Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe: Everyday Encounters with Newcomers [1st ed.] 9783030568931, 9783030568948

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ALTRUISM, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL SOLIDARITY

Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe Everyday Encounters with Newcomers Edited by  Feyzi Baban · Kim Rygiel

Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity Series Editors Peter Callero Department of Sociology Western Oregon University Salem, OR, USA Matthew Lee Department of Sociology University of Akron Harvard, OH, USA Jane A. Piliavin Department of Sociology University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI, USA

The series, as its name implies, focuses on altruism, morality, and social solidarity and their interrelationships. These phenomena were of major concern in the founding and early years of sociology. Renewed interest in their study has occurred in recent years, not only in sociology but also in related disciplines such as psychology, economics, and philosophy. An awareness of the interdependence of these phenomena is also developing, and this series will expand on this while linking the phenomena to important topical issues and developing their implications for the public discourse and public good. Early, foundational scholarship in this area was grounded largely in the writings of sociologists Emile Durkheim, Jane Addams, and Pitirim A. Sorokin, whose work provides a comprehensive and powerful intellectual foundation for future theories and empirical studies. Contributions to the series will build on the mentioned foundational thinkers and will make use of a range of theoretical approaches, including symbolic interactionism, conflict theory, rational choice theory, personalism, Marxist theory, systems theory, and identity theory. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15784

Feyzi Baban  •  Kim Rygiel Editors

Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe Everyday Encounters with Newcomers

Editors Feyzi Baban Departments of International Development and Politics Trent University Peterborough, ON, Canada

Kim Rygiel Department of Political Science Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, ON, Canada

Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity ISBN 978-3-030-56893-1    ISBN 978-3-030-56894-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Lale Duruiz, “Two Sides of the River.” This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2015-0140]. We would like to extend our gratitude to all of the contributors, and to those others who made time to speak with us, for sharing their invaluable insights and knowledge and for their ongoing commitment and work. We would like to thank our research assistants on this project: Derya Tarhan, University of Toronto; Toronto, Canada; Diana Thomaz and Maissaa Almustafa, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, Canada, and Anisah Madden, Department of International Development Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. We are particularly appreciative of the support provided by Dr. E. Fuat Keyman, Director of Istanbul Policy Centre and Vice-President, Sabancı University, for his role as collaborator on the grant and the institutional support from IPC throughout the project. As always, this work would not have been possible without the ongoing love and support of our families and friends.

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Contents

Part I Thinking Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Solidarity Activism in Everyday Living   1 1 Introduction: Living with Others: Opening Communities to Newcomers  3 Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel Welcoming Refugees Amidst Growing Xenophobia   7 Cosmopolitanism, Solidarity and Living Together  11 Connecting Through Creativity: Welcoming Newcomers Through Artistic and Cultural Platforms  16 Organization of the Book  19 Conclusion  24 References  25 2 The Politics and Art of Solidarity: The Case of Trampoline House in Copenhagen 31 Birte Siim and Susi Meret Introduction  31 The Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Danish Populism: Reactions from Below  33 Theorizing Migrant Solidarity in Politics and Practice  36 Methods and Data  39 Trampoline House as a Solidarity Art Project  40 The Beginnings  40 vii

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Microcosm Trampoline House   42 Trampoline House as a Permanent Art Project  47 Arts and Asylum Politics   48 Closing Reflections  49 References  54 3 The Unintended Effects of Conviviality: How Welcome Initiatives in Germany Push Back Hostility Toward Refugees 59 Ulrike Hamann Introduction  59 The Emergence of Welcome Culture in German Cities and Towns  60 Conviviality: The Everyday Practice of Living Together in Difference  63 Acknowledging Different Needs and Building a Sustainable Welcome Culture  65 For the Equality of Rights: Challenges of the New Movement  67 Against Racism: Conditions for Pushing Back Against Nationalist and Racist Trends  69 A Culture of Conviviality Is Possible  74 References  77 4 Building Solidarity Cities: From Protest to Policy 81 Stefanie Kron and Henrik Lebuhn Introduction  81 The Solidarity City: Freedom of Movement and Social Rights  83 Urban Citizenship: Rights for All  86 The Sanctuary City Model  88 Health for All  90 Space Matters  92 Radical Democratization or Neoliberal Diversity?  95 Criticism and Counter-Criticism  96 Global Social Rights and Migration Struggles  97 References 101 5 State, Civil Society, and Syrians in Turkey107 Hande Paker and E. Fuat Keyman Introduction 107

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Making Room for Inevitable Diversity: Civil Society as Intermediator for Co-Existence 109 Civil Society Actors Working with Refugees in Turkey 111 The Political Context Facing Civil Society Organizations in Turkey 117 The Limits of Hospitality as a Discourse 117 The Indispensability of an Enabling State 119 Local Encounters, Trust Building, and Living Together 122 Grassroots Approaches to Facilitating Living Together 123 The Impact of Funding Stipulations 125 Conclusion 127 References 130 Part II Everyday Practices of Living Together and Community Building Through Culture and the Arts 133 6 Stitching IMMART: Overcoming the Challenge of Inclusion Without Exclusion Through the Arts135 Nicol Savinetti, Sez Kristiansen, and Sacramento Roselló Martínez Introduction 135 Stitching IMMART: Nicol Savinetti 138 Fostering “Linking Social Capital” 138 The Power and Impact of the Name 140 According to Our Members: Sez Kristiansen 143 Behnaz, Iran/United States 144 Josette Simon Gestin, France 145 Tina Lorien, Denmark/Italy 146 Mikkel Andersen, Denmark 147 Charlie Brown, Australia 148 Reflections 149 Food Memories: A Case Study in Pluralism Through Solidarity—Sacramento Roselló Martínez 150 Concluding Remarks 156 References 157

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7 ‘I Have Never Met a Refugee’: KUNSTASYL—Creating Face-to-Face Encounters Using Performative Art161 barbara caveng and Dachil Sado Introduction 161 References 188

8 Facilitating Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through Film, Art and Culture: Searching Traces and the Mahalla Festival189 Sabine Küper-Büsch and Thomas Büsch Introduction: The Roots of Searching Traces and the Mahalla Festival 189 Searching Traces Program 191   Countering Narratives of Victimization: Snapshots from Searching Traces Video and Filmmaking Workshops 192 Snapshot #1: Discussing the Documentary, Our Terrible Country  192 Snapshot#2: Discussing the Video, I Love Death  194 Snapshot #3: Collaborative Filmmaking and the Making of Beyond the Station  196 Snapshot#4: Discussing Appropriation and the Image of the Syrian Girl with a Scarred Face  199 Building Belonging Through Creative Work 201 A Culmination of Searching Traces Workshops: Putting It All Together in the Documentary Film, In The Dark Times 203 The Mahalla Festival 207 Mahalla Festival Istanbul 208 Mahalla Malta 209 Literature  211 Films  211 Performance  213 Conclusion 213 References 216 9 Connecting Through Cooking: Kitchen Hubs as Spaces for Bringing Local Community and Newcomers Together217 Noor Edres Introduction 217 The Beginning 218

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The Cookbooks 219 The Hub and Its Projects 220 Cooking Courses 220 Community Events 222 Mentoring Projects 223 Job Buddy  224 Building Bridges  224 Beyond the Hub 225 Satellites 226 Mobile Kitchens 227 Kitchen on the Run  227 The Trailer  229 Bölle  229 Lessons Learned: A Ten-Ingredient Recipe for Success 230 Impact 233 Limitations and Risks 237 Conclusion 239 References 241

10 Kırkayak Kültür: Facilitating Living Together243 Kemal Vural Tarlan Introduction 243 Spring Is Upon Us 245 Guest or Refugee? 247 And They Came! 250 Is It Possible to Live Together? 252 Migration Studies But How? 254 What Were the Other Areas of Contact and Where Were People Meeting? 255 Women’s Kitchen/Matbakh Workshop  257 No Border for Food Project  259 Kırkayak Kültür’s Migration and Cultural Studies Center  259 Migration and Cultural Studies Center Dom Research Workshop  260 Conclusion: On the Idea of Living Together 261 References 263

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11 Conclusion265 Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel References 271 Index273

Notes on Contributors

Feyzi Baban  is Associate Professor of Political Studies and International Development at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada. His research encompasses topics such as cosmopolitan theory, the politics of citizenship in late modern societies, and alternative forms of modernity in non-Western cultures. His work is published in several edited book collections and in journals such as Global Society, European Journal of Social Theory, Citizenship Studies and Studies of Political Economy. Some of his recent publications include: “The Past Is a Different City: Istanbul, Memoirs, and Multiculturalism”, published in Istanbul: Living with Difference in a Global City, 2018 and “Living with Others: Fostering Radical Cosmopolitanism Through Citizenship Politics” with Kim Rygiel, in Ethics and Global Politics 2017. Thomas  Büsch is a filmmaker and curator from Germany, based in Istanbul. He is co-founder (with Sabine Küper-Büsch) of The Mahalla Festival, through the Istanbul-based association Diyalog Derneği. The association aims to promote exchange and cooperation in order to facilitate intercultural understanding and cultural dialogue between communities. barbara caveng  is an independent visual artist focusing on participatory art, installation and performances. In 2015, barbara co-founded KUNSTASYL in Berlin. KUNSTASYL is a platform for a diversified exchange between displaced persons and the local population. During the last three years, KUNSTASYL developed (in conjunction with approximately 100 people from almost 20 nations) a range of concepts and xiii

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strategies by employing art as catalyst and provocation to question the hierarchy of living conditions in society. Noor Edres  is a social worker who holds a master’s degree in International Management from Berlin. As a Syrian national, who arrived in Germany shortly before what came to be known as the ‘Refugee Crisis’, Noor felt a pressing need and an emotional duty to support the country in its efforts to welcome the newcomers. These needs, coupled with her international experience and cultural understanding of both her host and heritage country, led her to join the team of ‘Über den Tellerrand’ and run its ‘Building Bridges’ program. Building Bridges is a project that aims to foster youth newcomers by creating a safe space where they could meet and get to know their local neighbors while simultaneously receiving the support they need to facilitate their future stay in Germany. Ulrike  Hamann (PhD 2014, Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Diversity and Social Conflict at the Institute for Social Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin. She researches and teaches on questions of racism, migration and the city. At the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM) she researched the motives and structures of welcome initiatives after 2015, as well as access to housing for refugees. She has recently published on racism, colonialism, ­refugee accommodation, urban protest movements and convivial urban spaces. E. Fuat Keyman  is the Vice-President of Sabancı University, Director of Istanbul Policy Center and Professor of International Relations. He works on globalization, democratization, international relations, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkey–EU relations. He is the author and editor of twenty books, such as Turkey in the Arab Spring (2016); Hegemony through Transformation; Modernity, Democracy and Foreign Policy in Turkey (2014), Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey (with Ayşe Kadıoğlu, 2011), Remaking Turkey (2009). Keyman has also authored numerous articles published in journals such as Journal of Democracy, European Journal of Social Theory, Theory, Culture & Society, and Review of International Political Economy. Sez Kristiansen  is an internationally acclaimed poet and author, born in South Africa to multicultural parents. She has traveled extensively living in

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numerous countries including Sri Lanka where she deepened her spiritual practice. Kristiansen empowers people with transformational mind, body and soul guides that inspire readers to live unique and untethered lives, driven by their own blueprint of freedom. Kristiansen has worked as a creative writer for projects in Denmark, UK, Portugal, Australia and South Africa. An International Marketing graduate (Leeds University), Kristiansen is also the founder of Content Creature, which provides artists and musicians with creative marketing content, re-branding and web design. Stefanie  Kron  holds a PhD in sociology and head of the division of International Politics at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation headquarters in Berlin. Her work and research interests include international migration and border regimes in a comparative perspective. Kron is a member of the editorial board of Movements—Journal on Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies. Recent publications include The Atlas of Migration (2019, co-edited with Florian Weis, Johanna Bussemer et  al.) and Solidarische Städte in Europa (2019, co-edited with Wenke Christoph). Sabine Küper-Büsch  is a filmmaker and curator from Germany, based in Istanbul. She is co-founder (with Thomas Büsch) of The Mahalla Festival, through the Istanbul-based association Diyalog Derneği. The association aims to promote exchange and cooperation in order to facilitate intercultural understanding and cultural dialogue between communities. Henrik Lebuhn  holds a PhD in political science and is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Sociology at Humboldt University of Berlin. His research interests include urban politics in comparative perspective, migration and borders, urban citizenship, urban social movements, and participatory politics. He is co-editor of the book series Raumproduktionen (Production of Space/Westfälisches Dampfboot). His recent publications  include “Insurgent Citizenship” (2019 in: The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies) and “Borders and Refuge: Citizenship, Mobility and Planning in a Volatile World” (2019  in Planning Theory and Practice). Sacramento  Roselló  Martínez  holds a PhD in Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies from Georgetown University. She has worked as a lecturer in the US, Spain and Denmark specializing in academic and creative writing. Sacramento moved to Denmark in 2012 as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) where her research cen-

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tered on women’s history, pre-modern literacy and life-writing. She has since worked as an adjunct at SDU and the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University. After volunteering with IMMART for two years, she became Project Coordinator working on internationalization, network relations and designing projects that focus on creative writing. Susi Meret  is Associate Professor of Comparative Migration Politics and Ethnic Relations in the Social Sciences at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her main interest is within populist radical right parties in Europe, populism, political extremism and civil society reactions hereto. Among her latest publications: Islam as a “floating signifier”: Right-wing populism and perceptions of Muslims in Denmark (2019), ‘What Can We Learn from Gramsci Today?’ Migrant Subalternity and the Refugee Movements: Perspectives from the Lampedusa in Hamburg (forthcoming). For more info: https://vbn.aau.dk/en/persons/100658/publications/ Hande  Paker  is a political sociologist who works on political ecology, civil society, state, and the transformation of citizenship. She has carried out research and published on modes of civil society-state relations, politics of the environment at the local-global nexus, and grounded cosmopolitan citizenship. Her articles have appeared in Voluntas, Environmental  Politics, Theory and Society, and Middle Eastern Studies. Paker holds a PhD from McGill University. She received her MA from  McGill University as well and her BA from Boğaziçi University. She  is based at the Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences at Bahçeşehir University. Kim Rygiel  is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Associate Director of the International Migration Research Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. She is Associate Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies. Her research focuses on critical migration, citizenship and border politics, including the self-­organized struggles of migrants and refugees, as well as solidarity organizing in s­ upport of refugee and migrant rights within North America and in Europe. She is the author of Globalizing Citizenship (2010), co-editor (with Peter Nyers) of Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement (2012), and author of several book chapters and journal articles published in journals such as Citizenship Studies, and Ethics and Global Politics.

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Dachil Sado  was born in Shingal, Iraq, where he completed high school in 2014. He taught IT skills until he was forced to flee due to war. Between February and September 2015, he lived in the shelter for people on the move and asylum seekers in Berlin-Spandau. Since April 2015, Sado is a board member and co-founder of KUNSTASYL.  In 2016 he attended lectures for Civil Engineering at TU Berlin and had a Fellowship at Bard College Berlin, followed by studies in the *foundationClass of the Weißensee Art Academy in Berlin, where he is now a team member. His research focus is on questioning identity, migration and art history in relation to sociological perception. In 2017 he started his studies in fine arts at Kunsthochschule Weißensee under Prof. Ulf Aminde. Nicol  Savinetti  holds a PhD in Social Policy from the University of Tampere. Her research focused on social citizenship among privileged migrants in India with fieldwork conducted in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. Nicol engages strongly with migration and human rights in all aspects of her working life—she is the founder and current director of IMMART, Board Member of the anti-trafficking NGO HopeNow, consultant at GlobalCSR, and founder of Global Europeans, which provides language, research and relocation services to internationals. Savinetti has been residing in Denmark since 1998 and has lived in Germany, Spain, Australia and Finland for different periods. Birte  Siim  is Professor Emerita, Aalborg University, Denmark. Recent publications include: Citizens’ Activism and Solidarity Movements: Contending with Populism, 2018 (ed. with A. Saarinen and A. Krasteva); Diversity and Contestation over Nationalism in Europe and Canada, Palgrave, 2018 (ed. with J-E.  Fossum and R.  Kastoryano); ‘Gendering European welfare states and citizenship—revisioning inequalities’, in P. Kennett and N. Lendvai-Benton (eds.). Handbook of European Social Policy, 2017 (with A.  Borchorst); ‘Political Intersectionality and Democratic Politics in the European Public Sphere’, Politics & Gender, 2014; Negotiation Gender and Diversity in an Emergent European Public Sphere (ed. with M. Mokre), 2013. Kemal  Vural  Tarlan is a researcher and documentary photographer based in Gaziantep, Turkey. He is the general coordinator of Kırkayak Cultural Center and director of the Middle East Cultural and Social Research Center in Gaziantep. Since 2000 he has been conducting Visual

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Sociology-Anthropology research on Dom communities in the Middle East. His articles and photos on Dom communities have been presented and exhibited at numerous international conferences and exhibits. Tarlan is a member of the European Sociology Association and teaches part-­time in the Communications Department at Gaziantep University.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Photo of women cooking together in the communal kitchen at Trampoline House by Kajsa Böttcher Messell 42 Fig. 2.2 Photo of Trampoline House’s daily calendar by Kajsa Böttcher Messell46 Fig. 6.1 Photo taken for IMMART by Mayra Navarrete 139 Fig. 7.1 Omar Alshaer | mutiny of self | 2011 163 Fig. 8.1 Photo of N. during the production of Instable202 Fig. 8.2 Photo of R. and B. leaving Fener. They settled down in Holland 205 Fig. 8.3 Photo of M. with crow Edgar at a veterinary clinic in Kadıköy 206 Fig. 8.4 Photo of shooting the short movie Shabia207 Fig. 9.1 Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s kitchen hub 221 Fig. 9.2 Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s mobile kitchen, Kitchen on the Run 227 Fig. 9.3 Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s Trailer 230 Fig. 9.4 Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s Bölle 231 Fig. 10.1 Photo of poster for Kırkayak Kültür’s 7th Annual International Zeugma Film Festival by Kemal Vural Tarlan 251 Fig. 10.2 Photo of Kırkayak Kültür’s Women’s Kitchen Workshop by Kemal Vural Tarlan 258 Fig. 10.3 Photo of Kırkayak Kültür’s Women’s Art Project by Kemal Vural Tarlan 260

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List of Boxes

Box 7.1   Art. 1 Box 7.2   Art. 2 Box 7.3   Art. 3 Box 7.4   Art. 4 Box 7.5   Art. 5 Box 7.6   Art. 6 Box 7.7   Art. 7 Box 7.8   Art. 8 Box 7.9   Art. 9 Box 7.10  Art. 10 Box 7.11  Art. 11 Box 7.12  Art. 12 Box 7.13  Art. 13 Box 7.14  Art. 14 Box 7.15  Art. 15 Box 7.16  Art. 16 Box 7.17  Art. 17 Box 7.18  Art. 18 Box 7.19  Art. 19 Box 7.20  Art. 20 Box 7.21  Art. 21 Box 7.22  Art. 22 Box 7.23  Art. 23 Box 7.24  Art. 24 Box 7.25  Art. 25 Box 7.26  Art. 26

165 165 166 167 168 170 170 171 171 172 172 173 174 175 175 176 176 177 178 179 181 181 182 182 183 183

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Box 7.27  Box 7.28  Box 7.29  Box 7.30  Box 7.31 

Art. 27 Art. 28 Art. 29 Art 30 Art. 31

184 184 185 186 187

PART I

Thinking Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Solidarity Activism in Everyday Living

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Living with Others: Opening Communities to Newcomers Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel

This book, like so many of life’s endeavors, arises from both troubles and inspirations. Like the sentiments expressed in the song “Troubled Times” by American punk rock band, Green Day, many of us are troubled by the times we live in: “What good is love and peace on earth / when it’s exclusive?” Worldwide inequality continues to grow with “[t]he average income of the richest 10% of the population … about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from seven times 25 years ago” (OECD n.d.). Societies around the world are increasingly polarized, under pressure from such forces as fascism and authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism, and misogyny and homophobia. In recent years, right-wing and

F. Baban (*) Departments of International Development and Politics, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] K. Rygiel Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_1

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populist movements have emerged across Europe and North America, posing a double challenge to the post-Second World War domestic and international orders. Domestically, powerful populist movements have gained power by rejecting the post-war consensus upholding certain liberal, democratic principles, such as the belief in the value of cultural, ethnic and religious plurality. Internationally, governments in Europe and North America have buckled under pressure from these same populist movements, weakening their commitment to the international refugee regime. Rather than offering protection to those fleeing war and other forms of violence, governments have erected more restrictive barriers preventing their arrival. These challenges come, moreover, at a time when the need for protection and resettlement is growing. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2019: 2), some 70.8 million individuals have been forcibly displaced worldwide in the past year alone. This figure includes some 25.9 million refugees, 3.5 million asylum seekers and 41.3 million persons who are internally displaced (Ibid.). Contributing to these high numbers is the Syrian war, now in its seventh year and which has displaced more than 12 million people (UNHCR n.d.), with figures suggesting that between those forcibly displaced and those who choose to move, some 258 million people live outside of their country of birth (UN DESA 2017). This number also includes the growing numbers of Syrians, who have fled war and resettled in countries such as Turkey, which now hosts more than 3.5 million Syrians, Germany with almost a million (UNHCR n.d.), and smaller numbers of Syrians living in countries elsewhere, such as Canada, which resettled some 40,000 Syrians between November 2015 and the end of January 2017 (Government of Canada n.d, #WelcomeRefugees). The large number of people living outside their country of birth, and the urgent need to resettle those displaced, has given renewed importance to the issue of welcoming newcomers into our communities—the focus of this book—both in Europe and in North America. In addition to displacement, social and economic injustices and polarization, another trouble weighing on us is how to respond in these troubled times. At an academic conference in Europe a few years ago, a lively discussion broke out over how we could—and should—best respond the forms of violence and injustices existing in our lives and characterizing our times. We were disturbed to see a consensus so readily settle in among the group. The consensus that emerged was that, while we should engage in struggle from our various vantage points and positionalities, the idea of

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common struggle was both a goal undesirable and too difficult for many. No doubt this position was partly informed by important anti-racist, feminist, postcolonial and other forms of critical analyses, which have made important interventions over the past several decades, drawing our awareness to power inequalities and how we are each embedded and reproduce power and inequality in various ways. Such critique has meant that people are often wary of speaking for or on behalf of others, leaving them to act from their own specific locations and identities. Yet, it was when a long-­ time activist and academic broke the consensus, crying out in frustration that they/we would never have witnessed the end of official apartheid had black and white South Africans not worked together across their differences and on behalf of a common cause, that we were inspired. The speaker declared that fighting apartheid politics had only been possible as a result of a politics of connectivity and exchange that necessitated reaching out to others, despite being differently situated within power hierarchies, in order to find and build common ground. We believe we have much to learn from the experiences of those who have walked paths of earlier struggles of resistance. It struck us that, today, we are in such a moment of needing to build and to acknowledge such a politics of connectivity and exchange, a politics that many undertake, in fact, every day but which often goes unnoticed when actions or interventions are quieter or smaller in size and scope. Now, more than ever, as we find ourselves in a world that is increasingly polarized, we need to shine a spotlight on the many acts, programs and initiatives that individuals, groups and communities are undertaking in order to build new ways of interacting with one another, creating new spaces of exchange, where we encounter and come to know one another, and where we can find possibilities for building common ground. For it is only in the exchange that we can come to know and learn from one another and to build community anew together. We hope that this book contributes to this endeavor in some small way by making visible some of the important work being done by scholars, artists and activist, and a variety of grassroots movements and civil society organizations to welcome newcomers into our communities, thereby fostering pluralism and alternative ways of living together in these troubled times. Finding common ground here should not be understood as that which results from some Darwinian or Hobbesian form of realpolitik, where what is “common” emerges from competing interests in which the strongest idea, voice, person or positionality wins out. Nor should “common”

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be understood in the liberal sense of finding a goal or an ideal that is universal or intrinsic to us all. Common also does not suggest that there exists a harmony of interests that arises either through complex negotiations of competing interests (although it may well do so) or which is delivered as a result of some external force like an “invisible hand” (Smith 2003 [1776]). Rather, our understanding of finding common ground is one which is inspired by Edward Said’s (1993) notion of “contrapuntal reading,” as something that emerges as a result of difficult translation processes. Said (1993: 51) developed this notion of contrapuntal reading from Western classical music explaining, “In the counterpoint of Western classical music, various themes play off one another, with only a provisional privilege being given to any particular one; yet in the resulting polyphony there is concert and order, an organized interplay that derives from the themes, not from a rigorous melodic or formal principle outside the work.” Building on this musical example, Said saw contrapuntality as providing a more critical approach to reading, understanding and knowledge production. Contrapuntality means, for example, reading “the great canonical texts, and perhaps also the entire archive of modern and pre-modern European and American culture, with an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented” (Said 1993: 66). Moreover, “For each locale in which engagement occurs, and the imperialist model is disassembled, its incorporative, universalizing, and totalizing codes rendered ineffective and inapplicable, a particular type of research and knowledge begins to build up” (Ibid.: 51). In other words, contrapuntality requires interpreting the “major metropolitan cultural texts” not just from the dominant perspectives but from the margins, that is from the perspectives of those who have been marginalized and written out of the texts, but yet are integral to their creation (Said 1993: 53). It means paying attention to the “moments of resistance,” which provide counter-narratives and ways of understanding and being in the world (Ibid.). For it is only by such an approach that “Western cultural forms can be taken out of the autonomous enclosures in which they have been protected, and placed instead in the dynamic global environment created by imperialism, itself revised as an ongoing contest between north and south, metropolis and periphery, white and native” (Said 1993: 51). With respect to living together and finding common ground, contrapuntality requires processes of translation, whereby people give up their old selves in order to become something else. That something else comes

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from encountering others, who are different and who, in return, also become something else, such that what becomes common is something anew to both parties. “We are dealing with the formation of cultural identities,” Said (1993: 52) writes, “understood not as essentializations (although part of their enduring appeal is that they seem and are considered to be like essentializations) but as contrapununtal ensembles, for it is the case that no identity can ever exist by itself and without an array of opposites, negatives, oppositions.” This is an approach that problematizes identities and cultures as being fixed, homogeneous or self-contained, a view that nationalists and right-wing groups and politicians promote. Integral to the idea of contrapuntality, instead, is the idea of problematizing the “purity” of identity and belonging by recognizing that “[p]artly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (Said 1993: xxv). In our own lives, we have spent years living and going between cultures and countries, and finding humor, beauty and inspiration in the contrapuntal moments, but also knowing the difficulties, anger, misunderstandings and pain that can also accompany these processes of translation. This book is inspired by the joy, creativity, learning and power that accompanies this exchange of differences from such contrapuntal moments and from the belief that such exchanges are vital to our troubled times. The book highlights writing by academics, activists, artists and members of grassroots movements and civil society organizations that share this vision of the importance of meeting others across our differences and creating together in the process new spaces and ways of being out of a politics of exchange, particularly in the context of welcoming newcomers into our communities. Many of the book’s contributors find their own language to express forms of connectivity, exchange and contrapuntal politics by both employing other concepts (such as cosmopolitanism, conviviality and solidarity discussed below) and through different forms of expression including dialogue, mutivocality, poetry, drawing and other forms of artistic expression, all of which aim to evoke this idea of living together.

