance, 172 Asian Tiger, 169 assimilationist approach, 41, 42, 109, 184 assimilationist fantasy, 65 assumptions, 17, 47, 118, 119, 121, 164, 166, 179 Australia, 41, 43, 45 –48, 50 autonomy, 105, 106 Ayfer S¸engu¨l-Loof (teacher), 143 backgrounds, 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 37, 41, 54, 57, 68, 125, 132, 135, 144, 145, 154, 184 Banerjee, Tridib, 134 Bangladesh, 50, 112, 113, 120 Bangladeshis, 116 banlieues, 66 barrier-free access to school, 141 battleground among diversities, 177

belonging, forms of, 73, 181 Birmingham, 50 BQM (Beratung Qualifizierung Migration), 140, 142, 144, 145 branding, urban, 36 Britain, 66, 77 Canada, 18, 40, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50, 122, 123, 126 Canadianness, 42 capabilities, 11, 118, 173, 185– 187 Caribbean, 50 Catholic Church, 80, 81, 83, 87 Catholicism, 81, 82 Catholics, 16, 74, 81, 82, 84 – 7 Centre for Local Research into Public Space (CELOS), 133, 135 chaplaincy, 81, 84 chauvinism, 73 ethnic, 76 China, 50, 112, 164, 171 Chinatown, 50, 51, 116 Chinese, 20, 49 – 51, 85, 116, 119, 132, 144, 167–9, 174 Christianity, 80 churches, 16, 74, 75, 79, 86, 87, 146, 180 circular migrants, 67 cities of strangers, 70 citizenship rights, 6, 11, 14, 184, 187 city administrators, 57, 60 – 2 city-state, 20, 115, 164, 167, 168, 172, 180 civil society, 2, 11, 120

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CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian or other) scheme, 168, 169 co-ethnic consumers, 52 coexistence, 4, 7, 26, 60, 125, 178, 193 coffee houses, 19, 147, 148, 151, 190 cohesion across difference, 1, 8 cohesion, social, 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 30, 32, 37, 60, 61, 133 collective meanings, 157, 184 collective participation, 73 colonialism, 30, 154, 168, 174 comfort zones, 5, 17, 179, 180 commercialization, 49 – 52, 134 common values, 57 communities of belonging, 6, 27 of convenience, 15, 65, 77 urban, 57 – 9, 61, 62, 71 community associations, 61, 116, 121 community governance, 58, 114 community organizations, 59 community-based approach 142 conflict, ethnic, 20, 113, 168 Congo, 75 Congolese, 67 conservatism, 174 contact hypothesis, 19, 153, 159, 161 zones, 18, 161 contemporary cities, 154, 156– 8, 160–2, 184 conviviality, 6, 15, 76 coping strategies, 11 cosmopolitan utopianism, 65 cosmopolitanism, 2, 8, 12, 16, 66, 73, 75, 77, 165, 173, 180 cosmopolitics, 165, 172 Council of Europe, 2, 4, 13, 40, 58, 113, 138, 153 creative industries, 171, 174 cross-difference relationships, 3 cultural player, 166, 172 cultural production, 167 cultural responsiveness, 139, 141– 3 cultural roots, 168 cultural value, 27, 32, 33, 35, 37 demographic changes, 57 denizenship, 29 Derrida, 67, 68, 73, 77

diaspora, 6, 84 diasporic communities, 70 Diepsloot, 69 difference cultural, 5, 26, 42, 43, 60, 119, 184 religious, 19, 88, 155, 159 discriminatory practices, 42 displaced persons, 67 displacement, 51, 67, 112, 116– 18, 184 diversity cultural, 1, 8, 20, 25 – 7, 30 –2, 38, 46, 48, 50, 54 – 56, 60, 62, 124, 139, 140, 147, 150, 152, 162, 184, 185 ethnic, 6, 14, 41, 49, 55, 118, 184 religious, 80 urban, 2, 114 dominant church, 81 dominant cultural norms, 65 dominant culture, 5, 16, 34 Dufferin Grove Park, 18, 129, 130– 4 economic crisis, 11, 12, 32, 55, 128, 170 economic growth, 56 economic migrants, 67 education programming, 166 reform, 171 elite cosmopolitanism, 75 empirical research, 56, 89 empowerment, 16, 61, 82, 87, 128, 151, 180, 186 entrepreneurial urban planning, 50 environmental determinism, 117 environmental justice, 45 equality, 9, 31, 40, 58, 123, 159, 178 Esquilino, 17, 18, 111– 13, 115– 17, 119, 120, 171 estuarial zones, 67, 70 ethics of hospitality, 77 ethnic businesses, 116, 118 ethnic concentration, 116, 117 ethnic consociationalism, 66 ethnic groups, 33, 47, 48, 51, 165, 179 ethnic mixing, 7, 75, 76 ethnicity, 49, 51, 76, 82, 111, 115, 157, 178, 186 ethnoburbs, 51 ethno-cultural differences, 5, 42 EU-funded projects, 140