Welcoming Refugees Amidst Growing Xenophobia The impetus of this book is both normative and descriptive. It provides a normative call for ideas and practices that foster ways of welcoming newcomers into communities. However, it is also descriptive in that it details

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grassroots and civil society initiatives in cities and towns from Berlin, Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Gaziantep, among others, and which include arts projects, kitchen hubs, and community centers, that show how such ideas are put into practice to foster pluralism and open community to newcomers. The discussion of living together is not, however, a Pollyannaish one. Rather, it arises within the very real context of growing xenophobia and racism in Europe and North America. Such forces come at a time when we are witnessing greater numbers of migrants and refugees on the move, often in search of protection and better and more just lives. This strengthening of xenophobia and racism can be seen in the success of anti-­ immigrant right-wing populist parties in Europe and North America. In Europe, the March 2018 Italian elections saw an increase in popularity of the populist Five Star Movement, winning 32% of the vote, and with the far-right, anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic Northern League winning another 18% of the vote (Kirchgaessner and Boffey 2018). Under this 2018 coalition government and the League’s leader and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s policies took a profusely anti-immigrant stance. This was most notably illustrated by the government’s refusal to let boats rescuing those migrants and refugees who are stranded at sea to land on Italian shores and its criminalization of anyone who assists with their rescue. Boats, such as the Aquarius, operated by Doctors Without Borders, which rescued 629 migrants in June 2018, were refused landing (Pianigiani et al. 2018). Others who defied the order not to land, such as Sea-Watch 3, which rescued 42 migrants off the coast of Libya, bringing them to Lampedusa, saw Sea-Watch captain, Carola Racketebe placed under house arrest and threatened with jail (Tondo 2019). Recent elections in September 2019 have brought a new government to power under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, with Salvini now replaced by EU technocrat Luciana Lamorgese (Pietromarchi 2019). While Italy’s stance toward newcomers is expected to soften, this remains to be seen, particularly given the popularity of Salvini’s policies among the larger Italian public.1 Italy is far from alone, however, in its anti-immigrant stance. It follows the rise in popularity in recent years of other far-right parties and movements such as France’s Front National, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Austria’s Freedom Party, and in Germany, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA). In 2015, Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán led the way in consolidating an anti-migrant/refugee “eastern bloc” with

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countries such as Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Confronting thousands of refugees and migrants en route through Europe and arriving at the Hungarian-Serbian border in the summer and fall of 2015, Orbán built a barbed-wire fence along its southern border. Moreover, this phenomenon is not limited to Europe. In North America, since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the American Presidency has become mired in anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, catering to white nationalist and white supremacist sentiments and support. Over the past year, the Trump administration has favored a hard-line approach to migrants crossing from Mexico and Central America into the US, which has included such action as separating families and placing children in detention in what amounts to cages, with former First Lady Laura Bush comparing the detention to Second World War “internment camps” used for Japanese-Americans and one Democratic congressman calling it “nothing short of a prison”’ (BBC 2018). Canada, too, has seen a rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric surfacing in the wake of 2019 fall federal elections. Leader of the People’s Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform while Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer courted the right-wing vote by, for example, speaking at a “yellow vest” event organized by energy sector workers, which along with protesting the carbon tax and derailed pipelines, also protested asylum seekers arriving in Canada from the US. The protest made news also because it was attended by white supremacist and former media commentator, Faith Goldy (Geddes and Markusoff 2019). Finally, Liberal party leader and Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, known for his record of promoting diversity in Canada, brought his own issues of racism to the campaign when photos circulated of him as a student and as a high school teacher wearing brown and blackface (CBC News 2019). As the above examples illustrate, the question of how to live together in societies that are increasingly multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious has become a political issue of utmost concern for many governments across Europe and North America. As former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, now UN Secretary-General, António Guterres (2014) insightfully stated: “Societies across the globe are becoming multicultural, multiethnic and multireligious. Like it or not, we cannot stop this trend; it is inevitable. We do have a choice, however, in how we approach this. Do we embrace diversity as a source of strength, or do we play the populist game and make it a source of fear? I believe tolerance is the only responsible option.” Confronted with such challenges, however, many European

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governments seem less capable or less willing to provide leadership and policies to address the various anxieties that xenophobic movements and populist political parties seem so adept at exploiting. They are failing to offer citizens and newcomers alike alternative models for living together that might encourage greater ethnic, cultural, and religious plurality. Learning to live with difference in diverse societies has thus become one of the most pressing political and policy challenges of the twenty-first century. Yet, at the same time as governments are failing to accommodate growing pluralism, and to manage migration and refugee displacement to the success of populist movements, a variety of grassroots and civil society initiatives have also emerged with the aim of welcoming newcomers. These initiatives share the goal of finding alternative ways of living together in diverse societies. Motivated by a desire to show solidarity with newcomers, these initiatives demonstrate enormous creativity in imagining different ways of fostering pluralism in an environment that has largely become hostile to the arrival of newcomers. Civil society movements, such as illustrated by Germany’s Welcome Culture (Willkommenskultur), Denmark’s Good Neighbors/Kind Citizens (Venligboerne), and other, smaller-scale initiatives, such as art and kitchen projects, first emerged as forms of solidarity movements in the wake of 2015 (see Rygiel and Baban 2019, 2018; Baban and Rygiel 2017). These movements and initiatives often develop frameworks that extend well-beyond a simple show of solidarity, creating alternative ideas about and ways of living together in an attempt to challenge traditional notions and binary ways of categorizing people as insiders and outsiders or citizens and non-citizens. These initiatives are particularly important in several ways. First, such citizens’ initiatives create new spaces for encounters between newcomers and citizens and, second, they promote the types of exchanges that enable people to go beyond assigned positions of insider/outsider. As Sara Ahmed (2000: 6) argues, whether feared or welcomed, the figure of the alien is always “abstracted from the relations which allow it to appear in the present” and the only escape from this is through “the encounter” or “a meeting, which involves surprise and conflict.” While we cannot predetermine the outcome of the encounter, face-to-face- exchange is essential if we are to better understand (and then move) the processes of inclusion and exclusion that have determined who belongs and does not belong to the community. Finally, such initiatives demonstrate the importance of moments of everyday living

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together for fostering a spirit of solidarity (in counter-response to xenophobia). It is within this broader timely and politically significant context that this book looks at such grassroots and civil society initiatives and the important work that they do in opening up communities to newcomers and fostering ways of living together with others from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. This edited book focuses conceptually and empirically on examples of grassroots and civil society initiatives and the ways they open the community to newcomers with an attempt to look at the question of: why, how and under what circumstances are some communities more welcoming than others? In doing so, the book brings together academics, artists, activists and members of grassroots movements and civil society organizations through discussion around the importance of concepts such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity and conviviality as a basis for creating a more inclusive citizenship politics. In particular, the book focuses on everyday living and the role that cultural production plays in this process whether it be through artistic and creative projects such as performance and art, kitchen and cookbook projects or creation of alternative forms of work and living spaces bringing people together.

Cosmopolitanism, Solidarity and Living Together Societies are today, more than ever before, pluralistic but also polarized. This simultaneous development of increasing cultural, ethnic and religious pluralization of late modern societies, and the growing polarization within them, forces us to rethink the question of how to live together. The answer to this question, which populist and nationalist leaders and movements provide, is to turn back the clock to a time when the nation was perceived as having unitary ethnic, cultural and religious origins. Of course, there has never been a time when nations have been constituted as singular cultural, ethnic or religious identities. Rather, nations have always consolidated themselves by rewriting and violently erasing the histories and identities of different groups and identities within their territories (Rogers and Tillie 2001; Ricciardelli et al. 2003). Populist parties and other right-wing groups are today, once again, attempting to revive the false promises of such national narratives that there exists such a unified society with a shared history and common identity. Within this worldview, those who do not fit into the collective national imagination are either denied membership and/or are excluded from

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membership altogether. Central to this political position are several assumptions: first, that there is a privileged national identity with singular cultural roots; second, that this privileged national identity cannot and should not be on an equal footing with others whoever they may be (such as, for example, immigrants, refugees, cultural, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities); and finally, that living together with others who are different pollutes the purity of the nation, leading to its decline. There are variations of political arguments influenced by these assumptions ranging from white nationalist and supremacist replacement theory to appeasement of populist groups who seek hierarchy among different groups in society. Central to this worldview is the belief that difference, whether it is ethnic, cultural, sexual or religious, is detrimental to human sociality and societies that try to accommodate those differences are doomed to disintegrate. This is why in Trump’s worldview, and that of his supporters, everyone other than those who are white and Christian (whether they be Mexicans, migrants, LGBTQ or in many cases women) are a threat to the integrity of the American identity. Like Trump, Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán shares a similar worldview, declaring a never-ending war against the invasion of Muslims and this despite the fact that there are very few Muslims in Hungary. This shared worldview is also behind why Matteo Salvini, Italy’s former interior minister, initiated prosecuting Domenico Luciano, the mayor of small Calabrian town, Riace. Luciano was known in Italy and internationally for successfully implementing integration policies in his town where migrant and local populations lived relatively harmoniously together. His programs were proof of the possibility of living together, thus, disrupting the right-­ wing narrative of the impossibility of living together with newcomers who might have different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. This renewed attempt to deny the existence of cultural differences as a constitutive element of society is a strategy designed (in its mildest form) to silence those groups and identities who demand recognition. It also leads to assimilationist policies, where minority groups, including newcomers, are asked to become part of the dominant culture by erasing and forgetting their own particular cultures, identities and histories. The recent policy changes in Denmark related to integration is a good example of such an approach. In 2018, the Danish government proposed measures requiring that children of newcomers be in daycare, starting from the age of one, for 25 hours a week (Guardian 2018). It also proposed limiting the percentage of immigrant children attending any single kindergarten to

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just 30%, mandating compulsory Danish cultural instruction (including about Christmas and Easter holidays) and doubling criminal sentences in areas that the government refers as “immigrant ghettos” (Guardian 2018). The demand for assimilation, however, is an unattainable goal, a goal that constantly moves, making assimilation function as a veil for exclusion. For instance, in August 2017, the leader of the right-wing populist party AfD called for an immigration officer with Turkish background to be deported back to Anatolia for claiming that there was no specific German culture (The Local de 2017). This example is a particularly telling one as it demonstrates that even though the official in question here is a German citizen, who speaks German and holds a government job—in other words, a perfect example of “assimilation”—nevertheless, she is still not recognized in the eyes of the AfD leader as a “proper” citizen, who threatens her with deportation for having raised questions about the supposed singularity of German culture. What this example reveals is that naturalized citizens, no matter how well they integrate, are still outsiders, without the authority to make statements about German culture, despite the fact that it is the culture into which they are required to assimilate in the first place. Common to both the Danish approach to forced assimilation and the German example provided here is the fact that there is an absence of the voices of newcomers and other cultural minorities about matters related to their lives. Furthermore, assimilation refuses to recognize that “integration” is a two-­ way street, where newcomers have an equal right to participate in defining the conditions of living together in their societies. The argument that the assimilationist approach creates a harmonious society by demanding newcomers to adapt to the dominant national culture is a false one, therefore, because it ends up producing exclusion, social tensions and conflicts. In contrast to assimilation, the multicultural approach is one that recognizes cultural difference as a cornerstone of pluralistic societies. It is informed by a belief that individual dignity necessitates recognizing one’s own unique cultural belonging. Multicultural approaches emphasize that the failure to recognize the differences and autonomy of group identities that do not fit within the dominant national cultural framework only results in their further marginalization and dispossession (Taylor and Gutmann 1992). Naturally, the multicultural approach views “homogeneous national identity” with great skepticism; any attempt to unify identity, as the history of nationalism proves, is realized at the expense of pluralism. In order to ensure that pluralistic social environments exist,

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multiculturalism not only promotes recognition of cultural differences but also the protection of minority cultures in order to ensure their survival (Kymlicka 1995, 2001). This book is informed, however, by a different political impetus than those put forward by assimilationist and multicultural approaches. What brings academics, activists, artists and grassroots and civil society members together in this volume is the desire to think about living together at the moment of contact. No singular identity can be isolated from the rest of society and groups do not live in isolation from one another. The chapters in this volume share the assumption that the way cultural differences are negotiated is as important as acknowledging these differences for preserving individual freedom and dignity. While sharing the multicultural sentiment of the importance of recognizing differences, whether cultural, ethnic, religious or sexual, as the cornerstone of pluralistic society, the chapters in this book move beyond simple recognition to focus on moments of contact instead, where different groups and identities meet, live and form new ways of living together in non-hierarchical ways informed by values of promoting equality and dignity of all individuals. Recognizing the uniqueness of different groups and identities is only one part of being able to peacefully live together in pluralistic societies for this does not address how different groups interact and relate to one another in a hierarchical national society. Peacefully living together in a pluralistic society requires respecting the freedom and dignity of the unique belonging of all members. However, equally important to building pluralistic societies is the ability of individuals to interact with one another. It is only through interaction that possibilities emerge for establishing new solidarities, developing new identities and finding opportunities for working together to challenge dominant identities in ways that respect differences, all of which are integral to ensuring the fair and equitable participation of all members within social and political life. The chapters in this book use various analytical lenses, such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity and conviviality, to explore these moments of contact. They draw on different sets of literatures that discuss various forms of politics aimed at creating new spaces for encounters between newcomers and citizens and promoting exchange that enables people to engage with one another beyond insider/outsider roles. Cosmopolitan forms of living together, which begin with the belief that human beings are bound by relationality, focus on the necessity of acknowledging and engaging with difference. Traditional forms of cosmopolitanism, built around a rigid

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understanding of universalism, have been less open to acknowledging difference. However, there is a growing body of literature that reimagines cosmopolitanism critically as originating “from below” (see, for example, Appiah 2006; Beck 2002; Cheah 2006; Landau and Freemantle 2010; Nyers 2003; Werbner 2008; Delanty 2009). Building upon this logic of cosmopolitanism from below, we have referred to this idea elsewhere as radical or “transgressive cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2017). Rejecting the dichotomy of assimilation and cultural recognition, as emphasized by multicultural approaches, transgressive cosmopolitanism emphasizes the idea that cultural particularity should neither be absorbed within the larger whole nor be viewed as something unchanging, frozen and authentic. Instead, radical or transgressive forms of cosmopolitanisms take the everyday political interventions of marginalized populations and people’s everyday life-negotiations and experiences with difference as the starting point for thinking about living together in difference. Like cosmopolitanism, scholarship on solidarity has centered more recently around refugee and migrant solidarity activism and social movements as a way of thinking about the connections between citizens and newcomers (Ataç et al. 2017; della Porta 2018). Much of this literature focuses on political protest and contestation in response to border controls, migration and asylum policy (De Genova 2017; Rosenberger et al. 2018), while others have focused on conceptualizing protest in terms of citizenship politics (Siim et al. 2019) and theorizing solidarity within this context (Agustin and Jørgensen 2019). These bodies of literature examine the rise in refugee and migrant-led politics and solidarity protest in terms of social movements, citizenship politics and solidarity activism. Finally, another set of literature takes the concept of conviviality as a way of explaining encounters as social practices of everyday life to discuss how groups and individuals interact with each other irrespective of their identities. Rather than prescribed or organized initiatives, discussions of conviviality direct our attention toward spontaneous everyday acts of negotiations without outside interventions (Erickson 2011; Koch and Latham 2011; Wise and Velayutham 2014). Instead of the loaded term “integration,” which is frequently used as a code word for assimilation, conviviality looks at ways of “interrelatedness” to explain how different groups interact with one another, revealing hierarchies and elements of power that prevent newcomers from fully participating in their adopted societies.

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Using these conceptual frameworks, the chapters in this volume capture discrepant moments, discover what and who is excluded from every day interactions of groups, and explore how divergent experiences come together as a part of what Said described as contrapuntal reading, leading to new forms of living together that are open to newcomers, pluralistic and non-hierarchical.

Connecting Through Creativity: Welcoming Newcomers Through Artistic and Cultural Platforms In this edited collection we take a closer look at grassroots and civil society initiatives that bring together newcomers and locals particularly through artistic and cultural platforms. The examples explored here include collaborative arts, music, film and cooking projects that build cultural networks and spaces of connectivity to bring together newcomers and locals. Such initiatives foster better self-understanding of one’s own culture and histories and enable newcomers to produce representations of their own cultural communities and identities. To take but one example to illustrate this, starting in 2015  in Berlin, the project Multaqa (meaning meeting point in Arabic) was developed as a joint initiative between the Museum of Islamic Art (Museum für Islamische Kunst) and three other museums and in collaboration with Syrian newcomers to train newcomers as museum guides. As guides, newcomers give tours, in either German or their native language, of both ancient and more recent histories on display at the museums. Museum Director, Stefan Weber (2016) sees the project as disruptive of the idea of a “one-way knowledge transfer.” As we explain in a cultural policy report written for the Istanbul Foundation of Culture and the Arts: Rather than encouraging the memorising of scripts, guides are encouraged to develop personalised tours based on personal experiences and to bring in personal biographies into the guided tour. Through this approach, guides and visitors are invited to explore Middle Eastern and Western European histories not as separate but interrelated histories and to explore the ways in which different cultural histories and forms of conquest and conflict are related across space and time. (Baban and Rygiel 2018: 74)

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In this sense the idea behind Multaqa resonates with Said’s (1993) contrapuntal reading of histories, with dominant narratives from the centers of power disrupted by counter-narratives, told by those marginalized by those same histories, with histories reinterpreted in the process. As Weber (2016) further explains: The history of others soon becomes a reflection zone for questions of oneself today. Through the discussion of objects, people, often from very different political and religious beliefs, meet with each other and start a conversation. The museum is therefore not only an area of new social circles but also a positive reference point and venue for the intercultural constitution of our society. (…) Museums have the immense opportunity to function as a connecting link between the refugees’ countries of origin and their new host country. In this way, museums can create a context of meaning for their lives here. (Quoted in Baban and Rygiel 2018: 74–75)

Projects like Multaqa are important for the way they offer space to understand the intersectionality of identities and cultures across time and space and the ways in which both locals and newcomers are invited to participate in the retelling of histories and, thus, meaning making. This challenges the dominant approach whereby newcomers are expected to integrate into their new host communities by assimilating within the dominant cultural narratives and identities, leaving their own cultural identities and histories behind in the process. Such projects that make an important intervention as right-wing movements in Europe continue to call for greater cultural purity, denying representation to cultural minorities whom they deem to be outside of their cultural framework. Culture and the arts can play a crucial role here in fostering pluralism by creating deeper understandings between different groups such as between newcomers and local populations. Scholarship on culture and the arts in relation to newcomers has noted their contribution in several areas. As noted in more details in Baban and Rygiel (2018: 54–59), these include the role that arts and culture plays in terms of arts-based community development (Kohl-Arenas et al. 2014 and Washington 2011). It also includes discussion of their therapeutic value with newcomers as a means toward combatting xenophobia (Atlas 2009) and facilitating better integration, or what Mirza (2005) refers to in terms of the “therapeutic state” (Ibid.: 50–52). Other scholarly literature discusses the importance of culture and the arts in terms of teaching civic

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education and providing a means to engage newcomers as citizens or potential citizens through their active participation (Abu El Haj 2009; Kuttner 2015; Lawy et al. 2010) (Ibid.). Contributing to these literatures and discussions is the importance of culture and the arts in terms of representation and recognition of group and individual cultural identities (in order, for example, to protect different lifestyles and combat invisibility, stigmatization and assimilation). Artistic and creative projects provide platforms to restore voice and give visibility to marginalized groups who may be excluded from full participation in society. These are all important aspects of the role that artistic and cultural platforms can play in welcoming newcomers. To this list, however, and our focus here, is the ways that arts and culture can provide avenues for welcoming newcomers. They do so, in part, by disrupting community boundaries and binaries of identities, opening up space in which to build new identities and new ways of understanding community and living in the world together. As we have argued elsewhere, “[t]he transformative potential of the arts and other cultural forms of production … lies in the ways in which such forms of expression, processes and spaces can destabilise the very boundaries and meanings of national identity and cultural communities and ideas about who does and does not belong, through a spirit of transgressive cosmopolitanism” (Rygiel and Baban 2018: 9). This is because the arts and other cultural forms of production “provide alternative spaces and forms for self and group expression and representations—representations that may challenge stereotypical or negative perceptions that the larger public holds and which prevents them from welcoming, knowing or entering into social relations with newcomers” (Ibid.). Here the creative processes of production are equally important. Through artistic and cultural initiatives, individuals are empowered with a sense of belonging in and contributing to the community. Projects such as collaborative photo and art exhibits, or cooking together allow for face-to-face encounters between locals and newcomers, providing opportunities to get to know more about one another and for locals, especially, to understand newcomers as something other than stereotypical representations and labels such as refugee (see caveng and Sado in Chap. 8) but rather as multidimensional human beings instead. The examples explored in the chapters here are based on projects across several European countries including, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Britain and Turkey. The chapters show how artistic and cultural platforms can foster a spirit of “transgressive cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2018)

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by widening the boundaries of inclusion and transforming how we understand community. This starts with the ways in which such projects provide platforms for newcomers to develop alternative representations of themselves that challenge the stereotypical images (for example of refugees as victims, security risks or criminals) that the larger society may hold.

Organization of the Book This edited collection is based on our own research as editors, which stemmed from a five-year project funded by the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada and from conversations emerging in relation to this project from a workshop held in March 2018, in Berlin, at Humboldt University, entitled, “Living with others: Fostering cultural pluralism through citizenship politics.” The collection brings together academics, artists, activists and civil society groups interested in issues around fostering diversity and pluralism and opening up communities to newcomers. Many people involved in this book occupy spaces in-between: as intellectuals, activists and organizers and artists. The book consciously draws across a variety of forms of expression, ranging from academic styles of communication to more artistic forms of expression using creative forms of language and visual communication. Building on our own findings and those of the workshop, the book was originally driven by the following research questions investigating, first, why, how and under what conditions some communities are more open to cultural differences than others and second, which types of projects and policies facilitate openness to newcomers? The book is divided into two parts. The first is a more conceptually focused one, exploring current debates emerging across the humanities and a variety of social science disciplines pertaining to issues around refugee and migration policy, multiculturalism, citizenship politics, nationalism and cultural belonging and the role of civil society and particularly culture and the arts in opening up communities. Part II offers concrete examples of grassroots and civil society initiatives, written by participants of the initiatives themselves, to illustrate more concretely how such initiatives implement these conceptual ideas in very concrete ways by offering new spaces, forms of exchange and thinking about living together. The chapters in Part I of the book, “Thinking Cosmopolitanism, Conviviality and Solidarity Activism in Everyday Living,” discuss conceptual debates pertaining to the concepts of cosmopolitanism, conviviality

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and solidarity activism in order to shed light on ways of living together. In doing so, they often present alternatives to the narrative of the existence of singular national identities that are often promoted by national governments and based on the idea of the nation state or the exclusionary logic of populist movements (often based on white nationalist/supremacist and anti-immigrant and foreigner logics). Drawing on theoretical debates and everyday examples of citizenship solidarity and refugee and migrant activism in response to anti-im/migration policies, whether it be through arts projects, kitchen hubs or solidarity city initiatives, the chapters in this section explore and outline conditions under which communities become open to newcomers and show greater degree of solidarity with them to include them into their communities. Chapter 2 addresses the politics of solidarity through everyday forms of activism in Copenhagen. Authors, Birte Siim and Susi Meret explore how acts of citizenship, and politics of solidarity are employed, with emphasis on the intersections of migration, race/ethnicity and gender. They argue that everyday forms of activism, inspired by artistic experiences and creative processes, can prompt learning processes and spaces where newcomers and locals can experience new ways of engaging and living with one another and illustrate this with a focus on the Danish, pro-refugee organization Trampoline House, which they explain emerged with the aim of offering “asylum seekers and refugees the practical tools and knowledge of how to deal with isolation in the asylum centers and integration within Danish society” and second, with creating “an alternative space in which to critically address and develop forms of societal and cultural resistance against the outside, where the outside is increasingly perceived as being a politically hostile, unequal and discriminatory environment.” They explore the importance of the work of Trampoline House in welcoming newcomers within the larger context of rising xenophobia with the increased popularity of the Danish People’s Party but also growing pro-refugee solidarity movements in Denmark and more broadly in Europe. In Chap. 3, Ulrike Hamann employs the concept of conviviality to explore the German case of living together, focusing on Germany’s “welcome culture” as an illustrative example. Here, Hamann focuses on how this “welcome culture” emerged and how, in smaller towns and communities in Germany, where racism and xenophobic attitudes are on the rise, those involved push back against white supremacist groups in support of newcomers. Based on interviews and focus groups in 2016 across 17 cities and 11 towns across Germany, Hamann outlines the emergence and types

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of activities organized as well as the challenges facing welcome culture initiatives and especially in East Germany where she examines the motives of people and their impact within the context of the proliferation of right-­ wing extremist attitudes against refugees. Furthering the discussion of the role of grassroots and civil society initiatives in welcoming newcomers in Germany, Stefanie Kron and Henrik Lebuhn focus in Chap. 4 on the solidarity city movement emerging across European cities, starting in 2017. Involving a range of actors from “refugee councils, migrant self-organizations, and welcoming initiatives”, to “left-­wing movements, urban policy NGOs, religious groups and academics in cities like Berlin, Bern, Cologne, and Zurich, as well as countless smaller cities,” the movement calls for an end to deportations and freedom of movement for all along with a “democratization of urban life” which the authors discuss in terms of urban citizenship. The chapter examines the ways the Solidarity City framework and the respective actors, movements and policies can foster a form of cultural pluralism that transforms understandings of who is a citizen and belongs to the community and explore the potential for programs and politics at the city level to welcome newcomers within the larger context of more restrictive and antiimmigrant and refugee policies undertaken at the national level. In the final chapter of Part I, Hande Paker and E. Fuat Keyman focus on the role that civil society actors play in generating shared spaces based on trust and solidarity for Syrian newcomers in Turkey, noting the urgency of finding ways of living together in a country that hosts over 3.6 million Syrians. Focusing on debates on diversity and radical cosmopolitanism, differentiating between tolerance, recognition, co-existence and living together, the authors argue that civil society actors can move debate around living together from one focused on hospitality to a rights-based approach for refugees. To do so, however, they suggest that the bottom­up capacity of civil society needs to be supported by policy and a supportive, enabling state. The chapters in Part II, “Everyday Practices of Living Together and Community Building Through Culture and the Arts,” focus on various grassroots and civil society initiatives, whose principal objectives are fostering pluralism and promoting alternative forms of living together that challenge or attempt to circumvent binary thinking around belonging and notions of insiders/outsiders and citizens/non-citizens. Within this context, the role of the arts and other forms of cultural production (such as kitchen projects) are particularly important as cultural production plays a

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vital role in developing deeper understanding of human condition, a first step in building more inclusive communities. The chapters in Part II provide specific illustrative examples of projects, addressing the question of how civil society initiatives can act as alternative sites from which to challenge notions of who does and does not belong in the community and foster inclusionary ways of living together. In Chap. 6, authors Nicol Savinetti, Sez Kristiansen and Sacramento Roselló Martínez show how IMMART, or International Migration Meets the Arts, a Danish organization founded to assist foreign artists living in Denmark and to diversify regional artscapes, has developed into a network that supports artistic projects and connects ethnically diverse artists, art lovers and arts and cultural workers together. Written in three separate segments, each author explores a different facet of the organization including its formation and goals; interviews with core members discussing its role in their lives as artists; and a third section discussing Food Memories, a multi-disciplinary community project. In this project, a group of Danish and foreign-born women participated in a collaborative life-writing project around food and cooking. The aim was one of empowerment but also to create a space where women could learn about their differences rather than feeling othered by them. The project, like the other work that IMMART engages in, fosters cultural pluralism by creating more supportive spaces for newcomers and locals to engage with and learn from one another. Chapter 7 also employs artistic forms of communication, structured as a dialogue between the two artists and founders of KUNSTASYL. Together in conversation, barbara caveng and Dachil Sado tell the story of the founding and development of KUNSTASYL, an initiative created in 2015 in Berlin, of “artists, creative minds, residents and itinerants”. (KUNSTASYL n.d). KUNSTASYL sees itself as a “platform that uses artistic expression to create a diversified exchange between displaced persons and the local, domiciled population” (KUNSTASYL n.d). The chapter, written as dialogue between the two co-­founders, narrates the birth of KUNSTASYL through a participatory art project, “daHEIM” that took place at an asylum shelter (Heim) in Spandau, Berlin, in 2015. Their discussion explores how through art and creativity, KUNSTASYL connects people across various trajectories of their lives and journeys, whether of displacement to and from Berlin or of personal and political growth. Their discussion is interspersed with members’ poetry and artwork and articles from their own Declaration of Human Rights. KUNSTASYL provides a good example of how grassroots organizations

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can use art as process and platform through which to build community, to make room for newcomers to share the space of “home” and to build something new together. Similarly, in Chap. 8, Sabine Küper-Büsch and Thomas Büsch explore the role of arts and culture for international artists, and Syrians in particular, to express their own realities of war, daily life and struggles to build networks and a sense of belonging while also countering stereotypical narratives of refugees as victims. The co-authors discuss the ways in which the Searching Traces program and its film workshops, along with The Mahalla Festival, a traveling festival of contemporary art, film and literature, brought Syrian and other international artists together with local artists in Turkey through these arts and cultural events. The authors explain how filmmaking workshops and The Mahalla Festival provided platforms: for artists to practice various art forms, including filmmaking, art, literature and performance; to introduce Syrian artists into the local art scene in Turkey; and the space in which to tell their own first-hand stories and experiences in order to counter-narrativize victimization. The authors show here how the creative process can be used to teach others about these more complex realities in ways that foster cross-cultural dialogue, create networks and help newcomers to build a sense of belonging through co-creative collaborative processes. Noor Edres explores the role of food and cooking as a way of connecting newcomers and locals in Chap. 9, through the work of Über den Tellerrand, a grassroots organization founded in 2013 in Berlin. Über den Tellerrand (which translates into English literally as “looking beyond your own plate,” meaning being open-minded or thinking outside the box) developed from a student project to a cookbook. This initiative grew into holding pop-up dinners, where newcomers and locals would cook and share a meal together and, in the process, learn more about one another. From these experiences, friendships developed and Über den Tellerrand then started a range of other activities, including sports, music events, mentorship programs, and cooking hubs and satellite kitchens that travel to other cities and villages across Germany and Europe. As Edres illustrates in this chapter, as newcomers and locals participate together in a variety of diverse activities, such as mentoring projects, community events, sports activities and cookbooks, people learn about one another and challenge their previously held prejudices, thus enabling them to form long-­ lasting friendships. In so doing, they learn about their different cultural identities and backgrounds but also engage in activities whereby they

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develop new identities and friendships and new ways of thinking about sharing space and building community together. Kemal Vural Tarlan, director of the cultural center Kırkayak Kültür in Gaziantep, Turkey, explains in Chap. 10 how the organization developed and began hosting cultural events that enabled newcomers and local residents to work and create together. Kırkayak was originally founded and funded by eight private citizens in 2011 with the aim of organizing cultural events, such as the annual International Zeugma Film Festival. However, with the arrival of growing numbers of Syrians, and a recognition that local residents lacked knowledge about Syrians, Kırkayak decided to use its space to exhibit several Syrian artists’ work, encouraging them to use the center for social and cultural events. From these early days, Kırkayak developed as a cultural space with the aim of bringing the local population and Syrian newcomers together. Through cultural events, locals have an opportunity to learn about the realities of displacement, to challenge their discriminatory perceptions about refugees and Syrians and to see newcomers in more multifaceted ways, including as professional artists, rather than simply in terms of stereotypes. As a cultural center, Kırkayak provides space for artists to work and programs to support artists ranging from film festivals and photography training to cooking workshops, similar to those explored in Chap. 9 through the work of Über den Tellerrand.

Conclusion The initiatives explored here throughout this book emerge from geographically different locations across Europe—from Copenhagen, Denmark to Gaziantep, Turkey. But despite their vastly different contexts, such initiatives share a common desire to dare and be creative in their approaches to finding new ways of living together that challenge citizen/non-citizen binaries and reimagine communities through interaction and exchange and, in the process, creating something anew. These initiatives reveal the real difference that everyday living together can have for fostering solidarity with others and implementing radical cosmopolitanism as praxis. They are also a testament to the hard work and love that many of us commit to in our daily lives. While many are small in size, as discussed further in the book’s Conclusion in Chap. 11, collectively their impact is much larger and can have an impact on the type of communities we build together. We recognize that encountering differences may challenge and, perhaps, even scare us—and sometimes we will not like the

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differences we encounter and with which we must live. Yet, it is only by creating opportunities to live with others, to engage in dialogue and enter into the exchange with “others”, others who may or may not be like “us”, that we can hope to collectively fight and stem the tide of rising xenophobia, a sentiment that can only result in policies and practices of walling ourselves off from others, and a world of camps, encampment and enclosures, and of practices of bordering, and erecting borders. If, indeed, learning to live with differences in diverse societies is one of the pressing political and policy challenges of our troubled times then we would rather find ways of responding by reaching out, building bridges and connecting to one another. The chapters here provide innovative suggestions for how we might begin to think and do this—whether this be through a single project initiated at the local community or municipal level, supportive state government policies, or through connections made transnationally, across our communities, as illustrated here in the various solidarity and grassroots initiatives highlighted in the chapters of this book.

Note 1. An IPSOS survey conducted in July 2019 on behalf of the newspaper, Corriere della Sera, showed some 59% of Italians in support of Salvini’s hard-line stance toward refusing to welcome and offer protection to refugees and migrants (Pietromarchi 2019).

References Abu El Haj, T. (2009). Imagining Postnationalism: Arts, Citizenship Education, and Arab American Youth. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 40(1), 1–19. Agustín, Ó. G., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2019). Solidarity and the Refugee Crisis in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. Ahmed, S. (2000). Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (pp. 1–17). London and New York: Routledge. Appiah, A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New  York: W.W. Norton. Ataç, I., Rygiel, K., & Stierl, M. (Eds.). (2017). The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins. London and New York: Routledge. The Chapters in This Book Were First Published in Citizenship Studies, 20(5), 2016.

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Atlas, M. (2009). Experiencing Displacement: Using Art Therapy to Address Xenophobia in South Africa. Development, Suppl. Xenophobia, Culture and Identity, 52(4), 531–536. Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2017). Living with Others: Fostering Radical Cosmopolitanism Through Citizenship Politics in Berlin. Ethics & Global Politics, 10(1), 98–116. Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2018, July 10). Living Together: Fostering Cultural Pluralism through Culture and the Arts. Report Commissioned and Written for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Cultural Policy Development ̇ Projects (pp. 1–32). Istanbul: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (iKSV). BBC. (2018, June 18). Trump Migrant Separation Policy: Children ‘in Cages’ in Texas. BBC News Online. Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www. bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44518942. Beck, U. (2002). The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies. Theory, Culture and Society, 19(1–2), 17–44. CBC News. (2019, September 20). What We Know About Justin Trudeau’s Blackface Photos—And What Happens Next. Retrieved September 22, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-trudea-black face-brownface-cbc-explains-1.5290664. Cheah, P. (2006). Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. De Genova, N. (Ed.). (2017). The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Delanty, G. (2009). The Cosmopolitan Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. della Porta, D. (Ed). (2018). Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Contentious Moves, Palgrave Macmillan. Erickson, B. (2011). Utopian Virtues: Muslim Neighbors, Ritual Sociality, and the Politics of Convivència. American Ethnologist, 38(1), 114–131. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01296.x. Geddes, J., & Markusoff, J. (2019, May 6). Andrew Scheer Has a Problem. Maclean’s. Retrieved September 22, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/ politics/andrew-scheer-has-a-problem/. Government of Canada. (n.d.). #WelcomeRefugees: Key Figures. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugeescitizenship/services/refugees/welcome-syrian-refugees/key-figures.html. Guardian. (2018, July 8). The Guardian View on Forcible Integration: This Cannot End Well. Retrieved 23 September 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/08/the-guardian-view-on-forcibleintegration-in-denmark-this-cannot-end-well. Guterres, A. (2014, May 29). Open the Gates to Uprooted Syrians. The Globe and Mail.

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Kirchgaessner, S., & Boffey, D. (2018). Eurosceptic Italy in Race to Form Majority Government. The Guardian. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/05/italy-turns-back-on-europe-aselection-points-to-hung-parliament. Koch, R., & Latham, A. (2011). Rethinking Urban Public Space: Accounts from a Junction in West London. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(4), 515–529. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00489.x. Kohl-Arenas, E., Nateras, M.  M., & Taylor, J. (2014). Cultural Organizing as Critical Praxis: Tamejavi Builds Immigrant Voice, Belonging, and Power. Journal of Poverty, 18(1), 5–24. KUNSTASYL. (n.d.). If There Was A War—All of Us Became ‘Refugees’—And Who On Earth Would Want To Have Us Then? Retrieved September 24, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/en/eg/4/. Kuttner, P. J. (2015). Educating for Cultural Citizenship: Reframing the Goals of Arts Education. Curriculum Inquiry, 45(1), 69–92. Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press. Kymlicka, W. (2001). Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Landau, L., & Freemantle, I. (2010). Tactical Cosmopolitanism and Idioms of Belonging: Insertion and Self-Exclusion in Johannesburg. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(3), 375–390. Lawy, R., Biesta, G., Mc Donnell, J., Lawy, H., & Reeves, H. (2010). ‘The Art of Democracy’: Young People’s Democratic Learning in Gallery Contexts. British Educational Research Journal, 36(3), 351–365. Mirza, M. (2005). The Therapeutic State. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11(3), 261–273. Nyers, P. (2003). Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-­ Deportation Movement. Third World Quarterly, 24(6), 1069–1093. OECD. (n.d.). Inequality. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from http://www. oecd.org/social/inequality.htm. Pianigiani G., Horowitz, J., & Minder, R. (2018, June 11). Italy’s New Populist Government Turns Away Ship With 600 Migrants Aboard, New York Times. Retrieved September 22, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/ 06/11/world/europe/italy-migrant-boat-aquarius.html. Pietromarchi, V. (2019, September 10). With Salvini Gone, What’s Next for Italy’s Migration Policy?, AlJazeera. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https:// w w w. a l j a z e e r a . c o m / n e w s / 2 0 1 9 / 0 9 / s a l v i n i - i t a l y - m i g r a t i o n - p o l icy-190910121122318.html. Ricciardelli, M., Urban, S., & Nanopoulos, K. (Eds.). (2003). Globalization and Multicultural Societies: Some Views from Europe. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

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Rogers, A., & Tillie, J. (Eds.). (2001). Multicultural Policies and Modes of Citizenship in European Cities. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Rosenberger, S., Stern, V., & Merhaut, N. (Eds.). (2018). Protest Movements in Asylum and Deportation. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Rygiel, K., & Baban, F. (2018). Moving Over. Moving In. Making Room Through the Arts: A Case for Transgressive Cosmopolitanism. In A.  Wolodzko & G.  Aagaard (Eds.), Groundwork Text Series on Participation, Urbanity, Alternative Economies. Series 6. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https:// improvedfutures.wixsite.com/rum46/publications-1. Rygiel, K., & Baban, F. (2019). Countering Right-Wing Populism: Transgressive Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity Movements in Europe (Special Forum: Border Protests and Transnational Solidarities. Guest Edited by Sunaina Maira). American Quarterly, 71(4), 1069–1077. Said, E. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf. Siim, B., Saarinen, A., & Krasteva, A. (Eds.). (2019). Citizens’ Activism and Solidarity Movements: Contending with Populism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, A. (2003 [1776]). Wealth of Nations. New  York: Bantam Dell, Random House. Taylor, C., & Gutmann, A. (1992). Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition: An Essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. The Local de. (2017, August 28). Outrage as Afd Leader Suggests Dumping Political Rival in Turkey. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https://www. thelocal.de/20170828/outrage-as-afd-leader-suggests-dumping/amp. Tondo, L. (2019, July 5). Captain Who Rescued 42 Migrants: I’d Do It Again Despite Jail Threat. The Guardian. Retrieved September 22, 2019, from h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / w o r l d / 2 0 1 9 / j u l / 0 5 / captain-who-rescued-42-migrants-id-do-it-again-despite-jail-threat. UN DESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2017). The International Migration Report 2017. Highlights.ST/ESA/SER.A/404, New  York: United Nations. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https:// www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/ migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights.pdf. UNHCR. (2019). Global Trends. Forced Displacement in 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https://www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf. UNHCR. (n.d.). Operational Portal Refugee Situations: Syria Regional Refugee Response. Retrieved September 16, 2019, from https://data2.unhcr.org/en/ situations/syria#_ga=2.40912034.1621531210.1525810308-192866089. 1522940125. Washington, G. A. (2011). Community-Based Art Education and Performance: Pointing to a Place Called Home. Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research, 52(4), 263–277.

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Weber, S. (2016). Multaqa: Museum as Meeting Point. Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums-Concept and Content. Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu. Berlin. Retrieved September 23, 2019, from https:// www.touring-artists.info/fileadmin/user_upload/Willkommen/Multaka_-_ Concept_and_Content.pdf. Werbner, P. (Ed.). (2008). Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives. New York: Berg. Wise, A., & Velayutham, S. (2014). Conviviality in Everyday Multiculturalism: Some Brief Comparisons Between Singapore and Sydney. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 406–430. https://doi.org/10.1177/136754 9413510419.

CHAPTER 2

The Politics and Art of Solidarity: The Case of Trampoline House in Copenhagen Birte Siim and Susi Meret

Introduction This chapter analyzes the politics and practices of activist solidarity with refugee groups. Refugee groups are here defined in a broad sense to include refugees and asylum seekers, groups with residence permits, rejected asylum seekers and irregularized migrants.1 The chapter asks how solidarity is practiced by studying the opportunities, framings, repertoires and strategies, and by focusing on tensions, potentials and problems of the selected organizations and grassroots movements doing solidarity work with refugee groups in the Copenhagen district area. Particular emphasis is given to the role played by cultural, artistic and creative processes and practices of solidarity in ways that encourage and forge political activity and transformation. The chapter explores how artists perceive their positions and engagement within the pro-migrant movement and the potentials and limits of their interactions with refugee groups, especially with

B. Siim (*) • S. Meret Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_2

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women’s and LGBTQ groups. The focus of the chapter is on the opportunities, tensions and constraints emerging from these encounters and on the ways these encounters foster or hinder empowerment and tolerance of diversity (Mokre and Siim 2018; Sauer 2018; Sauer and Siim 2019; Krizsan and Siim 2018; della Porta (2015); Siim and Meret 2020). A key issue here is how groups and organizations deal with (intersectional) inequalities, such as religion, nationality, gender and sexuality, and how awareness of inequalities (or the lack thereof) may impact the relations between and within activists and refugee groups (Doerr 2019). The purpose of this chapter is to make more visible the alternative forces to antiimmigration and right-wing populist policies in civil society. It is also to explore the challenges faced by these groups, by focusing on cooperation and alliances between native-born citizens and refugees, as well as within these diverse groups. The first contextual part gives an overview of the role played by the Social Democratic Party and by the social movements in the Danish context, both of which have been central to the building of the Danish welfare state and have shaped the ideals of participation and deliberative democracy (Siim and Meret 2016). Research shows that, since 2001, the Nordic universalistic welfare model has gradually transformed toward a “welfare nationalism” model (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012; Brochmann 2021).2 This has been described as a gradual mainstreaming or accommodation of right-wing populist discourse and policies regarding immigration and asylum, which has turned the universalistic idea(l)s of welfare toward an “exclusive welfare nationalism” reserved “for our people only” (Siim and Meret 2016). The second section outlines our theoretical approach, which is inspired by the scholarly literature analyzing the politics and practices of participatory democracy and solidarity, combining key concepts from citizenship, social movement and gender theory (Siim and Meret 2018). The chapter analyzes the practice of citizens (and non-citizens) in their everyday life (Lister 1997/2003), drawing on notions of “acts of citizenship” by non-­ nationals (Isin and Nielsen 2008) and on “acts of solidarity” and “acts of resistance,” from social movement theory. The intersectional gender approach is used to analyze the dynamics of inequalities and the differences between gender and other forms of inequality in creating categories (Crenshaw 1989; Yuval-Davis 2011). One cross-cutting issue is constituted by the relationship between national and transnational solidarity, another by the multiple inequalities created by the intersections of

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different categories and identities, especially gender, nationality, class, race, ethnicity and religion. The analytical frame of this chapter is informed by a view of democracy “from below,” analyzing the politics and practices of activist solidarity with a focus on agency and the practices of civil society organizations supporting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It explores how artists and other activists strive to promote the use of art and culture as a means to create alternative spaces to support refugees, inform public opinion and also to influence immigration politics in the Copenhagen area. The empirical study focuses on the case study of the Trampoline House; this is a paradigmatic example within the Danish context of an everyday form of pro-migrant activism that makes use of culture and art as the main ingredients to concretely translate solidarity into practice. The closing reflections sum up the challenges of engaging in a politics and practice of solidarity during a time of increasingly restrictive, and hostile environments, such as the one shaped by the Danish migration and integration regime over the past two decades. We suggest that the intersectional frame can provide a fruitful approach for analyzing the potentials and constraints developed by “acts of citizenship” and “acts of resistance.” The case study of Trampoline House’s everyday activism shows the potential of culture and the arts for opening up spaces in which to build communities and create understandings across differences. At the same time, the study also points to the limitations of the project when it comes to empowering refugees and influencing hegemonic migration politics.

The Mainstreaming of Right-Wing Danish Populism: Reactions from Below This section gives a brief account of key characteristics of the Danish welfare and gender regime, and of the political transformations produced by migration and integration policies (Meret and Siim 2013; Siim and Meret 2016; Siim and Borchorst 2017). The welfare and gender regimes have been characterized by a relatively high level of social and gender equality and social and political trust. One defining characteristic of Danish democracy is its emphasis on democracy “from below,” where voluntary civil society organizations and social movements have played an important political role since the 1960s. As a result, social movements, including the

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trade union and women’s movements, have rather successfully promoted equality and solidarity, especially across class and gender. Research has documented that growing immigration from the Middle East (originally described as guest-worker migration) has created a multiethnic society in Denmark, with a diversity of cultures and religions. Danish society has largely perceived this as posing challenges to its purported values of equality, welfare and solidarity (Siim and Borchorst 2017; Yilmaz 2016). These developments have been followed by a political shift since the 1980s, from an open to a more restrictive migration system, adopted in particular by the Liberal-led minority government from 2001 to 2011 and then again from 2015 until June 2019. These restrictive policies toward immigrants and asylum seekers have, from the start, depended on the support of the Danish Peoples’ Party (Dansk Folkeparti),3 a far-­ right party known for its vehement anti-immigration stance (Widfeldt 2015). Since 2001, Denmark has gradually moved from the earlier model of welfare nationalism, supported by the Social Democratic Party (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012), to what can be interpreted as a model of exclusive welfare nationalism (Siim and Meret 2016, 2018). Under the previous, center-right minority government, that came to power after the elections in 2015, again with the support of the Danish People’s Party, right-wing populism has gradually been strengthened and accommodated. Recently, the government, dependent on the Danish People’s Party and with the “silent” agreement of the Social Democrats in the opposition, announced its agreement on a “paradigmatic shift” in Danish asylum politics. This has meant a shift in the government’s approach to dealing with refugees from one focusing on their integration within the labor market and society and opportunities for permanent residence in the country, to their “repatriation” and returning refugees to their countries of origin (Siim and Meret 2018). The paradigm shift was only the latest step taken toward more restrictive laws toward immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, laws which have challenged some of their most fundamental rights in areas such as family reunification, integration benefits and access to permanent residency permits. The government’s restrictions on asylum matters have been followed by a growing number of complaints over Denmark’s discrimination of foreigners by the UN’s Human Rights Committees.4 However, this criticism has had no impact on the direction taken by the governing parties, or on the harsher position taken by the Social Democratic Party on immigration and asylum politics since at least 2015.

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The Social Democratic Party has, on several occasions, contributed to the implementation of laws and regulations proposed by the previous government, including a law banning various sorts of full-face covering from public spaces (also known as the “burqa-ban”); the enactment of the contentious “ghetto-plan,” passed by the Parliament and which sets out preventive measures against the development of so-called parallel societies in underprivileged urban areas in Denmark; and the tightening of asylum law regulations, including Denmark’s controversial hiatus from giving asylum to UN quota refugees.5 The latter measure was extremely controversial and harshly criticized by NGOs and civil society organizations and groups both nationally and internationally (Inland 2017). It was eventually lifted by the new Social Democratic Party-led minority government in the summer of 2019, showing that differences between and within Danish political parties still exist with respect to immigration and asylum policies, as well as on issues of race relations, ethnicity, religion and gender (Meret and Siim 2013; Krizsan and Siim 2018; Meret and Gregersen 2019). It is within this context of a growing populist and neo-nationalist right-­ wing consensus and of increasing anti-immigration and anti-refugee policies that forms of refugee solidarity have emerged and developed over the past two decades (Siim et al. 2018). In this sense, the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis” only partly explains the emergence and development of Danish refugee groups and movements. Many initiatives, in fact, had already started earlier than 2015, with active civil society mobilizations against Danish asylum and migration politics, including groups such as SOS against Racism6 (founded in 1988); the Refugees Welcome Denmark7 (launched in 2008); and the Friendly Neighbors (Venligboerne),8 whose activities have mushroomed since 2014 (Venligboerne 2019). In the case of Denmark, where restrictive immigration and asylum politics have grown during the past two decades, it is interesting to observe how counter-­ initiatives have organized and developed from below. In the next section we conceptualize the meaning of the politics and practices of solidarity by referring to how the concept of solidarity (and in particular of pro-migrant solidarity) has been employed and explained in the scholarly literature. We are particularly interested in exploring relationships and forms of solidarity addressing the interaction between groups of people having different positions in society and unequal access to rights and welfare.

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Theorizing Migrant Solidarity in Politics and Practice In contemporary Europe, migration and mobility have challenged established theories on citizenship, democratic participation, globalization and social movements. New approaches to social justice, participative and deliberative democracy, transnational citizenship and global democracy have emerged (Fraser 2013; della Porta 2013). Growing neo-­nationalist and populist appeals directly challenge pro-migrant solidarity movements, groups and networks, thereby considerably weakening citizens’ abilities and motivations to develop a “politics of friendship” (Derrida 2006) as well as their opportunities to respond to what Ruth Wodak (2015) has called “the politics of fear.” Our analytical approach combines critical citizenship theories (Isin and Turner 2007; Isin 2009) with social movement perspectives (della Porta 2013), and does so by paying attention to the role played by ordinary people in democracy and to forms of spontaneous civic activism developed by citizens. The two approaches have a similar focus on the agency and voices of (non-)citizens, marginalized social groups, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Both are concerned with the opportunities and problems of inclusion and empowerment triggered by civil society actors and social movements in the democratic process, and with marginalized groups and their claims for equality and social justice (della Porta 2015). To this literature we add the intersectional (gender) approach that focuses on recognizing and overcoming inequalities and diversities among social categories, such as gender, nationality ethnicity/race and religion (Meret and Siim 2013). Scholars analyzing modern citizenship suggest that citizenship needs to be invigorated (Isin and Turner 2007) by emphasizing forms of empowerment and self-empowerment of marginalized social groups (Monforte and Dufour 2013). Our understanding of citizenship is inspired by Hannah Arendt’s (1951, 1958) influential approach that asks who has “the rights to have rights.” This approach challenges the idea of citizenship and universal human rights acquired by birth, and it shows that, in practice, the guarantees and privileges of human beings rely strongly upon membership of a community, defined by the borders of the nation state. Arendt’s concept of statelessness refers to all people who, for any reason, could no longer benefit from the rights granted by citizenship and belonging to a national community.

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Engin Isin (2009: 383–384) proposes the “activist citizen”—an actor making claims to justice—as the emerging figure of contemporary global politics. Here, citizenship is enacted through struggles for rights among various groups. The focus is on “acts” rather than on status or habitus and on citizenship as political subjectivity. Isin (2012) analyzes how “citizens without frontiers” traverse social, cultural and geographical frontiers for social justice, creating relations between “those who are no longer and not yet citizens.” In a similar vein, Baubäck (2006) studies the divisions between and within racial, social, civil and political categories of people, such as national citizens, EU-citizens, and so-called third country nationals, as well as the tensions between rights of refugees and asylum seekers and national citizens. These divisions have created what we call “differentiated citizenship” between categories of people. From the social movement perspective, one key issue is how to reconcile the tensions between participation and deliberation (della Porta 2013) and between equality and diversity (Fraser 2013) in order to stimulate democratic dialogue within movements and organizations and between unequal groups, such as between the leaders/coordinators and initiators of citizens’ activism and the excluded and marginalized groups of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers (Siim and Meret 2020). One proposal to deal with diversity is Jodi Dean’s (1996) concept of reflective solidarity that reframes Habermas’ deliberative model of democracy. This version of solidarity builds on ties created by dissent and refers to “a mutual expectation of a responsible orientation to relationship” (Dean 1996: 29) as an alternative to affective and conventional forms of solidarity. Social movement and migration scholars have been inspired by Gramsci’s approach to social solidarity, defined as practices of forming alliances between civil society groups at national and transnational levels. Transnational solidarity is considered a necessary step toward societal and political changes that can encompass access to rights and enable the integration of refugees (Agustin and Bak Jørgensen 2016). One cross-cutting theoretical issue is the relationship between a national and transnational politics of equality and solidarity. Some scholars have argued that there is an urgent need to address methodological nationalism and to rethink concepts and strategies able to combine national with trans-­ national solidarity (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2002; Glick-Schiller 2018). An example is Will Kymlicka’s (2015) discussion of the “progressive’s dilemma” that arguably forces a choice between solidarity and diversity, examining the challenge of combining national solidarity with inclusive

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citizenship. He is critical of neoliberal multiculturalism and welfare chauvinism that champions national solidarity at the expense of immigrants and minorities. He proposes a model premised on multicultural national solidarity, a model based on the multicultural welfare state as an alternative to cosmopolitanism. Kymlicka (2015: 12–13) calls this normative model of solidarity, one that promotes multiculturalism, a form of Canadian-style nation-building. One of the challenges for “solidarity without borders” is how to overcome the difficulties of cultivating transnational solidarity in contemporary Europe. Baban and Rygiel’s (2017) approach seeks to reconcile cultural plurality with communitarian concerns maintaining long-­ established traditions and norms of those societies. It explores how to accommodate the cultural plurality of newcomers while, at the same time, creating conditions for them to participate in the historical traditions and norms of their adopted countries. This work refers to community-led initiatives in Berlin to demonstrate that a cosmopolitan spirit, motivated by a desire to engage with others and with their cultural, religious and other forms of particularities, is possible. This approach is an interesting attempt to rethink hospitality through the rights of the guests rather than the privileges of the host. Inspired by Derrida’s concept of “unconditional hospitality,” it opens up new venues of citizenship politics that demonstrate that a dialogue between citizenship and radical cosmopolitan scholarship is fruitful (Baban and Rygiel 2017: 113–114). To this literature we add an intersectional perspective, which more explicitly deals with differences and inequalities between and within social groups. Originating in the U.S. in the 1980s, this concept focuses on intersections between gender and race and between racism and feminism within social movements (Crenshaw 1991). European feminist scholars started using a similar concept in the 1970s, particularly with respect to concerns about relations between gender and class (Hartman 1979). Here, an intersectional approach moved from placing its primary focus on gender, race and class to a broader focus on differences between and within gender and other inequalities creating categories such as ethnicity, religion, migration and nationality (Ferree 2008; Yuval-Davis, 2007, 2011). Political intersectionality has become one of the key concepts used for disclosing patterns of in/exclusionary intersections within politics and in the public sphere (Meret and Siim 2013; Mokre and Siim 2018). One of the challenges is, however, to unravel how patterns of inequality and mechanisms of marginalization and forms of disempowerment take place

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within different settings and amongst diverse (marginalized) groups, and how these can be disrupted by the use of alternative communicative means, inter-relational practices and political initiatives. In this sense, our empirical study has a particular focus on the concept of political intersectionality as a means to explore the challenges of “doing solidarity” with refugees in the Danish context (Siim and Meret 2020). It asks about the potential of using culture, arts and alternative communicative practices to process and bridge inequalities and differences often reproduced by the relational paradigm of “host versus guest” that often permeates understandings and practices of solidarity. Trampoline House is used here as an example of a specific solidarity space where living together in difference is a question that is part of everyday life.