INDEX Eurasians, 168 Europa Schule Gymnasium, 142– 6 exclusion social, 117 spatial, 35, 36 urban, 11 European Commission, 2 European Research Council, 155, 162 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, 2, 58 everyday multiculturalism, 7 facilities, urban, 9 Federal Government’s Ethnic Affairs Program, 48 Filipino Chaplaincy, 81, 84 forced migrants, 67 foreign-born population, 71 fragmentation, urban, 19 gated communities, 5, 68 gentrification, 5, 35, 49, 51, 52, 68, 110, 111, 184 Germany, 18, 19, 55, 60, 109, 137– 42, 145, 147 Ghana, 75 ghettos, American, 66 global capitalists, 163 global city, 163, 170, 171, 179 good practices, 19, 149 Government’s Ethnic Affairs Program, 48 governance, urban, 13 governments, urban, 39 grassroots interculturalism, 12 heartlanders, 172, 173, 174 Hong Kong, 49, 169 host nation, 44 host population, 67, 74, 77 host society, 5, 9, 35, 187 hosts and guests, 15, 66, 68, 72, 73 divisions, 68 housing, 9, 10, 26, 29 – 31, 46, 60, 61, 72, 76, 94, 95, 168, 169, 186 human mobility, 16, 66 human rights, 58, 75, 173 protection of, 165 hybridity, 76, 115, 164 hybridization, 8, 120, 172

211

identity group, 40 ethnic, 2, 160 inclusion, 12, 20, 32, 34, 37, 49, 58, 82, 85– 8, 123, 177 spatial, 16, 20, 32, 34, 37, 180 of migrants, 11, 16, 27, 87, 90, 180 inclusive city, 102 India, 50, 51, 164, 171 Indians, 20, 168, 174 individualism, 75, 115, 180 injustice, social, 18, 128 institutionalization, 19 of diversity, 44 institutions cultural, 141, 163, 165, 166 religious, 74 insurgent city, 104 integration debates, 65 language of, 68, 77 patterns, 12 process, 67, 146 space-bound, 66 interaction cross-cultural, 59 social, 6, 59, 66, 177, 178, 180, 183 intercultural city strategy, 58, 60 notion of, 1 ‘Intercultural City Programme’, 2, 60 intercultural lens, 17 intercultural paradigm, 1, 3, 13, 176 intercultural perspective, 13, 59, 125 interculturalism, 2 – 4, 8, 9, 11 – 15, 17, 18, 20, 39 – 45, 48, 49, 51 – 3, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 77, 109, 119, 123, 124, 127, 177 approach, 2, 3, 18, 58, 61 communication, 9, 18, 19, 133, 153 dialogue, 2, 12, 17, 19, 20, 58, 126, 127, 134, 154 encounters, 10, 19, 153 practices of, 43, 53 public space, 122, 124, 133, 134 understanding, 58, 154, 161, 162 interethnic relations, 49, 120 intergroup relationships, 9 invisibility, 2, 12, 16, 34, 35, 79, 80, 87, 103, 148, 179, 180, 183

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Iraq War, 156 Israel, State of, 155 Italy, 1, 11, 16, 17, 50, 55, 80 – 2, 84, 85, 109, 112, 121, 178– 80, 187 Jews, 19, 155– 62 Johannes Diakonie, 140 Johannesburg, 15, 66, 67, 69, 70 – 5, 179, 180 Jordan, 155 Kampong Glam, 51 Kenson Kwok, 163, 171 Kenya, 75, 76 Kikuyu, 75 Kuala Lumpur, 167 landmarks, 91, 93, 94, 98 – 102, 105 landscape, urban, 79, 90, 91, 104 language services, 60 Lee Kuan Yew, 169, 175 legal migrants, 31, 34 lifestyles, 77 Lily Kong, 173 Little Italy, 50 local governments, 2, 50, 52, 178, 182, 185, 187 local level, 2, 110, 176, 182, 183 local municipalities, 46 local municipality, 84 localism, 26, 68, 76 London, 21, 50, 56, 83, 156 Los Angeles, 51 Maasai, 75 Malays, 168 Malaysia, 167, 168, 170, 173, 175 Maputo, 15, 66, 69 –73 Maranella, 120 market mechanisms, 76 market-based cosmopolitanism, 75 market-based liberalism, 73 Mason, Jutta, 130, 131– 5, 166 media, 59, 60, 61, 130, 157, 182 mediation, 9, 60, 80, 114, 141, 157 mediators, cultural, 9 Mediterranean, 155 Melbourne, 46, 47 mental maps, 17, 90, 94, 100, 104, 105, 107 micropublics, 7, 10, 19, 154