Methods and Data Our analytical frame is informed by an understanding of democracy “from below,” and it employs an extended public sphere model focusing on the agency, activities and practices of civil society organizations (Siim and Meret 2018: 28–29). Our approach explores the politics and practices of activists and groups working in and for solidarity with refugees, defined in a broad and inclusive way. In doing so, we place particular emphasis on the role played by culture and the arts and on the positioning of the artists/activists, looking at the intersectional potentials and limitations of their interactions with marginalized groups, such as activities directed toward women’s groups, rejected asylum seekers and LGBTQ groups. We ask how solidarity is practiced by studying how the framings, repertoires and strategies of doing pro-migrant solidarity have changed over time in relation to the surrounding society and the changing political opportunity structures (Mokre and Siim 2018; Sauer 2018). One cross-­cutting issue is how activists (and groups) deal with (intersectional) inequalities, such as religion, nationality, gender and sexuality, and how an awareness, or lack thereof, of inequalities in these encounters may influence relations between and within activists/supporters and refugee groups (2019). Our data builds on interviews and fieldwork done during an earlier European comparative project9 in which we studied different forms of pro-migrant activism in Denmark (Siim and Meret 2018: 43–44). These data were updated with a few new interviews, observations and documents. This material can hopefully contribute to casting light on the

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politics, acts and practices of pro-migrant solidarity in the post-2015 “refugee crisis” context, particularly in the Copenhagen metropolitan district. Trampoline House is a community center for asylum seekers, refugees and citizens based in the Copenhagen district of Nørrebro, one of the most multiethnic and multicultural neighbors in the Danish metropolis.10 Through a series of interviews conducted with the founders of Trampoline House in 2015, 2016 and 2019, we analyze Trampoline House’s evolution, framings, strategies, repertoires and organization. The house’s civic engagement and specific forms of solidarity work are illustrated by women’s and LGBTQ group initiatives, as well as by the recent political struggle of The Movement for the Future of Asylum Children,11 which produced the Citizens’ Proposal for the Future of Asylum Children.12 The two initiatives address the conditions of young asylum seekers living in the Sjælsmark “deportation center,”13 located on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Finally, we discuss the potential of “political intersectionality” to understand relations of power/empowerment and inclusionary and exclusionary practices between artists/activists and refugees.

Trampoline House as a Solidarity Art Project The Beginnings Trampoline House is a pro-refugee organization founded in 2010. It is currently based in a building in Nørrebro, one of Copenhagen’s most multiethnic and diverse neighborhood. The activities and initiatives of the house have become increasingly known and appreciated over the years, including outside of Denmark. The initial steps to start a community project developed from a series of workshops organized in 2008 under the label of “Asylum Dialogue Tank” (ADT). The first ADT workshops took place at the Royal Danish Academy, at the asylum center Kongelunden14 and the asylum center, Sandholm. The workshops’ initiators were visual artists Joachim Hamou and Morten Goll, and curator, Tone Olaf Nielsen. The latter two would become the main driving forces behind the Trampoline House project. Morten Goll recollects the beginnings this way: Trampoline House is a project that started back in 2008 […] when I invited two other artists to organize a workshop. The workshop was meant to be about how the situation for asylum seekers in Denmark could be improved. Back then conditions for asylum seekers were very harsh, and they still are.

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But we, as artists, were upset about how many people were talking about how terrible the situation was without doing anything about it. So we put up this workshop at Center Kongelunden and Center Sandholm. We invited some asylum seekers and some young Danish artists. In the first workshop there were twenty-one people, who discussed what was wrong with living in asylum centers. When they had finished discussing this isssue, we asked them what we could do about it. That is to say, not what someone ought to do, but what we, as the very people sitting together [there], were actually willing to commit to doing. This process concluded with the decision to create Trampoline House. (Interview with Morten Goll, Copenhagen, 17 June 2016)

The activities promoted by the ADT group became a stepping stone to test and later realize what today constitutes the backbone of the house in terms of its programs and activities, such as language classes, free legal and medical counseling, discussions and reading seminars, get-together parties and the women’s club. The ADT group gathered about 40–55 people, which included asylum seekers, art and architecture students and other interested participants. What initially triggered a group of artists to organize this was the political situation in Denmark and the tightening of asylum and migration policies. ADT critically and directly addressed issues about the racism behind the Danish asylum system (Interview with Tone Olaf Nielsen, Copenhagen, 27 January 2015), the isolation in the camps, the asylum seekers living in limbo and the impact that the implementation of various legal restrictions and regulations had on the lives of people living inside and outside the asylum system. Some of the workshops resulted in a series of collaborative videos between Danish artists and asylum seekers. Some of these can still be viewed on YouTube. The videos were among the first visual products created by ADT and aimed at raising awareness within the Danish public about the structural differences and socioeconomic inequalities experienced by asylum seekers and refugees in comparison with Danish natives. As formulated in a document of that period: “The intention was to create a reversed space of exception to the camp’s space of exception: a reversed space in which asylum seekers would temporarily be re-equipped with their basic civil rights that they are deprived of in the camps.”15 The activities would encourage “the meeting between Danes and asylum seekers,” showing to integration authorities that a “non-profit, user-driven cultural space could function,” as well as promote “integration, learning, and an

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exchange of knowledge, creating networks and mutual respect,”16 and could supply services to asylum seekers that were increasingly becoming unavailable or difficult for them to access.  icrocosm Trampoline House M The main idea emerging from the ADT was thus to create a “safe” space, where asylum seekers would feel welcome and involved in the house’s daily activities, such as cooking together (see Fig.  2.1), under the same premises and conditions as the ones applying to other visitors and members of the house. This would be beneficial to asylum seekers and to their knowledge and understanding of how Danish society works. At the same time, this space would be an occasion for Danish citizens at the House to interact and learn from asylum seekers and refugees. As Tone Olaf Nielsen remarks in an interview: When we established Trampoline House our first concern was how to get [asylum seekers] out of the camps [the asylum centers] and into the house.

Fig. 2.1  Photo of women cooking together in the communal kitchen at Trampoline House by Kajsa Böttcher Messell

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We did, and still do this by offering them three-months of practical training, and when they fulfill the contract, we reimburse their transportation costs, that permitted them to visit the house at least two times per week. … We try to find practical training, aimed at building people’s capacities and resources. We strive to facilitate a platform where we can actually exchange knowledge and learn from one another. At the same time, [the asylum seekers and refugees] can make use of all of the other activities: they receive legal counseling, meet the voluntary doctors who visit us once a week … besides making friends and relationships … which is not such an easy task when living in the isolation of the camps. But the house is also for ethnic Danes, and international students who are interested in immigration issues, and it is important that they too feel at home. (Interview with Tone Olaf Nielsen, Copenhagen, 27 January 2015)

Tone Olaf Nielsen refers to three main objectives behind the Trampoline House project. The first is to attempt “to reach out to those people living in isolation in the camps” and to give them tools that can help them with “navigating and making decisions concerning their lives that can improve their conditions.” The second objective is to inform the public in Denmark about the “living conditions in the camps,” in an attempt to mobilize people in favor of closing the camps and establishing an alternative and more humane approach to the asylum system. The third objective refers to Trampoline House’s task of supporting refugees “along the arduous pattern established by the integration process” (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 27 January 2015). This, according to Tone Olaf Nielsen, requires developing concrete skills in Danish language proficiency and specific knowledge about labor market culture, the culture and political objectives of municipal job centers, the Danish tax system and other such issues. The three main objectives are considered interrelated and play out in the activities targeting all Trampoline House users. During interviews and conversations (2015–2019) with Trampoline House staff and focus group interviews with some of the users, it emerged that the project of creating Trampoline House in 2010 was prompted by at least two main motives: first, offering asylum seekers and refugees the practical tools and knowledge of how to deal with isolation in the asylum centers and integration within Danish society; and second, creating an alternative space in which to critically address and develop forms of societal and cultural resistance to an “outside” that is increasingly perceived as being a politically hostile, unequal and discriminatory environment.

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The tension between the “inside” and the “outside” of Trampoline House emerged several times and was highlighted even further in our recent interviews. One version of experiencing this tension is in the portrayal of Trampoline House as a homey, safe and physically welcoming place, where refugees, notwithstanding their status, can relax and feel that they belong as an integral part of the house. The interiors of the house play a significant role in creating a space for all and are well-thought-out. Being part of a larger and ongoing artistic project (see section below), the physical environment of Trampoline House needs to create the homey feeling of safety, intimacy and comfort, but in respect of the many different subjectivities and identities living in the house. As Tone Olaf Nielsen observes: The reason why Trampoline House looks like it does—you see, such an esthetically eclectic and a little worn-out in style, but also very cozy and welcoming—is because we wanted to avoid newcomers experiencing a space which is 100% designed … thus, it’s on purpose that we have [put together] a sofa from Iran and lamps from Ikea, with random stuff donated to the house. A person who arrives at the house should be able to find something she or he feels a personal attachment to (while) at the same time finding something completely foreign … the esthetics shape the rule of the game for the social interactions [within the house]. This is something that we have brought with us from our background [as artists]. (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 27 January 2015)

Trampoline House, thus, tries to re-create spatially and physically a room for co-existing diversities and interactions, those same conditions that the users would like to see reproduced in the society outside. The house’s interior is what at the same time reassures and destabilizes Trampoline House users, proposing a model for bringing together assorted designs, furniture and artifacts all within the same space/place. This aims to mirror the diversity of backgrounds, faiths, political identification and worldviews of the users, but also the prospect of finding shared positions among this diversity. At the same time, the house is described as the place where natives are reminded of, and made aware of, their privileged status and condition, thus being “re-programmed” and “re-formatted” from the “outside of the house,” which is seen as increasingly imbued with discrimination and racism. As expressed by Tone Olaf Nielsen:

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I am at Trampoline House [also] for my own sake … [it is a place] where I can get rid of my white privilege. If I were only to be out there –as I use to say, surrounded by Danes with CPR numbers,17 full-time jobs, children and private property, these inequalities would be invisible to me and the racist side of me would flourish. The house is where I get re-programmed on a daily basis, where I am reminded of my white privilege and prompted to realize why I have it and at the expenses of whom. And I am here because of racism and discrimination in society and because Western refugee and migration politics are amongst the world’s biggest problems, besides climate change. (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 27 January 2015)

The inside/outside opposition draws the picture of Trampoline House as a microcosm of diversity and a potential meeting place and space for coexistence, dialogue and activism. The House thus comes to represent a “good example,” creating a “positive model” that can eventually be applied to the outside (Interview with Morten Goll, Copenhagen, 17 June 2016). Trampoline House’s daily calendar is packed with activities (see Fig. 2.2) developed to stimulate and promote processes of active citizenship, democratic learning and participation. This is interpreted as an alternative reality in opposition to the outside world, where inequality and diversity (embodied in the refugees) are made invisible to the majority. At the same time, our interviews disclose a clear awareness of the House as a project that cannot “stand alone.” To play a role and to continue to exist, the house needs to interact with the private and public actors in society. Morten Goll underlines Trampoline House’s potential in this direction, developing it as a possible counseling and business partner to private and public organizations working on asylum questions and refugee integration. While in the past Trampoline House was supported with public funding, since 2015–2016 its activities are increasingly dependent on funding grants from project applications and on private donations. This has made the house subject to greater economic insecurity in the long-­ term perspective, a reality that has prompted the need to find new strategies to help financially secure its future. This has influenced Trampoline House’s relationship with the “outside” when it comes to the development of opportunities and conditions. For instance, solidarity projects have been targeting specifically refugees with legal status, rather than rejected asylum seekers or those waiting for a decision regarding their refugee claim (and the numbers of the latter two groups have been constantly decreasing, particularly in the Copenhagen area). These conditions

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Fig. 2.2  Photo of Trampoline House’s daily calendar by Kajsa Böttcher Messell

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might negatively impact and accentuate the differences among the users of Trampoline House, giving greater importance to people’s legal status. Trampoline House as a Permanent Art Project In 2015, curators Tone Olaf Nielsen and Frederikke Hansen founded the Center for Art and Migration Politics (CAMP), with an exhibition space hosted within Trampoline House. The center’s name openly refers to “the refugee camp, the asylum center, and the detention center.”18 Since 2015, and with the support of several funding organizations and groups, CAMP has organized about ten art exhibitions.19 The main purpose is first, to use art to “increase insight into the life situations of displaced and migrant persons, and to … discuss factors that cause displacement and migration” and second, to stimulate “new visions for a more inclusive and equitable migration, refugee, and asylum policy” (Trampoline House, n.d). The CAMP summarizes the encounter between art and political action and still unambiguously articulates and communicates the critical reaction to mainstream migration and asylum politics, which triggered the launching of the House project in 2010. This approach attempts to use arts and culture to communicate and to display processes of discrimination, exploitation, racism, privilege and abuse of power. As Tone Olaf Nielsen formulates it: CAMP … contributes to shaping social and political change through artistic and curatorial practices. It is something we literally grasp. Trampoline House has attempted to create a physical space where the rules of the game for interaction are different. This is what we have created as a space today, and we strive daily to make it a space of equality, despite our unequal situations, our unequal opportunities. A space that can negotiate differences across religious, ethnic backgrounds, political beliefs and legal status. A space that, in one way or another, is able to mobilize the desire to create coherence, despite our differences. Because there are really very different people in the Trampoline House … people from all parts of the political specter, LGBTQ people, as well as homophobes, anti-racists, as well as racists. There are people of the precariat20 as well as of extreme privilege … there are people with these differences of one kind or another that meet on a daily basis, and … which the house, as a social space and platform, needs to find ways to negotiate. (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 8 February 2019)

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The House project strives to create and promote equal relations and solidarity in the interactions taking place within the House. It does so by incorporating reflections and practices about how space and place directly affect these relationships, and by encouraging dialogue instead of antagonism, conflict and barriers. This approach is reflected in the idea of the House as a “permanent art project.” As Tone Olaf Nielsen explains this, “Trampoline House is an art project which demonstrates that artists can create a common space for people of privilege and people of the extreme precariat. A space where these groups feel equally worthy [in the house]. It is an art project. And it is a permanent art project” (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 8 February 2019).  rts and Asylum Politics A This professional and artistic investment in the house’s activities and surroundings permeates many of the initiatives and actions run by Trampoline House. A recent example of this was an initiative undertaken by citizens in support of the children living in the Sjælsmark deportation center. This initiative aims at informing and mobilizing public opinion about the situation and conditions for the approximately 130 children living with their families at Sjælsmark. Sjælsmark is one of the two centers for rejected asylum seekers established recently (the other being Kærshovedgaard). Originally built as a military facility, the Sjælsmark deportation center currently hosts up to 400 people, mostly families with children. It is run by the Danish Prison and Probation Service (Kriminalforsorgen), which means that visitors need a formal invitation and that ID-control is required in order to enter the center. Most of the children are not allowed to attend public schools; they attend a facility run by the Red Cross instead. A cafeteria provides food, and residents are not allowed to store or cook their own meals in the rooms. Following the growing concerns for the physical and emotional health of the children, expressed by their parents and also triggered by the public protests against the situation in Sjælsmark, Trampoline House, along with other migrant solidarity groups and organizations, started a campaign for the children of Sjælsmark. This encompassed several initiatives, including street-level demonstration, mobilizations through social and traditional media and the launching of a citizen-initiated proposal in December 2018 aimed at changing the law (Folketinget 2018). The proposal reached the 50,000 signatures needed to enable it to be discussed in Parliament. For Trampoline House, this is an example of an initiative emerging from a

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process of participatory practice and democratic deliberation.21 Furthermore, these endeavors to mobilize the public require a similar commitment and the types of skills necessary for devising, organizing and promoting an art exhibition. This approach suggests a somewhat different way of understanding (and translating) solidarity and activism, one that is not limited by pre-existing definitions of political activism, such as those designed by militant left/right activism. Instead, it is aimed at, and strives to overcome, differences by creating alternative understandings and communicative practices through collaborative projects involving diverse groups of people engaged in music, culture and the arts. However, the art projects also require mediators, who devise the planning and exhibition of procedures and spaces. The inherent risk lies in investing only in one project at a time, without considering the projects’ long-term impacts. There are also the risks of co-optation and the delegitimizing of the initial democratic deliberation process (Doerr 2019).

Closing Reflections In this chapter we suggest that an intersectional approach can provide a fruitful theoretical frame for combining different approaches drawing upon citizenship and social movement theory. When applied to critical citizenship studies, an intersectional approach helps to develop an understanding of political relations and gives a concrete angle from which to analyze the politics and practices of solidarity triggered from below by civil society. It also enables a focus on processes of empowerment/disempowerment within civil society, across conditions of inequality and difference, existing also amongst marginalized social groups. Finally, intersectionality can be a useful point of departure for developing strategies that can bridge inequalities and differences among social and identity groups, such as among national and religious groups, ethnic, gender and sexual minorities. Our empirical analysis confirms the overall negative impacts that the increasingly restrictive Danish immigration and asylum policies have had on the daily lives of refugees such as, for example, growing poverty and denial of the basic right to family reunification. The case study of Trampoline House illustrates the potentials of solidarity practices to change the daily lives of the users of the house and to unsettle Danish “natives’” self-understanding in a context of increasing diversity, by creating a space for daily activities, encounters and dialogue that feels “like home,” but where differences are made visible rather than concealed.

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Finally, our study has identified the potentials of everyday activism for creating networks on a local scale and collaboration across refugees and migrant organizations in the Copenhagen area together with other groups and organizations around concrete issues, such as the citizens’ initiative for the Sjælsmark children. The practices of CAMP, the Center for Art on Migration Politics, organized by artists/activists from Trampoline House, particularly illustrates the unsettling and disruptive role that culture and arts can play in creating understandings of and between unequal and diverse social, ethnic, racial and religious groups. The analysis also points toward the possible limitations of the House’s practices of solidarity for empowering refugees and asylum seekers. It illustrates that, despite the strategies developed for facing racism, sexism and homophobia “head-on,” these have not been eradicated from and within the house, which is also influenced by the increasingly difficult situation for refugees and asylum seekers in society. This confirms the point that the fight against racism is a never-ending process that needs de-programming of both newcomers/guests and natives/hosts as well as re-programming strategies at all levels, and not only within Trampoline House. A recent example of the politics and practices of solidarity is the launching of the Peoples’ Movement and of the Citizens’ Initiative in support of the children of Sjælsmark. These were carried out in collaboration with several other groups, organizations and individual citizens. The chapter has used the case of asylum children to explore the dilemmas of solidarity politics and practices in action, since it illustrates both the potentials of creating alliances across civil society organizations and social and identity groups, as well as the limitations of changing Danish immigration politics in the current political context. On the one hand, the case has proved to be successful in mobilizing ordinary citizens and civil society organizations for the practice of solidarity with asylum seekers. On the other hand, it illustrates the limits of a “politics of solidarity” in the present Danish context, since many citizens still interpret the migration issue as “too politicized,” “divisive” and “controversial” to build alliances across social and political groups that can radically change the approach to migration politics.22 This contrasts with issues such as LGBTQ rights, which in the Danish context has had the potential to influence politics by creating broader cross-political alliances (Siim and Meret 2018). It is worth noticing that many activists often refer to a gap between the local mobilization of practical solidarity in support of the equal rights of

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migrants and asylum seekers and the restrictive immigration system. The Trampoline House activists remain moderately optimistic in terms of their ability to mobilize people; however, and despite the overall political developments toward a more restrictive immigration/integration policies labeled as the new “paradigmatic shift,” the Citizens’ Initiative for Asylum Children’s Future managed to reach the 50,000 signatures required to be included on the parliamentary political agenda. This achievement might counterbalance pessimism about the opportunities for political change in migration politics. Arguably, the political developments since 2001 have created a lack of trust between civil society activists and political institutions, which explains why activists express little hope that a political shift in government can or will change migration and asylum policies in the desired direction. However, the last parliamentary elections, held on 5 June 2019, brought a new government to power23 and, at the same time, the results revealed that support for the Danish People’s Party fell by more than half (Folketinget 2019). It is too early to evaluate the effects of the recent political changes for future immigration policies. There is still a gap between the support for acts of solidarity by some ordinary citizens and practiced by civil society projects such as Trampoline House and the reality of Danish parliamentary politics and public opinion. Many obstacles still exist for an increase of political support to pro-migrant solidarity politics, which is also strong enough to obtain radical changes in migration policies. Yet, there is a potential that local cultural and artistic platforms will be given better opportunities and conditions to encourage understandings and dialogue across differences and diversities in society.

Notes 1. The term “irregularized migrants” refers to migrants and asylum seekers who move in an irregular fashion. As Koser (2007: 54) explains: “The reason that increasing numbers of migrants are moving in an irregular rather than legal way is mainly because of increasing restrictions on legal movements, mostly in destination countries.” This term is preferable to the term “illegal” migrant because, as Koser (2007: 55) explains, “defining people as ‘illegal’ denies their humanity: a human being cannot be illegal. It can easily be forgotten that migrants are people and they have rights whatever their legal status.” The term “irregular” also challenges the criminalization of these migrants, and draws attention to the institutional and

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political processes through which the mobility of certain people is criminalized. As Koser (2007: 55) again notes “most irregular migrants are not criminals, although by definition most have breached administrative rules and regulations.” The term includes people who may have entered a country without government authorization or with fraudulent or missing documents, as well as those who have entered legally but have stayed after a visa, residency permit or work permit has expired. It also includes those who may be bona fide refugees seeking asylum but who are unable to receive third-country resettlement through the international refugee system or unable to access a third country’s territory where they can then make a claim to asylum. This is the case in which many Syrians find themselves unable to access the territory of European countries, where they would then be able to make asylum claims. 2. Brochmann and Hagelund’s (2012) study shows that, historically, the Scandinavian countries have developed a particular type of welfare nationalism, which since the 1960s links national issues, democracy and gender rights in the construction of national belonging and identity. The Danish historian, Ove Korsgaard (2004) notes that since the 1930s the governing Danish Social Democracy redefined the people of the nation by linking the homeland they occupy to the people’s struggle for democracy and social welfare. 3. Founded in 1995, the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) describes itself as a party with “a strong focus on welfare for Danish citizens, immigration, national culture, security and independence (including opposition to the EU)” (https://dipd.dk/en/the-danish-peoples-party-danskfolkeparti/). In 1998, the party held just 7.4 of the votes in the national elections but, starting in 2001, it increased its power, supporting the Liberal Party (Venstre) and new center-right government until 2011, when a new multiparty center-left government came to power, led by the Social Democrats (Bosch and Gorm Hansen 2019). In the 2015 national elections, with the Liberal Party once again coming to power, the Danish People’s Party once again claimed a strong showing, winning 21% of the vote, in part because of its stance toward Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and Denmark (Bosch and Gorm Hansen 2019). 4. The Human Rights Convention declares that refugees must have the same rights and possibilities as Danish citizens, while the European Court for Human Rights declares that it is not allowed to discriminate on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, religion, age and so on. So too, the Children’s Convention declares that all children must be protected against discrimination and the Women’s Convention declares that women must be protected against discrimination (Bendixen 2019).

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5. In 2016 the previous Liberal-led minority cabinet government, with the support of the Danish People’s Party and the Social Democratic Party, approved the measure to temporarily turn down refugees from UNHCR camps, part of the UN’s quota system, for resettlement. The motivation given was a need for “breathing space” in order to manage refugees already living in the country. This measure was authorized until the Social Democratic Party-led government decided to revoke it in July 2019 (Scanpix 2019). 6. http://www.sosracisme.dk/?Om_os. Accessed 29 September 2019. 7. https://www.facebook.com/refugeeswelcomedenmark. Accessed 29 September 2019. 8. The Friendly Neighbours [Venligboerne, VB] founded in 2014 is an illustrative example of a successful mobilization of citizens in  local groups across the country since 2015 (Fenger-Grøndal 2016: 101–104). 9. The RAGE-project: “Hate speech and Populist Othering through the Racism, Age and Gender Looking Glass” (2013–2015) was based on comparative case studies of seven European countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and the UK, and included a common interview guide for the case studies of these countries (cf. Lazaridis et  al. 2016; Lazaridis and Campani 2017; Pajnik and Sauer 2017; Siim et al. 2018). 10. https://www.trampolinehouse.dk/. Accessed 29 September 2019. 11. https://www.asylboernsfremtid.dk/. Accessed 29 September 2019. 12. https://www.asylboernsfremtid.dk/borgerforslag. Accessed 29 September 2019. 13. h t t p s : / / w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / R e j e c t e d - s o u l s - o f - D e n m a r k E u r ope-222564811413741/. Accessed 29 September 2019. 14. This camp at the outskirts of Copenhagen was driven by the Red Cross. It was closed by the government in 2017. 15. See at https://selinihalvadaki.net/trampoline-house, 17 April 2019. Accessed 29 September 2019. 16. See at https://selinihalvadaki.net/trampoline-house, 17 April 2019. Accessed 29 September 2019. 17. All residents of Denmark are required to have a CPR or ten-digit personal identification number connecting a person to the Danish Civil Registration System (Det Centrale Personregister). The first six digits indicate a person’s birthdate followed by a four-digit unique identification number. The CPR is required in order to access social and other services such as opening a bank account or obtaining a Danish phone number (Internationalcommunity.dk—see https://internationalcommunity.dk/ en-US/Your-guide-to-DK/Coming-to-Denmark/CPR-Number). 18. http://campcph.org/about-camp. Accessed 30 April 2019.

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19. CAMP also organized a few out-of-TH exhibitions. See here: http:// campcph.org/past Accessed 29 September 2019. 20. The “precariat” is a term coined by Guy Standing (2011), and it refers to a social class or income group that has been replacing the proletariat (the mass working class) in the twenty-first century. Members of the precariat generally struggle with unstable labor and income, a lack of access to non-­ wage benefits and that have limited to no rights. 21. As Tone O. Nelsen remarks: “the citizens’ movement started because there were more and more families coming [to Trampoline House] and saying that the living conditions [at Sjælsmark] were unbearable and the children were getting sick. And instead we kept on discussing the issue, we feel it is Trampoline House’s role to say: ok, and how can we together make people understand this is a problem and mobilize the public opinion around this? This is how, together with the concerned families of the children and a long list of children’s right organizations, we gave rise to the people’s movement for the future of children asylum seekers” (Interview with Tone O. Nielsen, 2 February 2019). 22. One example is the acute conflict between hospitality and political dissent and political protest against the restrictive migration/integration policies that took place between local groups of the Friendly Neighbors/Kind Citizens (Venligeboerne). After a few hectic media debates between two local Facebook groups, in Hjørring and Copenhagen, the 150 local groups agreed to accept the three values of friendship, curiosity and respect for diversity and local autonomy in the implementation of these visions (Fenger-­Grøndal 2016). 23. This resulted in the change of government from the Liberal-led to a Social Democratic minority cabinet government, supported by three small leftwing parties. In their agreement paper the parties suggest new political aims and goals including welfare guarantees, environmental policies and an immigration policy that supports integration (Valg 2019).

References Agustin, O. G., & Bak Jørgensen, M. (Eds.). (2016). Solidarity Without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances. London: Pluto Press. Arendt, H. (1951). The Origin of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2017). Living with Others: Fostering Radical Cosmopolitanism Through Citizenship Politics in Berlin. Ethics and Global Politics, 10(1), 98–116.

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Baubäck, R. (2006). Who Are the Citizens of Europe? Eurozine. Retrieved September 24, 2019, from http://www.eurozine.com/ who-are-the-citizens-of-europe/. Bendixen, C.  M. (2019, February 11). Den Massive Danske Discrimination, Politiken. Retrieved September 29, 2019.http://refugees.dk/fokus/2019/ februar/den-massive-danske-diskrimination/. Bosch, R., & Gorm Hansen, C. (2019, December 16). The Ghost of the Danish People’s Party. Rosa Luxenburg Stiftung. Brussels Office. Posts. Retrieved March 31, 2020, from https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1561.the-ghostof-the-danish-people-s-party.html. Brochmann, G. (2021). From Bounded Universalism to the Trial of Internationalization: Migration and Social Democracy in Scandinavia. In N. Brandal, Ø. Bratberg, and D. E. Thorsen (Eds.), Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Comparative Social Research, vol. 35, pp. 197–224. Brochmann, G., & Hagelund, A. (2012). Immigration Policies and the Scandinavian Welfare States 1945–2010. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), 139–167. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1242–1299. Dean, J. (1996). Solidarity of Strangers: Feminism after Identity Politics. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. della Porta, D. (2013). Can Democracy be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social, Movements. Cambridge: Polity Press. della Porta, D. (2015). Social Movements in Times of Austerity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Derrida, J. (2006). The Politics of Friendship. London: Verso. Doerr, N. (2019). Activists as Political Translators? Addressing Structural Inequality, Gender and Positional Misunderstandings in Refugee Solidarity Coalitions. In J. Irvine, S. Lang, & C. Montoya (Eds.), Gendered Mobilizations in an Expanded Europe (pp. 189–207). London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield. Fenger-Grøndal, M. (2016). Venligboerne—historien om en bevægelse [The Friendly Neigbours—The Story of a Movement]. København: Bibelselskabets Forlag. Ferree, M. M. (2008). Framing Equality: The Politics of Race, Class and Gender in the US, Germany, and the Expanding European Union. In S. Roth (Ed.), Gender Issues and Women’s Movement in the Enlarged European Union (pp. 86–104). Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books. Folketinget. (2018). Afviste asylbørn skal tildeles bedre vilkår i hjem- og udrejsecentre og midlertidig opholdstilladelse senest 18 mdr. efter endeligt afslag. Retrieved April 30, 2019, from https://www.borgerforslag.dk/ se-og-stoet-forslag/?Id=FT-02060.

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Folketinget. (2019). Results of the Danish Election. Retrieved September 12, 2019, from https://www.thedanishparliament.dk/en/news/2019/06/ election-result. Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. London: Verso. Glick-Schiller, N. (2018). Theorizing About and Beyond National Processes. In J. E. Fossum, R. Kastoryano, & B. Siim (Eds.), Diversity and Contestations over Nationalism in Europe and Canada (pp. 31–62). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hartman, H. (1979). The Unhappy Marriage between Marxism and Feminism. Capital and Class, 3, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/030981687900800102. Inland. (2017). Amnesty: Absurd grund bag stop for kvoteflygtninge. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://jyllandsposten.dk/indland/ECE9972969/ amnesty-absurd-grund-bag-stop-forkvoteflygtninge/. Isin, E. (2009). Citizenship in the Flux. Subjectivity, 29, 367–388. https://doi. org/10.1057/sub.2009.25. Isin, E. (2012). Citizens without Frontiers. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. Isin, E., & Nielsen, M.  G. (2008). Acts of Citizenship. London/New York: Zed Books. Isin, E., & Turner, B. (2007). Investigating Citizenship: An Agenda for Citizenship Studies. Citizenship Studies, 11(1), 5–17. Korsgaard, O. (2004). Kampen om folket. Et dannelsesperspektiv på folkets historie I 500 år [The Struggle about the People]. Copenhagen, Denmark: Gyldendal. Koser, K. (2007). International Migration: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Krizsan, A., & Siim, B. (2018). Gender Equality and Family in European Populist Radical-Right Agendas: – European Parliamentary Debates 2014. In T. Knijn & M. Naldino (Eds.), Gender and Generational Division in EU Citizenship (pp. 39–59). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kymlicka, W. (2015). Solidarity in Diverse Societies: Beyond Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Welfare Chauvinism. Comparative Migration Studies, 3(17), 1–19. Retrieved from https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s40878-015-0017-4. Lazaridis, G., & Campani, G. (Eds.). (2017). Understanding the Populist Shift: Othering in a Europe in Crisis. Milton Keynes: Routledge. Lazaridis, G., Campani, G., & Beneviste, A. (Eds.). (2016). The Rise of the Far Right in Europe: Populist Shifts and ‘Othering’. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lister, R. (1997/2003). Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (2nd ed.). Hong Kong: Macmillan International Higher Education. Meret, S., & Gregersen, A. B. (2019). Islam as a Floating Signifier. Right-Wing Populism and the Role of Islam in Denmark. In Brookings. Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.brookings.edu/research/islam-as-a-floatingsignifier-right-wing-populism-and-perceptions-of-muslims-in-denmark/.

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Meret, S., & Siim, B. (2013). Gender, Populism and Politics of Belonging: Discourses of Rightwing Populist Parties in Denmark, Norway and Austria. In B. Siim & M. Mokre (Eds.), Negotiating Gender and Diversity in an Emerging European Public Sphere (pp. 78–96). Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. Mokre, M., & Siim, B. (2018). Negotiating Equality and Diversity: Transnational Challenges to European Citizenship. In J. E. Fossum, R. Kastoryano, & B. Siim (Eds.), Diversity and Contestations over Nationalism in Europe and Canada (pp. 187–210). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Monforte, P., & Dufour, P. (2013). Comparing the Protests of Undocumented Migrants Beyond Contexts: Collective Actions as Acts of Emancipation. European Political Science Review, 5(1), 83–104. Pajnik, M., & Sauer, B. (Eds.). (2017). Populism and the Web: Communicative Practices of Parties and Movements in Europe. London/New York: Routledge. Sauer, B. (2018). The (im)possibility of Creating Counter-Hegemony against the Radical Right: The case of Austria. In B. Siim, A. Krastevan & A. Saarinen (Eds.), Citizens’ Activism and Solidarity Movements in Contemporary Europe: Contending with Populism (pp. 111–136). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave/ Macmillan. Sauer, B., & Siim, B. (2019). Inclusive Political Intersections of Migration, Race, Gender and Sexuality—the Cases of Austria and Denmark, NORA—Nordic. Journal of Gender and Feminist Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803874 0.2019.1681510 Scanpix, R. (2019, July 30) We’ll Take Quota Refugees: Denmark to UN. The Local. Retrieved September 8, 2019, from https://www.thelocal. dk/20190730/well-take-quota-refugees-denmark-to-un. Siim, B., & Borchorst, A. (2017). Gendering European Welfare States and Citizenship: Revisioning Inequalities. In P.  Kennett & N.  Lendvai-Benton (Eds.), Handbook of European Social Policy (pp.  99–127). North Hampton: Edward Elgar. Siim, B., & Meret, S. (2016). Right-Wing Populism in Denmark: People, Nation and Welfare in the Construction of the ‘Other’. In G. Lazarides, A. Benveniste, & G. Campani (Eds.), The Rise of the Far Right: Populist Shifts and Othering (pp. 109–136). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Siim, B., & Meret, S. (2018). Dilemmas of Citizenship and Evolving Civic Activism in Denmark. In B. Siim, A. Krasteva, & A. Saarinen (Eds.), Citizens’ Activism and Solidarity Movements in Contemporary Europe: Contending with Populism (pp. 25–50). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Siim, B., & Meret, S. (2020). Patterms of Reflective Solidarity and Migrant Resistance in Copenhagen and Berlin. Critical Sociology, 1–15: https://doi. org/10.1177/0896920520944517

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Siim, B., Saarinen, A., & Krasteva, A. (Eds.). (2018). Citizens’ Activism and Solidarity Movements: Contending with Populism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Standing, G. (2011). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Valg. (2019). Læs hele aftalen, der gør Mette Frederiksen til statsminister. Retrieved September 12, 2019, from https://nyheder.tv2.dk/ politik/2019-06-26-laes-hele-aftalen-der-goer-mette-frederiksen-tilstatsminister. Venligboerne. (2019). About Venligboerne. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from http://venligboerne.dk/. Widfeldt, A. (2015). Extreme Right Parties in Scandinavia. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Wimmer, A., & Glick-Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–304. Wodak, R. (2015). Politics of Fear: What Right Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London, UK: Sage Publishing. Yilmaz, F. (2016). How the Workers Became Muslims: Immigration, Culture, and Hegemonic Transformation in Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (2007). Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging. Critical Review of International, Social and Political Philosophy, 10(4), 561–574. Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London, UK: Sage Publishing.

CHAPTER 3

The Unintended Effects of Conviviality: How Welcome Initiatives in Germany Push Back Hostility Toward Refugees Ulrike Hamann

Introduction While transnational migration is increasingly accepted as a fact and even a constitutive condition of contemporary societies, right-wing populist movements in many European countries are attempting to reinstate a culture of racism and demanding the closure of borders. They imagine a pre-­ migration society with a national body that is portrayed as being inherently white, Christian and native born. From such a perspective, the only imaginable form of solidarity is one based on nationalism, but this is just one of the many possible answers to the seemingly new situation of greater diversity in societies (Baban and Rygiel 2017). At the same time, however, many other actors are committed to developing the idea of an open society. Germany’s “welcome culture”

U. Hamann (*) Institute for Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_3

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(Karakayali and Kleist 2016) is an effort in line with this idea. It emerged in the context of the 2015 “long summer of migration” (Kasparek and Speer 2015) in cities and small towns of Germany, where neighbors organized and formed initiatives to welcome and open up their communities to newcomers. Here, the volunteers and refugees are part of a process of “transforming relations within the city as a networked and contested space of immigration policy” (Mayer 2018: 232). This chapter addresses the attitudes, conditions and motives that are present and developed in cities and small towns that welcome refugees. It argues that actors who adopt convivial attitudes produce a culture that is more open to living with others, including newcomers. This chapter is based on empirical material collected as part of two research projects based in different communities across Germany. Conducted in 2016, the projects examined volunteer initiatives aimed at welcoming refugees. The research involved qualitative interviews, with data analyzed using Mayring and a computer-based coding method. The first project, based on interviews with coordinators of volunteers for refugees located in 17 German cities, examined how the initiatives were structured and the challenges they faced (Hamann et al. 2016). The second project focused on the initiatives’ motives and social composition. Here, research was based on eight focus groups and 14 semi-structured single interviews with members of 12 initiatives from 11 different towns in Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony (Hamann et al. 2017).

The Emergence of Welcome Culture in German Cities and Towns A culture of welcoming refugees in German cities and towns gained momentum starting in 2015. This movement established a structural, discursive and organizational shift within society. For the first time in its history, German society became internationally known as being open to migration and friendly toward people in distress. The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees the BAMF (the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge) declared in August 2015 that Germany would refrain from adhering to the Dublin Regulation for Syrian refugees (i.e. sending them back to the EU country where they had first applied for asylum). Following this announcement, thousands of people traveled from Hungary to Austria and Germany by train, on foot and by bus. They were temporarily left to move freely, unhindered by police forces

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(Kasparek and Speer 2015). Starting in summer 2015, or what has been called the “long summer of migration” (Kasparek and Speer 2015), even critical migration scholars were surprised by the intermittent political acknowledgment of the “autonomy of migration”1 (Moulier Boutang 1998; Papadopoulos and Tsianos 2013; Mezzadra 2010; De Genova 2017), when the German chancellor hesitated to close the borders and, instead, asked the people of Germany to support the arrival of refugees.2 In doing so, she was motivated by the strong wish of the people on the move to reach a safe place in Germany, as well as by the emergence of spontaneous acts of solidarity demonstrated by German citizens, who went to the stations to support the basic needs of those on the move. During this time, public debate also emerged within German society noting the lack of institutional support in the towns and cities receiving newcomers, places that were unable to offer sufficient shelter, medical aid and basic administrational registration for those who had to flee their countries and wanted to stay in Germany. This was, in part, the result of a long period of neoliberal restructuring of not only the welfare state but also local administrations (Dowling et al. 2016), which produced a situation of “austerity urbanism” (Peck 2012), under which it became extremely difficult for refugees to leave camps and reception centers and to find housing (Soederberg 2018). In late August 2015, chancellor Merkel made the now well-known proclamation, “We can do this” (Hildebrandt and Ulrich 2015). This statement acknowledged the federal and local difficulties in providing accommodation as well as communal support for newly arriving refugees. It similarly addressed the willingness of German citizens to support refugees in situations when the state was unable to do so. During 2015 less than one million refugees applied for asylum in Germany.3 In 2015, emerging in and around the camps and reception centers, and at the train and bus stations and federal buildings, the so-called “welcome culture” emerged. This was a citizen-led, spontaneous movement of support for refugees. Independent from any organized bodies, such as non-­ governmental organizations (NGOs) or other civil society organizations, people came together and built groups, networks, initiatives and structures that were able to organize, in the most flexible way, an infrastructure of support for the newly arriving people who had survived a route of forced migration. They initially brought food, clothing and medical aid and organized shifts to address the changing situations at railway stations and registration authorities, most infamously the Berlin Landesamt für

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Gesundheit und Soziales (LAGESO) (the Berlin Authority for Health and Social Issues), the authority responsible for refugee registration. Most of these structures were spontaneously self-­organized by ordinary citizens across towns and city districts where refugees arrived and where volunteers wanted to participate in helping them. It was a bottom-up movement, which at times involved the participation of established civil society actors, such as religious or sport associations, although these actors did not take the lead in initiating the movement (Mayer 2018). In 2016, almost 12 percent of German citizens supported refugees (Ahrens 2017: 7). Excluding those who showed support only by providing donations, some 8.7 percent of citizens of Germany actively supported refugees (Ahrens 2017). The majority of these volunteers saw their engagement as a way to change society in a positive way and to fight against racism (Karakayali and Kleist 2016). This kind of practical solidarity occurred not only in Germany but also in several very different European countries, ranging from Hungary and Denmark to the Netherlands (Feischmidt and Zakariás 2019; Agustin and Jørgensen 2019; Della Porta 2018; Fleischmann and Steinhilper 2017; Zechner and Hansen 2016; Turinsky and Nowicka 2019; Rast et  al. 2019). While Germany struggled to meet the needs of some one million people arriving in one year, civil society established a welcome culture that by late 2015 and early 2016 had not only sustained the engagement of its activists, but had built sustainable support initiatives (Aumüller et  al. 2015; Daphi 2016; Hamann et  al. 2016). Through a division of labor, fundraising and the continuous adjustment of programs to the needs of refugees, this welcome movement sustained itself throughout the peak of the arrivals and afterward for the duration of at least the following two years. As part of the two separate research projects described above, we followed this “welcome culture” movement throughout 2016 and 2017 in order to analyze the various types of initiatives, their motives and the challenges facing them, as well as their key areas of engagement. More recently, as a reaction to the arrivals of refugees, and to the response of some to open up their communities, German society has also witnessed a right-wing backlash. This backlash has attempted to hold refugees and the chancellor’s migration politics and policies as responsible for the supposed increase in violence. Racist stereotypes have framed the arrivals of refugees as a “refugee crisis,” creating an increasingly hostile political discourse against migrants and Muslims (Yurdakul et al. 2018). As a result, the notion of “refugee crisis” has come to be linked to the idea

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of “overburdening” (Überforderung) the social welfare systems, a perspective that is in opposition to the optimism expressed by chancellor Merkel’s statement of “we can do it.” Surprisingly, despite the right-wing’s growing discursive power, the welcome structures of volunteers did not report feeling similar sentiments of being overburdened but rather were motivated to continue their work (Karakayali and Kleist 2016: 5). Rather than feeling overburdened, the volunteers maintained a political climate of solidarity within small towns and bigger cities (Hamann and Karakayali 2016), as I will show below. Against this backdrop, I argue in this chapter that the volunteers, who were active in showing support for refugees, played a significant role in creating and keeping a political climate of openness toward migration and solidarity for refugees against these right-wing political sentiments. In this chapter, I first shed light on the structure of this welcome culture movement. I then describe the challenges facing the movement, examining their efforts to push back against racist discourse and exploring the conditions under which this pushback might be successful. The volunteers’ efforts contributed to maintaining a climate of hospitality, in the sense of radical hospitality (Baban and Rygiel 2017; Derrida 2005), and they continue to contribute to creating a culture of conviviality (Gilroy 2004) that describes an everyday life of a post-migrant society living with differences. Conviviality focuses attention on encounters as social practices of everyday life rather than focusing attention on identities of people who are different from one another (Berg and Nowicka 2019).

Conviviality: The Everyday Practice of Living Together in Difference A growing number of authors have looked at the local conditions for negotiating difference under the concept of conviviality (e.g. Erickson 2011; Amin 2008; Koch and Latham 2011; Wise and Velayutham 2014; Berg and Nowicka 2019). These scholars refer to the notion of conviviality, as introduced by the postcolonial author Paul Gilroy (2004) in his book Postcolonial Melancholia. He provides the following explanation of the concept of conviviality: I use this to refer to the processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multicultural an ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities elsewhere. I hope an interest in the workings of

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conviviality will take off from the point where ‘multiculturalism’ broke down. It does not describe the absence of racism or the triumph of tolerance. Instead, it suggests a different setting for their empty, interpersonal rituals, which, I suggest, have started to mean different things in the absence of any strong belief in absolute or integral races. (Gilroy 2004: XV)

While far from being a clear-cut definition, this explanation of the concept points to several key elements found in the literature on conviviality. First, it describes living with diversity as an “ordinary feature of social life,” thereby acknowledging the ordinary social practices and exchanges between people that occur in everyday life and through which people negotiate differences without being governed or told to do so. Second, it describes these processes as occurring in “British urban areas and in postcolonial cities elsewhere,” pinpointing these as features of a culture that originates in the urban arena and which is shaped by historical relations of power such as colonialism and its aftermath of (postcolonial) migration. This approach, therefore, regards the city as a place of diversity. Third, Gilroy identifies racism as a present problem of exactly this urban space. Despite resistance by the anti-immigration movement that has existed since the 1950s and 1960s in Britain, the convivial culture described by Gilroy has continued to evolve (Ibid.: 112). Another important part of conviviality is the absence of “governmental interest” (Ibid.: 136), making it possible that “forms of conviviality and intermixture […] appear to have evolved spontaneously and organically from the interventions of anti-­ racists and the ordinary multiculture of the postcolonial metropolis” (Ibid.: 136). This last aspect describes the position of conviviality as lying at the intersection between (governmental) politics and the political practices of grassroots political initiatives and as a feature of living together in difference. Based on Gilroy, the analytical perspective of this chapter is one that identifies conviviality in urban settings and as being shaped by (postcolonial) migration, where racism is an issue. The advantage of conviviality as an analytical concept, in contrast to other concepts such as the notion of integration, which are more one-sided, is its focus on “interrelatedness” (Nowicka 2019: 21), in which one group must relate to another in various ways. An important factor inherent to the concept of conviviality is thus its focus “on interactions and relationships, rather than on individuals, groups, cultures or categories” (Berg and Nowicka 2019: 2).

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Building on the concept of conviviality, migration scholar Naika Foroutan proposes a new concept of “convivial integration,” with the aim of shifting attention away from the supposed deficits of newcomers and minorities, focusing her analysis instead on the types of structures that prevent migrants from participating in society (Foroutan 2015: 210). Foroutan defines convivial integration as “a new society-structuring leitmotif that is composed of the segments of acceptance, equal opportunities, and participation, with the aim of overcoming discrimination and inequality” (Foroutan 2015: 211, my translation).4 In this sense, as the following section illustrates, the welcome culture movement and the volunteers’ initiatives help to open up society to newcomers not only through traditional forms of assistance but also by demanding equal rights, based on experiences of living and engaging with newcomers and fighting racism in various communities.

Acknowledging Different Needs and Building a Sustainable Welcome Culture Most of the so-called welcome initiatives were founded between 2011 and 2015 and have established an astonishing level of self-organized professionalism (Karakayali and Kleist 2016; Ahrens 2017; Hamann and Karakayali 2016). They are democratic in their decision-making, highly differentiated in their division of labor and flexible in their work. Most of them have a structure facilitating the coordination of activities and members such as one coordinator or a committee and several working groups (Hamann et al. 2016). They offer a range of services to refugees, which include German language lessons, consulting regarding legal rights issues, accompanying refugees to visit migration and social authorities and assisting refugees with job and housing searches. Additionally, and according to members’ skills, other initiatives offered include bicycle repair lessons, organizing city tours and neighborhood feasts and providing shuttle services in cases where public transport is unavailable. Partly and specifically around 2015, volunteers had even taken on some of the duties normally provided by the state such as providing medical aid. However, more frequently, the welcome culture members offered support by assisting refugees to access and use state services. For example, such members have provided information to refugees on housing or labor rights and assisted them with asylum applications (Hamann et al. 2016). The range of tasks

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that these self-organized initiatives take on depends on the needs of the refugees, the local conditions and the skills of the volunteers. In rural and marginal areas, for example, providing shuttle services to the next city and accompanying refugees to meetings with authorities are more relevant types of tasks undertaken by such initiatives (Karakayali and Kleist 2016: 16f). The overwhelming majority (44.1%) of services are language courses for refugees, which speaks, as Karakayali and Kleist (2016: 24) note, to refugees’ demands for language skills (a fact which counters the allegation that refugees are unwilling to “integrate”). The broad range of activities undertaken by these volunteers also indicates that this segment of German society is willing to adapt to the different needs of newcomers in different situations, one of the indicators necessary for convivial integration. There is an ongoing and, in my opinion, necessary debate around whether, through their initiatives, such volunteers carry out the activities of the state in areas of social welfare and care (Dowling et  al. 2016). Nevertheless I want to introduce the idea that there are also some tasks that cannot be fulfilled by paid social workers such as, for example, the social contact with neighbors or, and most importantly, enacting civil disobedience against right-wing propaganda in order to reduce tensions between hostile neighbors and newly arrived refugees, as I will elaborate on later in the chapter. The volunteers are as active in larger cities as they are in in small towns. A research group monitoring the engagement of volunteers for refugees over a period of three years from 2014 to 2016 noted that the share of volunteers in smaller towns grew by as much as to 19 percent (Karakayali and Kleist 2016: 16). The spontaneously formed initiatives emerged often in and around newly built refugee camps, and they created democratic structures for decision-making and the division of labor within the movement. Most initiatives have one full-time coordinator, who organizes communication between the group and city authorities, and toward the different actors involved with the refugee camp, such as the operator of the camp, the security personnel, the social workers and others. These initiatives also often seek the most effective way to influence the local situation in favor of the refugees who they are working with. This is why they also participate in networks and initiatives such as round tables, in which they seek access to governmental authorities in order to negotiate better conditions for newcomers. As the majority of these coordinators are pensioners, who have professional skills such as in management or teaching, they also use their networks within the town to arrange meetings as, for

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example, when employers do not properly explain to refugees their rights (Hamann et al. 2016). While such initiatives have been built over a short time period, they seem to have a certain degree of sustainability. Although media coverage of the welcome culture has stopped, these welcome initiatives and networks nevertheless continue to work and confront new challenges.

For the Equality of Rights: Challenges of the New Movement However, despite opening communities to welcome newcomers, the welcome culture is also far from being an emancipatory social movement and power relations present in the German society can also be found within the movement (Hamann 2018). For example, Turnisky and Nowicka (2019) and Braun (2017) note how despite intentions to welcome refugees, volunteers at times reproduced similar hierarchical relationships between themselves and the newcomers based on positionalities of class, gender, race and other differences. Other authors have shown the limited possibility for refugees to participate in decision-making processes of these groups (Rast and Ghorashi 2018). There is also the danger of reproducing a colonial paternalist attitude in parts of the movement (Braun 2017). Apart from these general challenges of dealing with racism, sexism and classism, the initiatives are confronted with organizational challenges. As we observed in 2016, the willingness to engage remained high despite the negative turn in media coverage about refugees and in contrast to what some assumed would be compassion fatigue. In our interviews and focus groups, the volunteers discussed the notion of frustration. As one member explained, “Well, we noticed how the state is blocking our engagement by every means possible to supply people quickly and unbureaucratically with work, an internship, or housing. It is still a catastrophe” (Group discussion quoted in Hamann et al. 2017: 12). As this example illustrates, volunteers were frustrated with government officials’ unwillingness to speed up the process and to find solutions to the urgent needs of refugees. If the volunteers, for instance, found a job for someone who did not have a work permit, they found that the official state channels might be slower than the volunteers themselves and as a result the job would be lost. The work of the volunteers, especially their assistance accompanying refugees on visits to the authorities, can be seen as fostering “convivial integration”

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(Foroutan 2015) or a more participatory and rights-based form of integration that focuses on supporting refugees to achieve the same rights as citizens, rather than seeing refugees as a drain on society. As one volunteer in Berlin-Reinickendorf, commenting on this aspect of rights, explains: To certain authorities you have to go with a high level of tolerance to frustration and simply know [the rights] well, sometimes down to the legal details [...] At the job center I also had the impression that the authorities sometimes have instructions to say: ‘OK, we have already exceeded our quota of the apartments that we can approve, and now we reject the next applications [...] It happened to me in a very specific case, in which we had all the documents gathered together, also the offer from the landlord, wonderful, everything was perfect, and then the lady from the job center looked at her list and said: ‘Well I’m sorry, I cannot approve the apartment, which is 50€ per month over the allowed limit.’ […] If the [refugee, U.H.] family had been there alone, they would simply have been sent back and they could not have done anything because they did not have certain information, but I knew that a 10 percent extension could be used, and when, after a while, I said, ‘And what about the 10 percent range, can you not use this?’ Then the clerk said quite stupidly, ‘Oh, you know about it, well, then we have to act differently.’ Of course, she was still trying to prevent that, but the family finally got the apartment and everything went well, but it would not have gone well if there had been no native speaker who would know a bit about this right. (Hamann et al. 2016: 27)

The fight for the rights of refugees seems to motivate the volunteers to continue to do their work. In a 2016 survey, 37.6% of volunteers noted that, among the many different activities they performed, accompanying refugees on visits to governmental authorities was one of the most important aspects of their work (Karakayali and Kleist 2016: 24). This kind of work results in removing or reducing barriers for refugees to participate in the social life of German society and in exercising their rights. In fact, 25% of volunteers who responded to the survey stated that translation work for refugees was also important to them. This illustrates how volunteers work to make access to equal rights possible.