migrants children, 19, 137 circular see circular migrants economic see economic migrants families, 147, 150, 184 forced see forced migrants legal see legal migrants policies, 2, 186 trajectories, 66, 180 undocumented see undocumented migrants Milan, 17, 89 – 91, 93, 94 – 6, 98, 99, 181 minorities cultural, 2, 176 policies, 9 ‘mixed flow’, 67 mixed-neighbourhoods, 117, 118 Mosbach, 140 Mountain of Fire and Miracles church, 75 Mozambicans, 67 Mozambique, 75, 180 multiculturalism, 2 – 4, 7, 8, 12, 14, 17, 18, 28, 40 –9, 51 – 3, 65, 76, 121–4, 132, 133, 167, 170, 176, 177, 179 crisis of, 2, 176 everyday see everyday multiculturalism policy, 57, 58 radical see radical multiculturialism state, 168 urban communities, 57 multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, 17, 109, 111 multiracial model of the nation, 168 museums, 20, 40, 163– 6 collections, 165 community, 167, 172 curators, 166 directors, 166 Muslims, 19, 19, 26, 74, 79, 83, 85, 87, 90, 155–62, 166, 168 mutual recognition, 120 Nairobi, 15, 66, 69 – 73, 75, 78 nation building, 170 national border, 27, 122, 165 national boundaries, 77 national goals, 167 national identity, 26 – 8, 42, 46, 56, 168, 170, 179 nationalism, 28, 155, 166 nationality, 30, 38, 67, 70, 82

INDEX nation-forming, 46 nationhood, 166 nation-state, 27 – 9, 67, 165 native inhabitants, 3, 5, 79, 117 neighbourhood, 5, 12, 15, 17, 18, 30, 35, 40, 57, 59 –61, 65, 66, 68, 70, 76, 83, 109–13, 115– 18, 120, 121, 123, 128, 138, 142, 146, 156, 181 New York, 51, 52, 56, 83, 166, 173 newcomers, 3, 5, 17, 20, 31, 34, 40, 80, 132, 144, 169, 178, 181, 183 NGOs, 11, 61 Nigeria, 74, 75 Ole Kasasi neighbourhood, 76 Ongata Rongai, 75, 76, 78 otherness, 16, 36, 125, 154, 177, 178, 183 outsider, 27, 40, 47, 67, 72 Padua, 16, 12, 80, 81, 84 – 6, 179, 180 Pakistan, 26, 50 Palestinian Arabs, 155 Pan-Africanism, 75 parent associations, 150 parent cafe´, 19, 137, 139– 45, 147– 52 parent cooperation, 149 parent facilitators, 140, 142, 144, 148 parent involvement, 138–43, 149, 151 pastoral care of migrants, 80, 81, 83 peaceful conviviality, 76 Pentecostal churches, 16, 74, 180 People’s Action Party, 169 peripheries, 113, 116 permanent temporariness, 71 phone centres, 116 Piazza Vittorio, 18, 11, 112, 118, 119 place-bound community, 15, 66, 68 pluralism, cultural, 8, 112 polarization, 5, 6, 10 ,122, 125 of urban populations, 5 policies approach, 8, 15, 17, 57, 60, 183 approaches to diversity, 57 arts, 171 cultural, 20, 40, 163, 165, 167, 169, 170, 173, 175 of governments, 39 guest-worker, 57 home-school, 138, 139, 151 for immigrants, 110