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Against Racism: Conditions for Pushing Back Against Nationalist and Racist Trends “Yes, we were just scared that the local political right wing quickly becomes strong and then we thought we have to do something about it immediately” (Hamann et al. 2017: 13, my translation). As the quote here from this volunteer suggests regarding the situation facing a small town where a refugee camp was going to be established, one of the most serious challenges that the volunteer movement experiences is the threat by right-­ wing extremist groups, who sometimes attack volunteers and refugees in East and West Germany. The scale of these threats often depends on the position of the local politicians toward refugees (Messing and Ságvári 2019). Here, some volunteers who assist refugees are consciously acting against racism in order to maintain a political climate of conviviality. In accordance with Gilroy’s notion of conviviality, the presence of and fighting against racism is one of the indicators of a convivial culture. Violent acts of racism directed against refugees and their supporters can be seen, in a broader sense, as an attack against the creation of a more convivial culture. With the rising numbers of volunteers after 2015, people’s range of motivations for engagement has diversified. While some may be religiously or politically motivated, in 2015 a large number of volunteers claimed to be apolitical (Karakayali and Kleist 2016). But as other authors such as Fleischmann and Steinhilper (2017) have argued, there is no such thing as an apolitical form of assistance because the effects of supportive acts directly influence the political climate. However, opinions on refugee support and its political effects differ depending on what aspect one looks at. It is, as Fleischmann and Steinhilper (2017) stated, irrelevant whether or not the actors themselves believe they are being political. Rather, what is important, as I want to stress here, is the kind of effects their actions have on the community in which they live. I am focusing here on the local effects that are directly playing out in the immediate social space and have not to become mediated through the media. This phenomenon has been overlooked and ignored by the mass media after the change in discourse in Germany since 2016.5 Some have critiqued the failure of these volunteers to embed “their activities into a wider political context” (Fleischmann and Steinhilper 2017: 20) and to challenge government politics, such as the severely negative changes made to asylum laws in Germany in 2016. Nevertheless, Toubøl (2018) notes

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the unintentional but lasting effects that the contact with refugees can have, working in both directions—opening up society for refugees, on the one hand, and providing opportunities for volunteers to learn, on the other hand, about the specific conditions that are produced as a result of the border and migration regimes. The other additional effect that the volunteers’ initiatives have, which is not mentioned in some of the critique raised, is that of preventing the political climate from drifting further to the right. Only a few studies have discussed the impact of the welcome culture initiatives on the dissemination of right-wing attitudes (Speth and Becker 2016: 40; Hamann et al. 2016). In our research in 2016 we conducted group and single interviews with volunteers in the three German states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, located in East Germany. In doing so, we encountered a certain political attitude that illustrated responsibility for social cohesion and the safety of refugees (Hamann et al. 2017: 13). In short, the volunteers’ work furthers conviviality and the ability to live together in pluralistic societies, and it works against the proliferation of right-wing extremist attitudes against refugees. As many interviewees explained to us, one of the initial motivations behind volunteers working with refugees was a concern for the political atmosphere of the town or village in which they lived. Most of the interviewees were involved in intense, polarized public discussions within their hometown or community and had experienced a radicalized and brutalized form of racism emerging, which they had not previously noticed. Neighbors and community members articulated this racism publicly, often on the occasion of public meetings when discussing the upcoming arrival of refugees within their community. For example, as one interviewee explained, “Yes, it was really scary outside [in the town]. It was a bit of pogrom-like atmosphere, they really did make racket, the mayor also got really roughly attacked and you’re scared when the mob is going on like this” (Group interview 4, 2016, my translation). This context of what was often perceived to be a “heated” public atmosphere was not the only reason for many volunteers standing up for a position of openness and antiracism. These moments of intense public debate were also moments when volunteers related toward each other as members of their community. While expressing anti-racist attitudes, they often faced verbal aggression and threats of physical violence in a climate they described as being a “pogrom-like atmosphere.” As a result of these experiences, the volunteers see themselves as being partly responsible for preventing an escalation in the town, especially in the interests of the refugees.

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The information about the danger of a right-wing attack seems to spread quickly even among refugees. As one volunteer, who was teaching German lessons, noted: The group that I have can speak almost no German and then suddenly this word popped up: Nazi. And then I think, man, [they] know no German, but they knew ‘Nazi’. And then I […] said, because they also have small children, I say, if possible, do not go to [the town] that day [of a political parade of Neo-Nazis]. (Hamann et al. 2017: 14, my translation)

As implied here in the quote, many volunteers in smaller German towns, especially in the East, feel a political responsibility within this political climate to fight against the hostile racism of their neighbors and peers. They additionally feel that they bear this responsibility on their own. For volunteers, standing up and speaking out against hate speech is a first step but the second is to organize themselves as a group of volunteers to support refugees. Volunteers organize out of self-interest but also on behalf of the interests of the refugees and for the social cohesion of the town. This struggle for an open society does not obscure conflicts within the town but, on the contrary, it creates openness to others by confronting the conflict. As one volunteer from a small East German town reported: There was a heated public debate [when it became announced that the town will receive 100 refugees, U.H.], with pretty bad racist comments—half of the town against the other half. And it looked as if the whole topic is tilting, to our detriment. And then XZ just got up and said: Listen, who do you think you are? We help people in need here. He really spoke from the heart and with empathy and managed to turn the majority of the audience, to turn the spirit. And that was the crucial moment to prepare the arrival of the 100 refugees. And then all of a sudden, our citizens started to support them. (Group interview 2, 2016)

These volunteers are aware of their impact on the political climate and they are conscious about the effect of their work for refugees. As another volunteer explained to us: So, the help for humans, yes of course, that is in the center. But I also think that the welcome initiatives in the villages are also important to show the face and also, let’s say, to not surrender to the dominant discourse in such a village to those who are there on other paths. […] Exactly that, of course, if

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my work [with refugees] has the effect to oppose the right-wing extremist attitudes, then I welcome this kind of effect. (Group interview 4, 2016)

Both quotes demonstrate how the volunteers actively try to push back against racist attitudes verbally and through their practical work, in order to create, following Gilroy, a state of conviviality, where people from various backgrounds are welcome and where racists are not. As we can see here, it is not an easy endeavor, achieved simply through declarations of solidarity, but one which requires a tough struggle and with one’s very neighbors, especially in small towns, where people know each other. What the volunteers can manage within the social and political radius of their towns and villages, they miss in federal politics. Federal politicians have not matched the same level of positioning against racism or may have even contributed to a worsening of the situation. For example, as one interviewee explained, “We feel very abandoned by the state policy in Saxony, which is something like dark brown [politically near to right-wing positions] and by the fact that when we are on the street and the others are on the other side, the water cannons are always directed against us, always, because only we, of course, are dangerous [ironically], very difficult” (Single interview 12, 2016). Volunteers, such as this one, note that this lack of a clear position against racism at the federal level is dangerous for their work. They criticize federal politics for fostering xenophobic attitudes, which they do, in part, by generating suspicion about the willingness of refugees to “integrate.” In 2016 the German federal government issued a new “law on integration.” This law follows the principle of the neoliberal German welfare system “Fördern und Fordern” (demand and promote). This principle outlines an expectation that people who receive social assistance will fulfill several requirements in return, such as taking language courses. Volunteers are critical of such politics as suggested in the following quote: I think that it [the new law on integration, U.H.] is a piece of impudence, because the media interprets it, that they [refugees, U.H.] are not ready to integrate or to take courses. This undertone is there, and that is why it is precisely this way of framing, including politics, that is really a shame because it simply promotes bad attitudes in the society, and it promotes prejudice. They [politicians, the media] always say “we are against right-wing attitudes,” but this kind of discourse is somehow producing such a bad and

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pejorative picture, as if they [the refugees] do not want [to integrate], so we have to force them, that’s outrageous. (Group interview 4, 2016)

According to this volunteer’s perspective (and experience), a pro-­ refugee and migration position on the part of leading politicians would help to minimize the problem of aggression against refugees. As one recently published survey on the changing attitudes toward migration in European countries before and after the summer of 2015 concluded, “the strength of norms as set by political and public discourse plays a decisive role in determining the degree to which negative attitudes are turned into explicit rejection and exclusion” (Messing and Ságvári 2019: 2). The results of this survey confirm findings from our research that the political attitudes of the (local) politicians matter not only for the local climate for or against migration but for the safety of refugees and volunteers. Another set of factors that influence the political climate in favor of migration and refugees can be found in communities, which have seen cuts to their infrastructure due to austerity measures. This is illustrated in the following quote from a volunteer who explained how in one public meeting, a heated debate erupted, with angry citizens attacking politicians because they had accommodated refugees in the town: I think of the meeting there in the sports hall […] I was really happy that in the end XY, who also belongs to the [welcome] initiative, got up and said, well, if she understands the town council correctly, [the town] can now negotiate for the fact that for receiving refugees it also wishes that public transport gets improved. So that she once brought in the idea, you could maybe get something out [laughs] of the situation. And I thought that was a good idea, because when you arrive at the level, you can perhaps talk more objectively. (Group interview 3, 2016)

Within their own town, volunteers also develop strategies against right-­ wing extremist positions. First, they take a clear position against racist statements, publicly and explicitly. Second, they try to merge the interests of the town’s long-term residents with those of newer residents, for instance, by demanding better public transportation and other social services. In summary, those volunteers in East German communities, who have no previous contact with migrants, undertake the responsibility and role of being pioneers of a post-migrant society when they speak up for

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ways of living together with refugees through the public space of their hometowns. In bigger German cities, dominated by a right-wing presence, the situation can be different. In our interviews with volunteers in Dresden, many described their activities as hidden from the public sphere; one even described her support for refugees as “underground” work. Some of the volunteers in the birth town of the right-wing populist movement Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) described their initial motivation to support refugees with a certain frustration or even sickness about this movement that dominates the inner-city space each Monday. Volunteers supporting refugees argued that, for their own mental health, they needed to become active for refugees because of their feelings of powerlessness against this movement. By turning their frustration against the growing dominance of right-wing populism into something productive—for example by providing support to newly arriving refugees—they presumably also saved their own mental balance. Nevertheless, they claimed to prefer avoiding confrontation or conflict and to work privately, silently and even “underground” instead. This situation, where civic and solidary engagement must occur without political acknowledgment from local government and clandestinely, is alarming. It echoes European survey findings that political support is an essential condition for creating a more welcoming political climate to newcomers and additionally necessary for the success of supporters’ efforts to save the political climate from right-wing radicalization and to foster, instead, “radical cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2017).

A Culture of Conviviality Is Possible Achieving a convivial culture is the unintended product of living together with differences over time. It is far from being intentionally produced by government programs but, as Gilroy has noted, it can emerge as a result of the work of anti-racist networks and ordinary people. In this chapter, I have discussed the kinds of challenges facing volunteers who support refugees in smaller towns and bigger cities, where a considerable portion of the population holds a hostile attitude toward migration and refugees. The volunteers base their work on the conviction of the existence of equal rights for all members of society, independent of citizenship status and they reject attitudes that defend the privileges of long-term residents. In a convivial sense, they do not expect homogeneity to be the precondition

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for participation in the community, and they work instead for refugees’ access to rights and equality. The previously mentioned survey on attitudes toward refugees in Europe found that the overall climate toward migration in Europe is stable and that those who hold a position of “unconditional rejection” toward migrants have decreased from 15 to 10 percent. Nevertheless, decreasing hostility toward newcomers and increasing conviviality do not happen automatically. As I have argued here, the actions and positioning of several actors can contribute to creating a culture of conviviality, a culture where racism can be named and blamed and where people can relate to each other across their differences. Factors that can contribute to an increase in racist attitudes include a scarcity of resources, such as the lack of public infrastructure and services, that can then become fought over issues and easily articulated into racist terms of competition (over housing, social welfare and places in schools) and picked up in the positioning of local and national politicians against migration, migrants and refugees. The activities and positions of volunteers, which I have portrayed here, deal with these kinds of challenges in different ways. If they see an opportunity to change the climate in their hometown, they may decide to take a public stand and build alliances to create a climate that is open to migration and that welcomes refugees. However, I have demonstrated that a problematic and dangerous situation can also develop, when volunteers feel that even supporting refugees must be done clandestinely because the hegemonic political climate is dominated by hostile and racist attitudes, such as the case found in the city of Dresden. Volunteers also try to engage with the austerity-driven situation of their hometowns and address the need for more social infrastructure. By deliberately influencing the political climate, these volunteers create an atmosphere where conviviality can grow. This can be seen, for example, when they organize festivities for the town in which ordinary members of the community have opportunities to casually meet and have encounters with newcomers. The effects of these activities are not intended as a pre-planned strategy because the primary aim of these groups is to support refugees. Nevertheless, these activities should not be underestimated for they not only keep the political climate open, and entail the potential to stop right-­ wing attitudes from becoming hegemonic, but also prepare the ground for a sustainable culture of conviviality, where people live together acknowledging the danger of racism but also their differences.

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Notes 1. Proponents of Critical Migration Studies challenge the idea that migrants’ movements can be entirely predicted and influenced by economic factors or other oppressive conditions (pull-factors) and, therefore, question the idea of migration as merely a field of governance that is regulated through and within the space of the city. The concept of the autonomy of migration highlights migrants as agents within these global and material conditions. It goes back to the French economist Moulier Boutang (1998) and has been developed as a concept by critical migration scholars Papadopoulos and Tsianos (2013), Mezzadra (2010) and others. 2. The term “refugee crisis” is often used in the media and as a term to criticize the opening of borders in August 2015. To counter this discourse, critical migration researchers and solidarity movements prefer to speak of the “long summer of migration” in order to highlight the moments of free movement. From this perspective the notion of crisis refers to a crisis of administration, that is, the failure of the German state to provide shelter and care for the increasing numbers of refugees and the failure of the Dublin system, rather than a crisis created by refugees. 3. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees or BAMF (2016) divulged the number of one million refugees arriving in Germany. This number was later corrected to 890,000 by state minister Thomas de Maizière (NDR 2016). The difference is explained by several double registrations during the high peak of arrivals. 4. The concept of “convivial integration” (Foroutan 2015) has several advantages over the more commonly used notion of integration. First, it focuses on newcomers having the same rights as citizens rather than emphasizing the privileges of the natives. Second, it accepts difference as a constitutional precondition of society but searches for equality in terms of access, rights and participation. Third, it shifts the focus from the seeming deficit of the migrant (that lies in the notion of integration) toward an acknowledgment of different needs in different situations. 5. The media attention turned from presenting Germany’s “welcome culture” in a positive light to negatively writing about the supposed increase in levels of crime allegedly by refugees after the media spectacle about the sexual harassment cases in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015/2016 (Yurdakul et al. 2018).

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Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https:// www.fluechtlingsrat-brandenburg.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ Studie_EFA2_BIM_11082016_VOE.pdf. Kasparek, B., & Speer, M. (2015, September 9). Of Hope. Hungary and the Long Summer of Migration. Bordermonitoring.eu. Retrieved August 13, 2019, from https://bordermonitoring.eu/ungarn/2015/09/of-hope-en/. Koch, R., & Latham, A. (2011). Rethinking Urban Public Space: Accounts from a Junction in West London. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(4), 515–529. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00489.x. Mayer, M. (2018). Cities as Sites of Refuge and Resistance. European Urban and Regional Studies, 25(3), 232–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0969776417729963. Messing, V., & Ságvári, B. (2019). Still Divided But More Open. Mapping European Attitudes Towards Migration Before and After the Migration Crisis. Budapest: Friederich-Ebert-Stiftung. Mezzadra, S. (2010). The Gaze of Autonomy. Capitalism, Migration and Social Struggles. In V. Squire (Ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility. Borderzones and Irregularity (pp. 121–142). Oxford: Routledge. Moulier Boutang, Y. (1998). De l’esclavage au salariat: économie historique du salariat bridé. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. NDR. (2016, September 30). Doch keine Million Flüchtlinge in 2015. Retrieved September 8, 2019, from https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/Dochkeine-Million-Fluechtlinge-in-2015,fluechtlingszahlen100.html. Nowicka, M. (2019). Convivial Research Between Normativity and Analytical Innovation. In M. L. Berg & M. Nowicka (Eds.), Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture (pp. 17–35). London: UCL Press. Papadopoulos, D., & Tsianos, V.  S. (2013). After Citizenship: Autonomy of Migration, Organizational Ontology and Mobile Commons. Citizenship Studies, 17(2), 178–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2013.780736. Peck, J. (2012). Austerity Urbanism: American Cities Under Extreme Economy. City, 16(6), 626–655. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2012.734071. Rast, M. C., & Ghorashi, H. (2018). Dancing with ‘The Other’: Challenges and Opportunities of Deepening Democracy through Participatory Spaces for Refugees. Social Inclusion, 6(1): 188–198. https://doi.org/10.17645/si. v6i1.1300. Rast, M.  C., Younes, Y., Smets, P., & Ghorashi, H. (2019). The Resilience Potential of Different Refugee Reception Approaches Taken During the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Amsterdam. Current Sociology March, 1–19. https://doi. org/10.1177/0011392119830759. Soederberg, S. (2018). Governing Global Displacement in Austerity Urbanism: The Case of Berlin’s Refugee Housing Crisis. Development and Change, 50(4), 923–947. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12455.

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Speth, R., & Becker, E. (2016). Zivilgesellschaftliche Akteure und die Betreuung geflüchteter Menschen in deutschen Kommunen. Opusculum Nr. 92 April. Berlin: Maecenata Institut für Philanthropie und Zivilgesellschaft. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0243-042016op923. Toubøl, J. (2018). From Democratic Participation to Civic Resistance: The Loss of Institutional Trust as an Outcome of Activism in the Refugee Solidarity Movement. The British Journal of Sociology, 70(4), 1198–1224. https://doi. org/10.1111/1468-4446.12622. Turinsky, T., & Nowicka, M. (2019). Volunteer, Citizen, Human: Volunteer Work Between Cosmopolitan Ideal and Institutional Routine. In M.  Feischmidt, L.  Pries, & C.  Cantat (Eds.), Refugee Protection and Civil Society in Europe (pp.  234–268). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-92741-1_9. Wise, A., & Velayutham, S. (2014). Conviviality in Everyday Multiculturalism: Some Brief Comparisons Between Singapore and Sydney. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 406–430. https://doi.org/10.1177/136 7549413510419. Yurdakul, G., Korteweg, A., & Hamann, U. (2018). Symbolische und materielle Grenzziehungen. Geschlecht und ‘Rasse’ im Diskurs über Gewalt und Fluchtbewegungen in Kanada und Deutschland. In I. Attia & M. Popal (Eds.), BeDeutungen dekolonisieren (pp. 276–296). Münster: Unrast. Zechner, M., & Hansen, B. R. (2016, April 7). More Than a Welcome: The Power of the Cities. Open Democracy. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from https:// www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/more-than-welcomepower-of-cities/.

CHAPTER 4

Building Solidarity Cities: From Protest to Policy Stefanie Kron and Henrik Lebuhn

Introduction In June 2018, the new right-wing Italian government started denying permission to rescue ships operated by private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to dock in Italian ports. This move marked the dramatic opening salvo of a further reinforcing of “Fortress Europe.” Since then, most civil rescue missions in the central Mediterranean have been blocked, while captains and crews are threatened with legal proceedings for, among other things, “supporting illegal migration.” According to the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency (UNHCR 2018), these moves caused at least 850 people to drown in the Mediterranean in June and July 2018 alone.1

S. Kron (*) Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] H. Lebuhn Humboldt Univeristy of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_4

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In response to these developments, urban civil society and local politicians have risen up in protest across Europe. Several statements issued since the summer of 2018 by the mayors of several southern Italian coastal cities, such as Palermo, Naples and Ravenna, have attracted international attention. All of these cities have harshly criticized their national government’s refusal to allow rescue ships to anchor in Italian ports, declaring their willingness to “offer safe port to migrants” and to accept the refugees in their cities (Wintour et al. 2018). In Germany, to date, the municipal governments of almost 124 cities (among them Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne) have joined the German Seebrücke (safe ports) initiative and have signaled their willingness to also take in refugees (Seebrücke 2020). Many of the cities currently pushing for taking on more refugees belong to the network of the administrations of major European cities established in 2016 “Solidarity Cities.” This alliance of cities includes Barcelona, Naples, Athens, Thessaloniki, Amsterdam, Gdansk and, since January 2019, also Berlin. Founded by the Eurocities-Initiative, “Solidarity Cities” (Eurocities 2016) is, however, not an activist network, but a circle of city governments composed of numerous European metropolises, mostly port cities, pushing for a coordinated approach to what its founding document labels the “refugee crisis” (Eurocities 2016). They call on the European Commission to better distribute refugees in Europe and to increase social infrastructure funding in the European cities in which most refugees arrive or already live.2 Political pressure also comes from the activist base, however. In 2017, refugee councils, migrant self-organizations, welcoming initiatives, left-­ wing movements, urban policy NGOs, religious groups and academics in cities like Berlin, Bern, Cologne and Zurich, as well as countless smaller cities, founded the alternative city network with the almost identical name, “Solidarity City” (Solidarity-City 2017). The coalition’s demands go far beyond the official European city network: they call for halting deportations and directly accepting refugees, but also for a fundamental democratization of urban life. Additionally, a number of organizations are focusing on civil rescue missions in the Mediterranean. The Seebrücke initiative, for example, was first established by grassroots organizations after Italy’s announcement to block the ports in June 2018. Activists of the “Watch the Med Alarm phone” and other international civil rescue organizations started a similar initiative at the European level called “Safe and Open Harbors” (Alarmphone 2018).

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These examples show the growing significance of urban policy coalitions in the struggle against Europe’s rightward drift and the ever more restrictive European border and migration policies (Kron 2017). Against this background, the notion of urban citizenship has become an important point of reference when it comes to the question how cities can counter the repressive European border regime and foster cultural pluralism at the local level. In this chapter, we take a critical look at the Solidarity City networks that have been emerging over the past few years and at the ways they envision new forms of citizenship. Conceptually, we are building on the critical literature on global social inequalities and freedom of movement (Cassee 2016; Lessenich 2016), urban citizenship (Bauböck 2003; García 2006) and “radical cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2017). Empirically, we draw from our research on various European cities, including Berlin, Naples, Palermo and Zurich (Christoph and Kron 2019). Furthermore, we use the North American Sanctuary City movement for comparison (Lebuhn 2016). In particular, we are interested in the ways the Solidarity City framework and the respective actors, movements and policies can foster a form of cultural pluralism that transforms understandings of who is a citizen and belongs to the community: does this framework open non-­ hierarchical ways of living together with newcomers, in this case refugees or marginalized and undocumented groups of migrants? And what is the relationship between governance-oriented initiatives on the one hand and grassroots movements in this field on the other hand?

The Solidarity City: Freedom of Movement and Social Rights What initially appears as two separate topics—EU border policies and social rights in the city—turns out, upon closer inspection, to be closely related. Insofar as Solidarity Cities experiment with new ideas of disconnecting access to rights and resources from national citizenship, they strengthen struggles for freedom of movement and settlement. For although a growing number of people regard it as the precondition for access to social rights, the right to global freedom of movement and settlement is thus far not recognized as one of the catalogued social rights in the stricter sense. So-called “free movement”—the free choice of one’s place of residence—is by its nature more of an individual right and thus belongs

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to the category of civil rights. Paragraph 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives every person the right “to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state” and “the right to leave any country, including his [sic] own, and to return” (United Nations 1948). The human rights charter thus acknowledges the right to emigrate, but not to immigrate. The UN Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), to which the UN agreed upon in 2015 and to which primarily humanitarian and development NGOs refer, also fail to identify global freedom of movement and settlement as a development goal (United Nations 2015). It is instead addressed only as a sub-point featuring a very vague formulation that “orderly, safe, regular and responsible” forms of migration should be established, including through the “implementation of planned and well-­ managed migration policies” (United Nations 2015). Yet the sustainability goals make no mention of a right to migration for everybody, a right that most people in Europe and North America take for granted. The “Global Compact for Migration,” which was signed and adopted by the United Nations in December 2018, also does not include a rights-based approach (United Nations 2018).3 This legal and developmental gap is the subject of intense debate in the social sciences and humanities. Authors who attempt to adopt a global approach to inequality research or political philosophy see the restricted right to global freedom of movement and settlement as one of the most important preconditions to accessing many further (social) rights and thus to the goal of global social justice (Cassee 2016). The visa politics pushed by the EU and United States in the northern hemisphere, and the “global mobility divide” (Lessenich 2016: 137) associated with it, is described by Lessenich (2016) as a central pillar of the “externalization society.” It maintains the “imperial mode of living” and privileges people in the Global North at the expense of people in the Global South. As Lessenich (2016: 137, translated by Kron and Lebuhn) explains, “Mobility chances are a monopolized resource here, which one claims for oneself while denying it to others. Physical regulation of movement—some are mobile; others are demobilized—is a central element of the Western lifestyle. In the movements and networks for a Solidarity City, the right to global freedom of movement and settlement is—sometimes more, sometimes less implicitly—acknowledged and attempts are made to assert global social rights in local political spaces. This becomes particularly evident in the “Charter of Palermo” formulated by Palermo’s mayor, mayor Leoluca Orlando, to which many European Solidarity Cities have since subscribed (Comune di

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Palermo 2015). Orlando explicitly calls for the abolition of residency permits, the linking of civil and social rights to one’s place of residence, as well as the unconditional guarantee of the right to global freedom of movement and settlement (Kron 2016). Orlando also draws on a historical discourse about port cities in the Mediterranean like Palermo. This discourse emphasizes the cities’ cultural history as a site of cultural pluralism and transnational encounters between Europe, Africa and the Middle East: “Palermo is not a European city,” Orlando points out, “Palermo is Tripoli and Beirut, we are half Europeans, half Orientals, the city is a mosaic” (Kron 2016; Interview with Leoluca Orlando by Stefanie Kron September 2015). Luigi de Magistris, the mayor of Naples, uses a similar narrative. In an interview with the NGO “European Alternatives” (2017), de Magistris recounts Naples’ history as one of migrants and non-citizens. He relates this history to the current potential of the city as a cultural bridge and welcoming site, in which the city’s inhabitants even open their houses for newcomers: Naples is a refuge city and a city of shelter. We believe solidarity and welcome policies are the best (…) way of building bridges between cultures and guaranteeing peace. In Naples, we are either all illegals or no-one is illegal. This is the history of our city, but it is also our political vision. Naples is at the vanguard of a new ‘diplomacy from below’ working for a Mediterranean of peace and not war (…). There was recently a large-scale arrival of migrants from Libya. Naples is a city with a lot of suffering and great economic difficulties: but we have had a rush for solidarity from all citizens. They were offering not just food and clothing but also opening up their houses to host the migrants. (European Alternatives 2017)

These quotes illustrate that, in addition to the initially stated social and material objectives, Solidarity Cities also entail the potential to become strategic sites for residents and newcomers forming groups and alliances and creating novel forms of solidarities. This includes new ways of living together and breaking down binaries between citizens and non-citizens. We argue that Orlando’s and de Magistris’ references to the transnational and culturally plural history of “their” cities, Palermo and Naples, open discursive spaces for negotiating and experiencing new forms of (municipal) citizenship that are not exclusive but rather inspired by “radical cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2017). Following Baban and Rygiel (2017: 101),

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[r]adical cosmopolitanism offers a different way to theorize the citizen/non-­ citizen border by emphasizing the desire to live and engage with others but also to be transformed by those considered as potentially different and as outsiders. At the core of radical cosmopolitanism lies a relational ontology based on a moment of transgression of self-other, non-citizen/citizen binaries. (…) From the perspective of radical cosmopolitanism, then, the border between insider and outsider can materialize in non-hierarchical ways as well (…).

Within this context, the idea of urban citizenship helps to conceptualize both the discourses and policies of the Solidarity Cities and new forms of living together and belonging to a political community that potentially are emerging from them.

Urban Citizenship: Rights for All In the Anglo-American debate, municipal citizenship policies are often discussed as forms of “urban citizenship.” Conceptually speaking, the debate builds on sociologist T.H. Marshall’s 1950 essay “Citizenship and Social Class.” Here, the concept of “citizenship” is understood in markedly broader terms than the notion of “national citizenship” (Staatsbürgerschaft in German). It emphasizes the relationship between membership in a polity (political community), on one hand, and the rights and obligations that go hand in hand with it, on the other. Hence, it allows for a nuanced and historically informed understanding of social, political and economic participation in social life (Marshall 1950). The urban citizenship debate applies this perspective to the local level and to urban processes (Bauböck 2003; Lebuhn 2013). Against this backdrop, notions of urban citizenship are discussed to denote the introduction of local political instruments which grant or extend social participation not only to (state) citizens, but also to urban inhabitants who have no formal citizenship status or rather cannot assert it due to their marginalized social position (García 2006). García (2006: 754) speaks of urban citizenship as involving cases, when policy instruments are introduced locally (…) in order to maintain and/or create social entitlements as a result of citizens’ demands or as a result of local institutions’ innovative practices; and when the mechanisms for political integration provide an open sphere for participation and contestation not only for established citizens, but also for denizens.

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In recent contributions to the debate, citizenship is understood as more than just statuses, which people either do or do not have. Instead, political and social struggles are highlighted through which recognition, rights and access to resources can be won in the first place. “There is now an agreement that citizenship must be defined as a social process through which individuals and social groups engage in claiming, expanding and losing rights,” as Isin and Turner (2002: 4) argue. Primarily with a view to the situation of migrants and refugees and their struggles for rights, Engin Isin and Greg Nielsen, as well as Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel, have coined the term “acts of citizenship” to describe these struggles (Isin and Nielsen 2008; Nyers and Rygiel 2014). Whether understood as status or as process and contestation, urban citizenship should be conceptualized as a continuum between two poles that mark inclusion and exclusion in different dimensions. By strengthening residents’ citizenship rights, cities provide “an alternative model of membership that could eventually help to overcome some of the exclusionary features of national citizenship” (Bauböck 2003: 157). Rather than defining membership based on nationality and immigration status, urban citizenship allows access to rights and resources based on the question of where people actually live, work, pay taxes, go to school, make friends and care for their neighbors. Hence, granting rights and recognition based on residency has the potential to “transform national identities and nationalist ideologies from below and from within” (Bauböck 2003) and to create spaces of transnational cultural diversity and solidarity based on experiences rooted in everyday life. Thus, within a right-wing dominated and widely xenophobic political environment in many European Union member states, the framework of the Solidarity Cities opens communal spaces for an inclusive, a non-binary and non-hierarchical re-­ articulation of citizenship and belonging to a political community through discourses and practices of solidarity and radical cosmopolitanism. This becomes especially relevant when citizenship regimes are being hollowed out at the national level. It was, and continues to be, the shifting terrain of urban, regional, national and global politics that lead to new struggles over rights, recognition and redistribution. On one hand, this concerns questions of social citizenship, especially with regard to social security, housing, health care and education. On the other hand, questions of citizenship have been heavily affected by the rise of right-wing parties and movements, national anti-immigration policies and brutal border regimes like in the southern and eastern periphery of the European Union. Against

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this background, especially the larger cities, which are becoming rapidly more diverse and often act as economic engines for the new economy, governed by socially progressive mayors and liberal or even left-leaning governments, have become important places to foster new forms of pluralism and inclusion.

The Sanctuary City Model A prominent model for the European movement of Solidarity Cities is the “Sanctuary City” movement, which started in Canadian and US cities and localities in the 1980s (Lippert and Rehaag 2014). Pushed forward by the mobilization of strong immigrant rights movements, progressive mayors and municipalities bar local administrations and police departments from working and cooperating directly with national immigration authorities. Most importantly, they refuse to survey, store or share information about their residents’ immigration status. This so-called “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy goes a long way in preventing raids and deportations, as the federal authorities responsible for executing checks and deportations are generally dependent on the assistance of local authorities. Yet, many US and Canadian municipalities are concerned with more than “just” stopping deportations and a more or less precarious “right to stay.” Some Sanctuary Cities, such as New  York City and San Francisco, issue their own municipal identity (ID) cards known as the so-called “City IDs” (Lebuhn 2016), and immigrant-friendly states, like California, have passed laws to give undocumented migrants driver’s licenses, which function as de facto IDs. These allow people without regular residency permits, as well as other marginalized groups in the city, to deal with local administrations more easily, and offer them more security in their everyday city life more generally. Although the reach of such policies is limited, the everyday alleviations of difficulties that a Sanctuary City status or a municipal ID can facilitate should not be underestimated: whether it be registering children for public schools, using public libraries, accessing city resources in the broadest sense or opening a bank account or signing a rental contract. The municipal City ID issued in North American cities like New  York and San Francisco provides access to social and cultural services. It allows access to public services based on residency in the city and not on nationality. Therefore it widens the boundaries of the political community and redefines who belongs and can participate.

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Recently the idea of a City ID has travelled to Europe: the city council of the Suisse city of Zurich agreed upon a similar City ID in 2018 (Morawek 2019) and the co-governing parliamentary party Die Linke in Berlin is discussing such a project (Frank 2019). However, Sanctuary City policies are much more than just government regulations. They are the result and expression of solidarity among local residents with diverse backgrounds and migration histories. In New York City, for example, the City ID introduced by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015, known as the IDNYC, has attracted over one million users by now. Since New York City’s undocumented immigrant population amounts to “only” an estimated 500,000 residents, and most likely not all of them hold the IDNYC, the question arises as to why hundreds of thousands of other New Yorkers also apply for the City ID as well. When in 2016 the Mayor’s office commissioned the first official evaluation of the program, they asked the question, “Why do New Yorkers get IDNYC?” 71.2 percent of the interviewees answered that they want to “show support for the program” (Daley et al. 2016: 17). As one of the survey respondents explained: I use the ID as much as possible because I know the program is only as strong as the number of people who use it. It can't be a scarlet letter or a signpost to authorities that it is the ID of last resort for those who lack documentation. I use it in solidarity with all other cardholders and New Yorkers, and with those for whom it truly is their only option. (Daley et al. 24)

Compared to many European countries, it is also interesting to note that Sanctuary City policies do not address the topic of migration through discourses of cultural difference such as the dispositif of integration, ethnic ascriptions or the alleged formation of parallel societies. Instead, the problem is framed as a tension between belonging to a political community, on one hand, and the possibilities of social participation belonging entails, or should entail, on the other (Holston and Appadurai 1999: 4). Potentially, this affects not only migrants, even if they are often excluded from (formal) citizenship, but rather all people pushed into social marginalization as a result of neoliberalization, who have had their social, as well as civil rights, restricted.

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Health for All As the example of the North American “Sanctuary City” movement shows, urban citizenship is not limited to stopping deportations. Rather, it is about strengthening social rights and social participation in their various dimensions. This includes social rights such as health, education, shelter and work, but also cultural and gender-specific rights. If we compare the North American “Sanctuary City” movement with its European counterpart, we have to bear in mind that the federal system in the United States gives cities more autonomy to create their own policies. However, even though most European countries, including Germany, have stronger centralized political systems, cities can still find ways to work around and beyond national policies. Contrary to the often repeated prejudice that fundamental change can only be reached at the nation-state level, there are in fact spaces to maneuver at the regional and municipal level, especially, if activists, local politicians and administrations work together (Fried 2017; Heuser 2018). An exemplary case can be found in the field of health care policy. In Germany, for example, hardly any other policy area is more tightly regulated than access to the public health care system. Nevertheless, several states and cities have managed to enable medical care for people without access to the public health insurance system through alternative public programs. This, in turn, helps not only migrants without regular residency permits, but also many other people, who were pushed out of the standard insurance system due to social marginalization. The city of Berlin, for example, recently implemented a new policy to provide access to medical care through an anonymous medical certificate. Those in need will receive the certificate through a non-state clinic without having to indicate their identity or legal status. Such programs are not perfect, as they continue to work as a kind of parallel system to the regular public insurance system. However, they relieve activist networks like the “MediBüro” (Office for Medical Assistance to Refugees) (Medibüro Berlin n.d.), which until now has provided medical care for disadvantaged groups in a volunteer capacity and regularized this assistance beyond simply being an ad hoc system of volunteer assistance. The MediBüro—one of the most important actors in the Berlin Solidarity City coalition—is a good example of a grassroots initiative that not only provides services to migrants but also has a strong role in campaigning and activism. In a recent case study on Solidarity City policies in

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Berlin, Mario Neumann emphasizes the role the MediBüro has played in the negotiations with the Berlin city government for health care, dedicated to people with precarious legal status (Neumann 2019). The initiative was founded in 1996 as a self-organized, non-government health care project in Berlin. The office is primarily a solidarity-based network of volunteers and medical specialists that provides free medical treatment to people without documentation or who lack health insurance. Focusing on modes of cooperation between NGOs and city administrations, Neumann shows how civil society actors such as the MediBüro are influencing the development and implementation of social policies for vulnerable people, among them refugees, migrants and poor Berliners, as well as the challenges these civil society actors face in the negotiations with their city governments (de Graauw 2016). In doing so, civil society actors contribute to transcending the citizen/non-citizen divide and to developing inclusive forms of urban citizenship. In the case of Berlin, these negotiations between civil society groups, such as the MediBüro, and the city also needs to be understood against the backdrop of the recently elected progressive local government. The elections of 2016 brought into office a left-leaning coalition between the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green Party. The new government has started to address some of the pressing issues in the city. In its initial coalition agreement, for example, it pledged to exploit all means possible to push for a progressive migration policy at the federal level (Regierungsparteien Berlin 2016). It also pledged to revise Berlin’s outgoing government’s “masterplan” and to allow civil society actors and refugees to assume an active role in this process (Juretzka 2017). However, even though the current city government is pushing for a progressive policy change on many levels, it can only do this because of the ongoing political pressure from grassroots groups and the activist expertise provided by various initiatives. With regard to the new medical program, the city is now setting aside 1.5 million Euros per year to provide health care services to uninsured people including illegalized migrants. A so-called Clearing-Stelle (Clearing House) was established to offer counseling for people without health insurance, point them to specialists and, if required, organize access to funding. Critics point to the fact that the current model is financially limited. So far, it remains unclear whether the Clearing-Stelle will be able to maintain its services if the budget dries up or expensive treatments are needed. Still, the Clearing-Stelle is an important first step toward a

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fundamental policy shift, and it has the potential to encourage further discussions and ideas. Since the program is open to anyone without insurance and seeking help, it has also become an important contact point for various people without access to health care, not least for EU citizens (Neumann 2019). More than anything, however, it represents the insight that access to medical treatment for all residents is a right that a society should guarantee and pay for through public funding.

Space Matters As we have seen, Solidarity City policies, such as DADT, city IDs and facilitating access to social and other public services for refugees, undocumented migrants and other marginalized groups of city residents, are usually not the result of top-down policy making, but are put onto cities’ agendas by social movement actors and through strong bottom-up mobilizations. Therefore, a crucial question becomes how heterogeneous grassroots initiatives manage to form or become a coherent movement able to make demands within the formal political arena. While social movement scholars are interested in the relational and organizational aspects of this question, urban researchers also pay attention to the socio-spatial dimension of this process, including the role of public space, the density of actors and networks in urban settings and even “mundane” aspects such as the materiality of meeting rooms and spaces of encounter. Authors who use the framework of “insurgent citizenship” argue that we need to pay attention to questions of space and scale as well as center and periphery if we want to understand claims for rights and recognition in urban contexts (Holston 2009; Lebuhn 2019). They explore the spatial, social, historical and juridical condition for citizenship struggles, inquire about the role that everyday practices in marginalized urban settings play for rights and recognition and ask how and why local citizenship movements take effect beyond cities and neighborhoods as territorially bounded areas. When we look at the emerging Solidarity City movement through this lens, we can identify (at least) two particular challenges that require specific socio-spatial conditions to be solved. The first is the challenge of overcoming divisions between citizens and non-citizens and especially between newly arriving refugees and local residents. In comparison to other social movements, such as the environmental movement or anti-­ gentrification struggles, immigrant rights movements are confronted with the problem that migrants, and refugees in particular, are often subject to

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segregation and socio-spatial strategies of isolation, most importantly through the separation and stigmatization of refugees by setting them up in camps and special facilities. Under these conditions, the emergence of cross-actor movements is all but self-evident. In Berlin, for example, the (highly conflictual) occupation of the public square, Oranienplatz, and the erection of a permanent protest camp by refugees in 2012, served as a catalyst and connected a diversity of activists and residents with each other. Joint and self-organized projects like a bike repair shop helped activists to gain public visibility, articulate claims to rights and recognition and build a refugee movement from below (Wilcke and Lambert 2015; Meret and Diener 2019). Thus, the Oranienplatz-Camp constituted a kind of exchange-space that enabled people to work together, to know and learn about one another independently of status and in ways that challenge stereotypical and xenophobic representations of refugees and migrants used by media, politicians and right-wing groups. The second challenge is the need to facilitate the dialog between Solidarity City activists on one hand, and local politicians and city administrations on the other, less antagonistic spaces and procedures need to come into play. For example, in order to enter the conversation about the anonymous health care policy in Berlin mentioned above, activists, NGOs, politicians and members of the city administration were invited to discuss the issue at a round table. In this case, the proposal had already been on the table for quite a while and “only” needed to be translated into a “good policy.” Finding less antagonistic spaces was also an important strategy in another example in Zurich, where similar conversations had to be initiated almost from scratch in order to develop new urban citizenship policies. In this case, “first encounters” between various activist groups and city officials were facilitated by meeting on “neutral terrain” at the “Shedhalle Zürich.”4 The “Shedhalle” is an alternative space for arts and culture, whose curators launched the project “The whole world in Zurich” in 2015. Over the course of more than two years, they managed to bring a range of local stakeholders together in discussion, stakeholders who were previously not speaking to one another. The project included panel discussions and workshops, exhibitions and art performances, such as “Ship Cruises” on the Zurich Lake, to which small groups of activists, politicians and experts were invited. These creative formats helped kickoff the conversation about various models of urban citizenship and new city policies modeled after the Sanctuary City concept (Krenn and Morawek 2017).

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Finally, one of the proposals for instigating a Zurich City ID entered the “traditional” political space of the Zurich City parliament, where its design was discussed. In November of 2018, the City parliament eventually enacted the implementation of the “Züri City Card” by 2022 (Tagesanzeiger 2018). However, Katharina Morawek, one of the curators of the Shedhalle and co-initiators of “The whole world in Zurich,” also points to the ambivalences that come with more institutionalized spaces. Most importantly, she asks whether and to what degree concepts of (urban) societal transformation are facilitated or undermined by the institutionalization of solidary tools and practices. In Zurich, for example, many of the cultural and anti-racist initiatives involved in the process regarded the City Card as just one specific component of a broader immigrant rights campaign. But the growing participation of institutional political actors has overshadowed the overarching goals of grassroots initiatives and technical and legal discussions concerning the implementation of an urban identification card dominate the current debate (Morawek 2019). Another example concerns the Italian city of Palermo, which has developed its own strategy to bring formal and informal actors together and has taken a different route with regard to local migration policies. After almost 400 refugees drowned near the coast of the Sicilian Island of Lampedusa in October of 2013, mayor Orlando declared Palermo a Welcome City for refugees. As one of the first measures following the declaration, the municipality of Palermo founded the so-called council of cultures (consulta comunale delle culture). The council of cultures represents an institution that goes even beyond policies of protection, solidarity and the different forms of North American and European Sanctuary and Solidarity Cities. It represents an institutional arrangement at the municipal level, which reaches into the sphere of political rights and participation for refugees and migrants. All residents of Palermo, irrespective of origin, political orientation and residence status, are permitted to vote for the council’s 21 representatives or run for a seat. Twenty-six candidates from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, East and South-East Asia as well as from different European countries, signed up for the latest elections of the council of cultures in 2018 (Comune di Palermo 2018).The council institutionally links to the municipal council and is not just consulted on matters of migration policy. It is also involved in all other decisions pertaining to the city of Palermo. The council’s most important aim, however, is to extend electoral power to migrants and refugees at the municipal level (Kron 2017: 85 f.). It aims at transcending the

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citizen/non-citizen divide on the political level and can be seen as an experiment of political cosmopolitanism on the local level.

Radical Democratization or Neoliberal Diversity? Looking at the notion of citizenship that is constructed in these spaces, it is precisely the socio-political and material component, which distinguishes urban policies asserting global social rights from diversity programs of the more neoliberal persuasion. Many states and municipalities have introduced these kinds of diversity programs in recent years (Rodatz 2014). At the European level, similar to the Solidarity Cities initiative, the “Intercultural Cities Programme” (ICC) has functioned as a network of over 100 European cities pursuing intercultural reforms since 2008 (Lebuhn 2018). It is without a doubt positive that such programs seek to normalize migration rather than depicting it as a problem for cities. At the same time, the term diversity is often oriented toward concepts taken from corporate management. From this perspective, migration is understood as an economic resource, which can prove useful for cities in inter-urban competition. The “World Economic Forum” (WEF), for example, emphasized in a 2017 report, addressing the effects of migration on large cities worldwide, that inclusive urban migration policies have a positive influence on “economic development” (World Economic Forum 2017). To the extent that the notion of “citizen” is deployed, it is often used to depict someone who tends to exhibit qualities like “self-responsibility” and “self-­ optimization,” combined with the utilization of neo-communitarian notions of a civil society-driven “responsibility for the community.” But citizenship, in Marshall’s sense of the concept, crucially builds on the idea of social, political and economic participation and, in the contemporary context, one might add the right to perform different gender and cultural identities as well as informational rights, especially in the context of (digital) data mining and “big data” processing. But while diversity policies emphasize the “right to difference,” they often fail to address the material dimensions of well-being. For example, in Germany, many cities have introduced anti-discrimination and diversity policies, but a key issue of local or urban citizenship remains widely neglected: affordable housing. According to a recent study by Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Frankfurt/Main, approximately 40 percent of the households in Germany spend more than 30 percent of the

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monthly income on rent (Holm et  al. 2017). In absolute figures this equals 5.6 million households, totaling 8.6 million residents. In the 77 largest German cities that were surveyed in the study, about 1.3 million households are currently left with an income below the social welfare threshold after paying their rent. Against this background, one might ask: what is the point in promoting urban diversity, if cities become simply unaffordable for a considerable part of the population? (see also Goonewardena’s and Kipfer’s [2005] critique based on the Canadian case). Unlike in the alternative Solidarity City network, which is inspired by the “Right to the City” approach and demands the “Right to Rights,” questions of distribution, justice or social security are secondary at best. Thus, when it comes to top-down diversity policies, it is of little surprise that points of connection for social movements and progressive politics are difficult to find.

Criticism and Counter-Criticism Although political approaches between the alternative Solidarity City network and Sanctuary City policies differ significantly from urban diversity management programs, they are also criticized by the political Left. Often described as problematic is the fact that urban citizenship policies would only have “local” effects and generally remain focused on “pragmatic” aims. In practice, however, the urban movements grouped around the idea of the Solidarity City are, in fact, highly important. On the one hand, they seek to mobilize broad political alliances. The Solidarity City network, for example, seeks to develop “a city for all” in which “everyone shall have the right to live and work,” “no matter what ‘legal’ and financial status they have” (Solidarity-City 2017). This makes the campaign attractive for housing and trade union initiatives as well. On the other hand, opportunities are created, not only for migrants with insecure residency status, to access rights and resources, at least at the city level. For those affected, who otherwise are deprived of fundamental rights to shelter, education, health and work through national laws, this has a very immediate utility, the significance of which cannot be emphasized enough. However, many Solidarity City actors like politicians, administrations, NGOs and social movements are developing or have developed policies that deal with material needs and access to social rights for refugees and undocumented migrants such as housing, health, language and employment, which is an important step toward formal inclusion but which still

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may be insufficient to encourage living together in diverse societies. Also needed are spaces and programs that foster opportunities for exchange and meaningful engagement, which have the potential of breaking down the citizen/non-citizen and insider/outsider binaries toward newcomers such as refugees. In Europe’s Solidarity Cities, these exchange-spaces, programs and initiatives have existed for many years, but especially since the “long summer of migration” (Hess et  al. 2016; Hamann and Karakayali 2016). Equally important is the fact that municipal regulations, due to their local reach, cannot ensure access to social security systems, which are generally established at the federal level. Moreover, Albert Scherr and Rebecca Hofmann (2016) argue that no regular access to the labor market can be enabled and that Sanctuary City policies, as we know them from North America, facilitate the emergence of “shadow economies.” Ultimately, no real protection from deportation occurs, which can perhaps give those at risk of deportation, and their friends and family, a false sense of security. However, despite all limitations it is hard to think of a good reason not to take action at the local level to make the everyday lives of migrants and refugees with a precarious legal status more secure. The criticism concerning the “shadow economy” seems problematic in that it overlooks the fact that local protection from deportation makes it easier to assert regular working standards for all. In the case of people lacking regular residency status, in particular, legal advice from trade unions and social movements becomes more accessible and people without status are better able to get help taking legal action against manipulative employers. In other words, the emergence of a “shadow economy” can be fought by addressing the demand side and supporting migrants in their labor struggles. Nevertheless, it seems clear that municipal citizenship policies are an important but only a small step in the right direction.

Global Social Rights and Migration Struggles The movements and coalitions of Cities of Solidarity and Sanctuary in Europe and North America are politically heterogeneous, pursue different interests and raise diverse expectations. We can identify four different types of municipal interventions into migration policy. First, one of the most common ways of intervening, and one which many of the 560 cities, districts and states participating in the US and Canadian Sanctuary Cities movements support, is the fight for protection against legal prosecution

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and deportation of irregular migrants and rejected asylum applicants (DADT-policies) (Kron 2018). A second area of intervention is in regards to making demands within the public to protect migrants’ human rights such as, for example, by demanding that cities directly admit refugees from rescue ships into European Cities and municipalities. Seebrücke, the mayors of 90 German cities, as well as Barcelona, Palermo and Naples, have declared, for example, their willingness to welcome refugees into their cities. These interventions are important but, thus far, their impact remains mainly at the discursive or symbolic level and has little impact on national public policies and debates of EU member states, where nationalist, exclusionary and migrant hostile discourses and politics predominate. A third type of interventions takes the form of municipal citizenship policies “on the ground.” With innovative experiments to strengthen urban citizenship such as municipal IDs in New York, San Francisco, Zurich and Berlin, as well as policies like the anonymous health care program in Berlin, city governments seek to assert global social rights at the municipal level and thereby to detach them from residency status and nationality. The final type of intervention revolves around struggles to strengthen “rights to the city.” The bottom-up Solidarity City network, for example, pursues a fundamental democratization of urban life. It is a social movement that campaigns for a more solidary, socially just and participatory city for all. Thus, while neoliberal actors like the World Economic Forum highlight city policies of inclusion and diversity as motors for economic development, social movement actors see Solidarity Cities as a “space for a progressive politics in Europe today” (Alarmphone 2018). As we have pointed out earlier, the alternative Solidarity City network consists of grassroots initiatives, social movements and pro-migrant NGOs such as the women migrants’ organization “Respect,” the MediBüro, refugee councils, refugee law clinics, anti-deportation groups and others. On the urban level, many of these actors have developed alternative social spaces in recent years. They have created kitchen, sports and cultural projects where existing residents and newcomers, like refugees and undocumented migrants, can come together in order to engage with and learn from each other. Some of these groups like the refugee councils frequently undertake visits to the German asylum seeker camps in order to report possible human rights abuses, but also to break down the segregation and exclusion of those seeking political asylum in Germany. Thus, the idea of democratizing urban life promoted by the Solidarity City network not only refers to the implementation of municipal social and/or protection

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policies for vulnerable non-citizens such as refugees and undocumented migrants, but also refers to finding ways to build new forms of living together in non-hierarchical inclusive ways and thus to foster cultural pluralism. For the Berlin case, Baban and Rygiel (2017) have analyzed approaches of radical cosmopolitanism in various welcome and support initiatives. We have provided further examples such as the Oranienplatz-Camp and the Berlin round table on health care for refugees and undocumented migrants. While the activities of the Oranienplatz-Camp were of a self-­ organized and grassroots character, the Berlin round table on the anonymous health card initiative included community-based politicians and administration as well as civil society organizations and was more of an officially organized initiative. Still others, particularly many of the local initiatives designed to foster cultural pluralism at a local level, have emerged outside of the political activist scene and Solidarity City movements would benefit greatly from seeking stronger connections to them. Irrespective of their differences, the coalitions and networks of Solidarity and Sanctuary Cities articulate a deep political disagreement with the increasingly restrictive and exclusionary migration policies being enacted at the national and regional level. This political disagreement becomes particularly obvious when we look at the tense relationship between national and city governments in the United States and Italy. In both countries, city mayors and social movements, who defend the Solidarity City movement and defend migrants’ rights, are threatened with criminalization and by their respective national governments’ decisions to cut back municipal funding. In this context, more than being formal status, the Sanctuary and Solidarity City are heterogeneous movements making strong political statements and demands at a time when we are witnessing a right-wing force growing globally. Herein, specifically, lies the Solidarity City’s political relevance and potential strength. An important question is whether migrants’ rights movements, progressive local governments and city administrations can find sufficient common ground. This requires, first, the time and space to talk and listen to each other, to discuss visions and recognize differences. This can be difficult, especially for social movement actors, as it requires balancing cooperation and cooptation: to work with politicians and administrative staff while keeping up the political pressure through an antagonistic position. However, even if such initiatives are successful, they cannot depend on simply transferring the issues of the freedom of movement and social

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rights onto the municipal level, which would only produce a patchwork quilt of local regulations. Recognizing the right to global freedom of movement and settlement at the municipal level is limited in what it can achieve. Despite having some symbolic and discursive impact at the national, and even global level, as prominent examples like New York City show, changes at the municipal level cannot replace the importance of national policy with respect to rights and mobility, especially when governments implement more restrictive border and immigration policies. In order for a range of rights to become more widely accepted among the already extensive catalogue of human rights—rights such as the global freedom of movement and settlement, the recognition of cultural pluralism and the assertion of global social rights beyond cities—new forms of coalition building are needed. This includes, for example, civil society actors working on development policy, progressive government administrations and politicians at the national and regional levels. A growing number of politicians and activists in urban policy coalitions understand that migration struggles and urban citizenship policies are not sectoral issues, but rather emphasize the common interests of (allegedly) disparate groups, and are principally social justice issues. Particularly the linking of demands for a right to free movement and global social rights in the city opens the possibility of posing a solidary and inclusive answer to the neoliberal and far-right European elites.

Notes 1. According to the UNHCR, nearly 2300 people drowned in 2018 intending to cross the Mediterranean United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2018). 2. In Latin America, a similar network figures under the notion of “ciudades solidarias” (Solidarity Cities). It consists of governments and administrations of several Latin American cities, among them Quilcura in Chile, Sao Paulo in Brasil and Desamaparados in Costa Rica. The ciudades solidarias network was promoted by UNHCR after the so-called Cartagena process in 1984. The Cartagena declaration was signed by most of the Latin American governments. It includes several agreements and policies for the Latin American context by following the principles of the Geneva Refugee Convention. One of these policies is fostering the local integration of refugees through urban policies (UNHRC 2005/2007; Cidade de Sao Paulo 2018). 3. The UN-Process of Compact came along with its rejection by the right-­ wing governments of several UN-member states. These governments,

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among them the United States, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Australia, Israel and Switzerland, criticized that Compact would openly plea for erasing borders and they refused to sign the respective documents (see http://theconversation.com/global-compact-for-migration-what-is-it-and-why-are-countries-opposing-it-106654; Accessed 22.01.2019). 4. See https://shedhalle.ch/shedhalle/ Accessed 22 January 2019.