213

integration, 9, 12, 112 intercultural, 3, 10, 40, 58, 60 – 2, 120 international, 60 local, 3, 178– 80, 182, 184, 185 setting, 39, 40 top-down, 134 urban, 8, 14, 20, 27, 31, 36 – 41, 46, 49, 51, 52, 57, 60, 110, 176– 8, 183, 185 political environment, 57 political participation, 71, 173 political voice, 165, 167, 169 porosity, 112, 114, 117 positive discrimination, 32 post-territorial, 74 practitioners, 13, 44, 45, 139, 140, 147, 151 ‘Prevent’ scheme, 160 principle of universal access (Habermas), 148 procession, 16, 84, 85, 86 professional facilitator, 157, 159 Protestants, 74, 126 public administration, 55, 112 public participation, 39 public space, 10, 13, 14, 18, 26, 33 –8, 42, 58 –60, 79, 84, 86, 90, 102, 103, 111, 114, 118– 30, 133– 5, 147, 170, 179– 82, 185 public sphere, 17, 34, 37, 85, 87, 114, 118, 122, 127 public-space activism, 18, 122, 127–30, 134 racial group, 168 racial quotas, 168 radical multiculturalism, 76 recommendations for policy makers, 62 refugees, 46, 47, 60, 65, 67, 95 religious affiliation, 31, 73 religious groups, 17, 79, 80, 81, 82 religious practices, 16, 79, 80, 88 religious spaces, 17, 81, 82, 87 ‘Renaissance Singaporean’, 172 re-territorialization, 82, 84 right to the city, 1, 10, 20, 29, 40, 42, 45, 52, 107, 178, 183 Rome, 17, 109, 111– 13, 120, 121 Rwandans, 77 safety, urban, 59 Santacruzan, 83 – 6 schizophrenia, urban, 125

214

THE INTERCULTURAL CITY

schools development, 139, 147 life, 141, 142, 145 system, 59, 138, 142, 143, 145, 146, 150 segregation, 5, 6, 32, 49, 58, 111, 113, 117, 119, 121, 125, 157 self-organization, 104 sense of belonging, 29, 32, 35, 36, 38, 90, 105, 107 shared space, 4 – 6, 186 Singapore, 20, 40, 51, 163– 75, 179 Singapore Arts Museum, 171 Singaporeans, 164, 167– 9, 171, 173 social control, 174 social mix, 117 social movements, 11 social practices, 110, 177, 179 social services, 60 social space, 47, 11, 142, 145, 146, 162, 186 society, urban, 27, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 186 sojourners, 76 Somalis, 67, 76 South Africa, 69, 72, 75, 180 sovereign state, 68 spaces of multiple belonging, 6 spatial actors, migrants as, 177 spatial order, 86, 182 Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the La¨nder (Kultusministerkonferenz), 139 stereotypes, 16, 32, 33, 36, 85, 126, 143, 160, 174 stigmatization, 111, 115 strangeness, 94 strangers, 5 – 7, 70, 94, 113, 118, 124, 125, 162, 165 Sudanese, 46, 67 symbolic change, 103 synagogues, 158, 160 tactical cosmopolitanism, 16, 66, 73, 75, 180 Tan Boon Hui, 172 temporariness, 71, 105, 107 territorially bounded identity, 77 Toronto, 18, 51, 122– 4, 126– 8, 130, 132–5 Torpignattara, 17, 18, 111– 13, 116, 117, 119, 120, 181

Torpignattara Neighbourhood Association, 121 transit point, 67 transitional living, 90 transitory living, 94, 106 transitory populations, 17, 89, 91, 94, 95, 181 translocal loyalties, 66 transnational, 6, 16, 27, 30, 75, 165, 180 transnational corporations, 163 transnationalism, 16, 75 unconditional hospitality, 68 undocumented migrants, 110 United Kingdom, 18, 50, 51, 55, 109 United States, 50, 75, 156, 164, 166, 173 universal access, 10, 148 up-rooted city, 95 urban agenda, 1, 11 urban analysis, 41, 53, 176 urban estuaries, 15, 16, 65, 67, 68, 180 urban gateways, 70 urban poor, 11, 66, 69 urban residents, 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 39, 71, 177 urban services, 31 urban space, 4, 5, 7, 8, 18, 26, 28, 33, 35 –7, 59, 61, 70, 79, 80, 85, 86, 88 – 91, 95, 103–7, 110, 113, 118, 121, 127, 128, 133, 177, 178, 180– 4, 187 urban studies, 56, 80, 88 urban texture, 79 urbanity, 4, 7, 12, 15, 36, 186 urbanization, 4 urbanologists, 2, 4 USA see United States values, universal, 75, 110, 164, 173 Vancouver, 41, 49 visibility, 20, 81, 111, 113, 182 Vodafone Foundation Germany, 139 Western museums’ conventions, 166 wholesale stores, 116 women, 26, 27, 32, 71, 84, 122, 142 Wong, Hannah, 164 workers, cultural, 171 worship, places of, 16, 79, 83, 180, 181 young people, 60, 123, 156– 62 Zionism, 155