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CHAPTER 5

State, Civil Society, and Syrians in Turkey Hande Paker and E. Fuat Keyman

Introduction The promise of an inclusive transnational sphere offered by a cosmopolitan ethics of recognizing the “Other” seems to be fading. On the one hand, long-standing global problems, such as inequality and poverty, climate change, and violence escalate. On the other hand, populist and authoritarian governments that prioritize parochial interests and follow divisive politics prevail. This state of affairs has been defined as a “global turmoil” (Brzezinski 2012), which has led to an unprecedented increase in the number of refugees. For the people who are on the move as a result of security risks, economic vulnerability, or ecological crises, the world seems a dangerous place beset by uncertainties and hostility. Ulrich Beck (2002) argues that these global risks create a “cosmopolitan imperative.”

H. Paker (*) Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] E. F. Keyman Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_5

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Living with others is an everyday reality, and the complexities of this require solutions beyond nation-state-based thinking. Beck’s (2005) “risk society” may have come to pass; but, ironically, the cosmopolitan framework that could offer a common ground for cooperation to address paramount global challenges is being undermined by increasing racism, closing borders, and diminishing freedoms. Turkey is at the epicenter of global and regional challenges, especially in terms of its position at the crossroads of problems of failed states, global terrorism, and most notably the Syrian refugee crisis. As a result of state failure in the region, whereby the state loses its capacity to govern its territory, along with its monopoly of violence and its sovereignty, a great number of people have been pushed into mobility. Syria, over which both civil and proxy wars have been waged with no end in sight, represents the ultimate point of the crisis. State failure creates further security risks with global impacts such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The fact that more than 5.6 million Syrians (UNHCR 2018) have risked everything to leave Syria, including their lives, shows that state failure is a survival issue, rather than simply a border and security issue, and one that requires a humanitarian response shaped by a bottom-up approach to living together. The manifestation of global turmoil in the region has meant that Syrians have sought refuge in mainly Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. These countries bear the main share of the burden. Turkey, which hosts some 3.6 million Syrians, must meet the challenge of providing for and integrating these newcomers. This challenge is complicated by questions of democratic participation and living in diversity within Turkish society. In the following pages, we argue that Turkey needs to move beyond ad hoc measures shaped to a large degree by a sense of hospitality, and toward a model of governance, in order to develop a rights-based approach to the refugee issue. As the stay of Syrian refugees in Turkey enters its 8th year and with 393 Syrian babies born every day in the country, the “guest” discourse institutionalized though the “temporary protection status” given to Syrians is no longer sustainable for bringing about co-existence in a political and social context increasingly marked by polarization, discrimination, and exclusion. Analyzing civil society actors that work with refugees, we further argue that the crucial role they play in generating common spaces based on trust and reciprocity needs to be supported and extended by an enabling state. We show that several factors shape the bottom-up capacity of civil society to cultivate co-existence. These include a limiting discourse of hospitality, state-led integration processes, Othering

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processes, differences among civil society actors in terms of service-based versus grassroots approaches, and constraints imposed by donors.

Making Room for Inevitable Diversity: Civil Society as Intermediator for Co-Existence Heterogeneous societies are the norm rather than the exception, and 40 years of globalizing forces have transformed the national framework to govern them. The unprecedented mobility of people crossing borders as a result of “global turmoil” further challenges the capacity of nation-states to address mixed societies. Paradoxically, more states declare commitment to homogenizing notions such as the primacy of naturalized populations and parochial interests. Yet, the current context of flows of refugees and increased migration makes living together in diversity “a banal reality” (Beck 2006, 2011) that we all share. The complex question of who belongs, which has always been at the center of cosmopolitanism, also defines our times and is far from settled. Actual experiences of accommodating diversity have already refuted the ideas of assimilation and multiculturalism, since the former generates exclusion, at best, and violence, at worst, while the latter locks identities, based on diverse sources of belonging, into essentializing and isolated categories (Baban and Rygiel 2014). Co-existence denotes the ability of living side-by-side peacefully, agreeing minimally on the right of the Other to share a common space, but it does not necessarily involve interactions to shape that space and create a common ground like the idea of living together does. Recent scholarship (Erskine 2002; Kothari 2008; Fisher Onar and Paker 2012) on cosmopolitanism analyzes everyday encounters, which also makes for a politicized cosmopolitanism that takes into account conflict as well as recognition. Cosmopolitanism from below is politicized precisely because marginalized populations make demands shaped by their particularized attachments to transform the prevalent imaginaries and offer alternatives (Baban and Rygiel 2014). In the case of refugees, cosmopolitanism from below has to do with negotiating a common public sphere, one entered into by individuals, who each hold multiple belongings and affiliations. Cosmopolitanism from below recognizes that engaging with differences inevitably involves a process of building solidarity and

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negotiation and contention, without which alternative forms for organization of the commons cannot be constructed. Civil society plays a vital role in fostering “radical cosmopolitanism” (Baban and Rygiel 2017, 2018). The “cosmopolitan imperative” (Beck 2002), which imposes the recognition that “we are all in the same boat,” becomes embodied in practices and spheres of civil society actors that bring together diverse communities, including refugees and locals, in our specific case discussed in this chapter. We agree with Baban and Rygiel (2014, 2017, 2018) that such practices of exchange and interaction can be “transgressive” in the sense that they demand of both parties a willingness to first engage one another and then change their preconceived notions of the Other. While many examples of grassroots organizations in this book demonstrate the role of civil society in strengthening living together, the context-specific factors in Turkey have led civil society to adopt approaches that predominantly aim for co-existence, construed as a service-oriented action, much like providing health or education services. It is not surprising that given the shrinking civic space for democratic participation in Turkey recently, service-based approaches in civil society have taken over, considering the increased costs of rights-based action. That said, examples of grassroots organizations have also emerged in Turkey, which have from the beginning defined their engagement with Others as living together. This is the bottom-up work of building a participatory common ground, which supports interactions between hosts and newcomers. In doing so, it is involved in trust building. The role of civil society in strengthening networks of reciprocity and trust has been underlined by the concept of social capital. In his classic work, Putnam (1993) defines social capital as aspects of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, which improve coordination. Social capital is seen as a form of social organization, which crosscuts existing social and political cleavages. In this regard, communities, networks, and voluntary associations are “microclimates” in which relations of cooperation and trust are developed. This is because incentives for trust and cooperation are stronger in associations and small communities. Given the frequency of face to face interaction, social norms are more likely to be reinforced through familiarity and peer pressure, and the members of the group can see on a small scale that the welfare of the whole depends on individual actions of the members (Edwards 2009). While work on social capital in civic networks has been influential in highlighting the role of civil society, it has also been criticized for an

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important omission of failing to pay sufficient attention to the role of the state. The critical role that the state plays in shaping the nature of civil society is well established (Migdal 2004; Evans 1995, 1996). Relatedly, scholars have emphasized that the impact that state institutions have on social capital can be supportive or inhibitive (Levi 1996; Hall 1995; Rothstein 2001; Rothstein and Stolle 2008). State institutions create a link between micro and macro levels of trust, with state institutions as the determinants of generalized trust, since the building and maintenance of high institutional trust levels depends on the degree of perceived fairness and impartiality of institutions responsible for the implementation of public policies, which then spills over to generalized trust (Rothstein and Stolle 2008). Therefore, the synergy created by the bottom-up approach of civil society for promoting living together can only be extended in interaction with an enabling state.

Civil Society Actors Working with Refugees in Turkey Civil society actors in Turkey do crucial work to increase interactions among local communities and Syrians. These efforts show that they contribute to familiarity and willingness of both communities to engage one another. Here, we discuss the activities of civil society organizations working with refugees, especially with the aim of understanding how they build a common space in which locals and newcomers contribute mutually, thereby building networks of trust and reciprocity. In addressing the question of how civil society actors facilitate living together, we use data based on research carried out on civil society organizations (CSOs) working with Syrian refugees in Turkey. The fieldwork took place between 2017 and 2018  in Istanbul, Gaziantep and Hatay. Gaziantep and Hatay are selected because they have received a substantial number of refugees, which now amount to almost half of their total population. Many international, national, grassroots, and Syrian CSOs are also located in these border cities. Istanbul not only has the highest number of Syrian refugees, but it is also home to various types of CSOs. Qualitative methods were used to capture the type of issues which CSOs focus on, the type of approaches they adopt in undertaking these issues, the nature of the relations they establish with the state and local governments, and the challenges they face in their sociopolitical environment as well as the daily

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experiences of Syrians. First, in-depth interviews were carried out with representatives of CSOs. The group of CSOs selected included those working at the national level, Syrian CSOs, international non-­governmental organizations (NGOs), and grassroots organizations in order to ensure a representation of different types, tasks, and approaches of civil society actors. A total of 22 interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview schedule, securing systematic data collection, while simultaneously allowing for open-ended discussions in which participants could raise alternative points or concerns. Second, two focus group discussions were organized to complement the in-depth interviews. The first focus group was organized in Gaziantep with Syrian men, while the second focus group was organized in Istanbul with Syrian women. Both groups consisted of about nine to ten participants. These focus groups were especially important for understanding the daily interactions between locals and newcomers. In addition to the fieldwork, a desktop component was completed which analyzed relevant reports, documents, and output of workshops attended.1 A diverse array of civil society actors work for and with refugees in Turkey. Their activities fall under three general categories: emergency relief, protection services, and co-existence. In the first phase of civil society activity in relation to refugees, as to be expected, emergency relief, such as the distribution of relief items, predominated.2 As the stay of refugees lengthened, the need and provision of services from CSOs increased. CSOs provide a range of services from protection to education and basic health care services. Protection involves: case-based responses, mental health and psycho-social support, counseling on matters such as registering a birth, renewing a temporary protection card or registering kids in school, establishing links with relevant institutions, and raising awareness about violence against women or child marriages. Educational services mostly consist of language courses; however, the educational activities that CSOs can undertake have been severely curtailed and, currently, very few select CSOs are allowed to offer courses. This is because the state increased regulation and centralization of education of Syrians. First, the government initiated the 2014 Ministry of Education Circular that emphasized the responsibilities of the public authorities in this area. Later, with the “National Harmonization Strategy” from 2016 onward, the government developed a refugee education policy aimed at integrating all of the school-­ age Syrian population into the national education system (Biehl et  al. 2018). A similar trend of centralizing government services played out in

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relation to health services as well. From 2013 onward, Syrians were granted access to nationwide healthcare services (provided that they were registered) and to care in migrant health centers coordinated by the Ministry of Health (Biehl et al. 2018). In the final phase of the response to the refugee inflow, peaceful co-­ existence has emerged as one of the most important challenges to be addressed. Even though the services offered by CSOs remain crucial for the ability of newcomers to navigate a bureaucratic and legal system with which they may be unfamiliar, they have diversified to include efforts to address challenges associated with co-existence (variably expressed as integration or social cohesion). With passing time, the need for emergency relief has waned while the question of co-existence has become inevitable.3 Therefore, many CSOs have started addressing the question of how hosts and newcomers can live together in the same society and share common spaces. Nevertheless, a majority of civil society actors have approached this question in terms of service provision. Although rights-based social and political participation flourished in Turkey in the 2000s, with civil society actors playing a crucial role in many areas including democratization, EU integration, living with diversity and protection of the commons, their work continues to be constrained by structural factors. These include the uneasy relationship with the state (historically defined as hierarchical and exclusionary), and limited societal support for rights-based activism in the ̇ civic sphere (Keyman and Içduygu 2003; Keyman 2005; Paker et al. 2013; Center for American Progress et  al. 2017). Such structural factors have become more restrictive in the increasingly hostile political environment for democratic participation. As a result, civil society actors have either chosen to respect the “red lines” of the state, and to work within the matrix of “national interest” and “duty to the state,” or they have shifted their activities toward less controversial service provision. Nevertheless, despite the deteriorating crackdown on any form of opposition, civic grassroots initiatives, citizens’ forums, horizontal networks, and community organizations, in addition to rights-based CSOs, have all continued to burgeon. In the case of refugees, these types of organizations construct their relationship with newcomers in terms of co-producing a commonly shared social and political space to live together. However, it is imperative that the state takes an enabling role in its relationship to civil society for any widespread meaningful impact that grassroots organizations can make. Civil society actors have directed their energies to fostering peaceful co-existence, which involves creating spaces where locals and newcomers

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may meet, spend time together and get to know one another. They create these spaces of engagement through exchange of artistic expressions and cultural activities, language courses, employment/work projects, cooking experiences, craftwork production, get-together events, and child-­oriented activities. Some of these civil society activities crosscut one another to serve multiple purposes. For example, language courses organized with both hosts and refugees, or focus groups organized to understand refugees’ needs, simultaneously bring together locals and newcomers. Educational activities geared toward children, such as organizing sports and cultural events, arts workshops, or kid friendly zones, are all part of a larger effort to integrate Syrian children into school. CSOs sometimes accompany families to register children in school to address the language barrier. These examples show how CSOs combine services with integration activities. When CSOs organize activities through which locals and Syrians come together—whether through art, work, cooking, or socializing together— these activities decrease isolation, prejudices and misconceived perceptions based on false information and, ultimately, cultivate co-existence. This is because they create a public sphere in which both locals and refugees participate and get to know one another. There are diverse mediums of building common ground and some civil society actors, especially grassroots organizations, have focused on community building and participatory exchange. For example, one grassroots initiative has pioneered practices of living together by creating an open space that invites host communities and refugee groups to come together to find common ground through culinary exchange and art exhibitions.4 The organization also translated and distributed a pamphlet on Syrian society and civil war prepared by Syrian youth in Gaziantep, which became a contact point bringing together youth from Syria and Turkey. These points of convergence strengthen the prospects of living together because they create awareness that “we think the same things” and “we enjoy the same things.”5 Work/employment projects in which CSOs mediate employment of both hosts and refugees in public are also crucial for creating spaces where both communities can participate and engage with one another. For example, a national CSO signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education and the municipalities to carry out a “cash for work” project where the CSO pays for the labor costs of both locals and Syrians, who are then employed in municipalities or schools.6 Work/employment projects increase encounters between host and newcomer communities and reduce

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tensions in a number of ways. First, they reduce tensions between employers and employees that might result from differences in work cultures. Second, they bring together locals and Syrians who get the opportunity to work side-by-side. This allows locals and newcomers to share their stories, even if they do not speak one another’s language, and to build relations, which one of the CSO representatives carrying out this work describes as being “excellent.”7 Finally, they change the perception, often held within local communities, that Syrians are receiving benefits and services while locals, who are also struggling with poverty, are being ignored. This perception is a major source of tension and has underscored the need for a community approach that involves both hosts and newcomers. Occupational courses, such as cooking and handicrafts, are also important in this way for facilitating community-based integration and because they strengthen labor market opportunities that can increase the autonomy of refugees. Both national and Syrian CSOs, as well as grassroots organizations, regularly organize many get-together events such as cooking, crafts production, and child-oriented activities that cultivate mutual encounters. Examples include Syrian and mixed women’s groups, who come together in social gatherings, such as teatime, where women invite their neighbors for tea and socialize. Child-oriented activities also make up a large part of civil society initiatives. These include taking mixed groups of local and refugee children to parks and the theater, and organizing festivals, art workshops, and sporting events for the children. Such activities provide the opportunity for Syrian and local children to participate in common activities together and are significant in increasing encounters, which also have a positive impact on the parents who observe their children in a co-­ sharing setting, thereby challenging their prejudices.8 Recognizing that language constitutes both a barrier and a bridge to living together, many CSOs organize language courses, which aim to turn barriers into bridges. There are a variety of forms of language education programs available. These range from language courses offered as conversation clubs to more formal educational Turkish courses organized by national CSOs, which are now “accredited” after signing a protocol with the government. They also include Turkish classes for Syrian children and Arabic courses for Turkish students organized by Syrian CSOs. Finally, workshops with both Syrian and Turkish teachers train them in engaging mixed classes with Turkish and Syrian students from different age groups.

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Community centers have also become prevalent as places where a mixture of these activities promoting co-existence take place, in addition to the services reviewed above. Many CSOs now run community centers aimed at increasing relations between host and refugee communities. Community centers organize child-oriented activities, often including mothers as well in activities geared toward women’s issues such as women’s health. They also give group-specific support to women’s or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) groups. Syrian women’s groups also participate in community centers and events aimed at raising awareness about child marriage and women’s rights and disseminating information on these issues through the pamphlets they have prepared. Also important for peaceful co-existence is the work of civil society in raising awareness about migration and recent change, directed at both refugee and local populations in order to dispel myths about one another. This can be especially important to counteract prejudices and misinformation about Syrians. In one case, a grassroots organization prepared a booklet in Turkish, English, and Arabic on vital information, such as how to register children in schools and distributed this throughout the neighborhoods with which they work.9 Another grassroots organization organized workshops with civil society representatives and activists, raising discussion about the issue of co-existence.10 Civil society engagement in advocacy is relatively limited. There are some efforts in this direction, such as organizing a meeting to bring together CSOs and state officials working on refugee issues or creating platforms where CSOs share experiences.11 Some CSOs also aim to involve state institutions more directly in the work being carried out in the field and offer support to state institutions whether by giving seminars to relevant officials, directing individual cases to these institutions or inviting state representatives as speakers in workshops to increase state capacity.12 One Syrian organization, for example, conducted workshops and prepared reports on proposals to improve the education services offered to Syrians and shared them with the Ministry of Education.13 The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, the AFAD (Afet ve Acil Durum Yönetimi Başkanlığı), and the Directorate General of Migration Management, the main state institutions working in the field of refugees in Turkey, organized meetings with the participation of all CSOs for several years and ending in 2016.14 This can be seen as an indication of declining opportunities for civil society participation and again underlines the necessity for an enabling state.

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Some civil society organizations explicitly state that they are not involved in advocacy.15 This is partly explained by the perception held by CSOs that the state is doing all that it can, given the scale of the issue. Europe is more severely criticized in this regard, because it is perceived as having closed its doors to refugees while it has a much greater capacity to receive refugees. Some also underline that state regulation is to be expected since the state needs to govern and regulate in areas such as health and education according to “its terms of reference” and, moreover, that regulation is necessary to avoid abuse.16 Nor is there a rights-based refugee movement in Turkey. The lack of a rights-based refugee movement can be explained by the political context in Turkey as well as the approach taken by political actors toward the refugee issue. In this political context, two dimensions (discussed further in the next section)—political discourse and relations with the state—play a role in understanding why a rights-based approach and advocacy is limited within civil society. As well, the fact that refugees are granted only temporary protection status leaves them with a more precarious standing, making it more difficult for refugees to make political demands. The next section analyzes the political context in which civil society actors work to facilitate co-existence through two crucial dimensions: political discourse and relations with the state. We first show how political discourse in relation to refugees has an adverse impact on the ability of civil society to increase the willingness of both local and refugee communities to engage one another. We then examine relations between civil society and the state and argue that political discourse based on hospitality and the state’s top-down integration approach need to be replaced by a model of governance empowered by an enabling state, manifested especially at the local government level.

The Political Context Facing Civil Society Organizations in Turkey The Limits of Hospitality as a Discourse The political discourse on refugees has, from the beginning, been shaped by an emphasis on hospitality, in line with the open-door policy Turkey adopted. Though it briefly created a welcoming effect, it never became widely accepted and remained in the domain of the government. Political discourse has an impact on both local and Syrian communities. First, the

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discourse of politicians reflects Turkey’s deeply polarized political context. Polarization has emerged as an increasingly crucial issue, making for divisive politics mainly along the historically formed cleavages of secular versus religious/conservative and Turkish versus Kurdish identities. Polarization has led to conducting politics along the lines of pre-existing cleavages and identities rather than issue-based politics. Accordingly, pre-existing cleavages based on party affiliation Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (AKP-CHP) or religious sect (Sunni-­ Alevite) shape the response of locals to Syrians. The opposition, especially the main opposition party, has criticized government policies, regardless of their content, simply because they are policies offered by the government. The reflection of the politics of polarization on the refugee issue means that the opposition adopts exclusionary attitudes toward refugees and helps perpetuate misinformation, because the open-door policy belongs to the AKP government. Inevitably, Syrians become instrumentalized in the politics of polarization in Turkey. This discourse shapes the perceptions of citizens of Turkey according to party affiliation, conflating opposition to the government with resentment toward Syrians. Moreover, it reproduces false information and myths about Syrian communities, such as, for example, that they receive salaries from the government or that they will receive citizenship. It also leaves in a precarious position many Syrians who live in fear of being sent back should there be a change in government. CSOs underline that the lack of transparency in state policies, and the absence of government statements aimed at correcting false information regarding Syrians, help perpetuate myths.17 It is not only the opposition’s political discourse that creates resentment toward Syrians. For a long time, the government used the discourse of Syrians being “guests” to emphasize their stay in Turkey as being temporary. While it fostered a welcoming attitude on the part of the local population in the beginning, it became damaging to co-existence, as the stay of Syrians lengthened into a more permanent situation. There is a strong culture of hosting guests in Turkey. Citizens of Turkey take pride in being good hosts and guests are valued and cared for. By the same token, however, the guest culture carries expectations attached to how guests should behave, as a CSO representative summarizes splendidly: You know this concept of the guest, the notion that the guest takes what s/ he finds and not what s/he hopes for and all its (implications)—and the Syrians are convinced too. We are guests anyway, we are overstaying our

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welcome (ayıp ediyoruz)—with this, they make no demands for their rights. Citizens of Turkey also do not have a rights-based approach in their interaction with Syrians. ‘So (the public thinks) the guest can stay for a limited amount of time. We do our best for them. But a longer stay is unpleasant. It is time for them to leave. We did what we could, we showed our hospitality as best as we could.18

Furthermore, the political discourse built around “Syrians as guests in Turkey” inhibits a rights-based framework toward refugees. The prospects of Syrians acquiring citizenship are left ambiguous and resented by the public at large while policies looking toward the future of Syrians remaining in Turkey are largely absent. The guest discourse facilitates a charity-­ based response to Syrians, and it prevents discussion of how Syrians might exercise legal rights, such as those conferred by citizenship. In addition, there are no channels through which Syrians can participate in the decision-­ making processes that concern them. The data presented here shows that the hospitality discourse is unsustainable. It is not sustainable for Turkey because it deepens polarization and fails to generate consent, not only from the supporters of the opposition but also the constituency of the AKP. It is not sustainable from the perspective of Syrians because it perpetually keeps them in a temporary and hence precarious state. This exclusionary political and social context, marked by resentment toward newcomers, limits the role that civil society can play in creating an inclusive common sphere. Alternatively, a model of governance, led by an enabling state, could strengthen the role that CSOs might play in responding to Syrian refugees. For this reason, we next unpack in the section below the state-civil society relations in refugee issues to understand whether and how the state can support and extend the co-existence practices at the grassroots. The Indispensability of an Enabling State Recent years in Turkey have been defined by a rapidly shrinking space for civic and political participation in general. CSOs working with refugees have seen their centers closed or their licenses revoked, especially in the case of international NGOs.19 As the state has re-established its monopoly with respect to the fields of health and education, the multi-actor situation that prevailed in the beginning has turned into one where the state tightly controls who can provide services and how. Starting in 2016, the state

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took over many of the services carried out by CSOs in health and education. The government canceled many permits, especially of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), that then left the country in due time. Some national CSOs were able to sign protocols with the government detailing the conditions under which these CSOs could continue to offer language courses, by applying and going through a security check.20 While these protocols give state recognition to some CSOs and facilitate cooperation with them, CSOs highlight the fact that the content of the protocols is prepared by the Ministry and not the CSOs, which makes the state the sole party that defines the type of cooperation that can be undertaken.21 CSOs also underline that their interaction with the state is characterized on the part of the latter by a reflex to control.22 If and when the state can improve its own capacity, then the civil society is pushed out, as was the case in education and health. CSOs also point out that the government does not want to share information and requires approval for continuing civil society activities.23 CSOs are fully aware of the unwillingness of the state to include civil society. They have to develop active strategies to cooperate and to “eliminate the prejudices of the state.”24 In an effort to cultivate good relations with the state, one CSO includes actions such as including government officials in seminars and workshops that they organize, visiting with officials as part of a pre-fixed monthly program to understand the “sensitivities” of state institutions, following the activities that state institutions organize and offering to hold joint activities on common themes, and collaborating on projects.25 As a result of these efforts, members of this CSO have seen a significant change in the approach of government officials toward them. While in the beginning officials refused to meet and were suspicious of them based on rumors that they were a “Christian organization distributing bibles,” they built relationships of trust and respect through their efforts to cooperate, so much so that they were one of the very few organizations that could get permits for their activities when the permits of many CSOs were canceled.26 Nevertheless, state-civil society interaction transpires very selectively and is tightly controlled from above. Even when CSOs are not excluded outright (as was the case with INGOs), the government carefully monitors the activities it allows CSOs to carry out and it is hostile toward what it defines as imposition on its own jurisdiction and “allowing the national CSOs just to exist.”27

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That said, there is also a general sense of approbation toward the state among civil society actors that work with refugees. CSOs feel that the government has done more than its fair share in opening its doors and providing for Syrian refugees.28 Despite policy shortcomings, these do not seem significant in the face of the failure of other actors to act, notably the EU. Still, representatives of CSOs point out places where there is need for more active government policy. For instance, CSOs criticize the Ministry of Education for the lack of policies or projects addressing discrimination toward Syrian children at school29 and training teachers to work with children who have experienced trauma.30 Despite these shortcomings or proposed improvements, CSOs grant that the Ministry of Education has done very well in terms of increasing the number of children in formal education, from about 17% in 2014 to 64% in 2018 (Biehl et al. 2018). In developing a governance approach where civil society actors are empowered to act through more inclusive state-civil society interactions, the role of local government figures prominently. In the case of civil society’s response to the refugee issue in Turkey, this is attested to by the emphasis several CSOs place on the importance of working together with municipalities. They make an attempt to cooperate with state officials, especially at the local level. One reason for this is the scale of the services required which is much larger than CSOs can meet. Another reason is that municipalities are much better placed to respond to the needs and problems of refugees. State institutions at the national level, such as the Directorate General of Migration Management, are removed from and unaware of local needs and dynamics. This is why a lot of CSOs perceive local governments as important actors with which to collaborate with in carrying out activities and programs. In fact, most of the collaboration with the state takes place at the local level. CSOs also cooperate with muhtars (administrators at the neighborhood level) to reach Syrian communities. Some grassroots organizations have specifically engaged local governments to increase diversity, framing them as the main actors who hold a mandate to facilitate co-existence. One grassroots organization stresses that they are working on cultivating a “local government approach that is more inclusive, pluralist, just towards all existing diversity and that offers a multilingual, multicultural public sphere.”31 In this regard, they make use of the Law on Municipalities which defines responsibilities of municipalities to “fellow denizens,” to demand from municipalities an inclusionary

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program for living in diversity, as the following words of a member of the grassroots organization show: The 13. article states that everyone who resides within the borders of the Municipality is a fellow denizen. And it does not limit this definition to ethnic identity, country citizenship or a specified group as such. It says everyone (emphasis added). Everyone in the Municipality includes the Syrians, Afghanis, or people with official residency in another city. The article goes on to say that they can participate in decision-making processes. This is why we emphasize fellow denizen. To say to the municipalities that Syrians are also your fellow denizens because they live in your jurisdiction.32

Local Encounters, Trust Building, and Living Together The importance of civil society building a common ground that is supported by an enabling state is accentuated when we consider that the social context in which everyday interactions are embedded is increasingly characterized by processes of Othering. This section delineates these processes that constitute a challenge to civil society actors working to enhance coexistence. These include discrimination, resentment emanating from daily encounters, and myths circulating about Syrians. For instance, Syrians are discriminated against when they are asked to pay higher rents or are paid lower wages, but then resentment builds up as a result of changes in life conditions of the local community, such as rising rents and falling wages. Daily encounters lead to offhand observations as well (observations such as “they have run away from the war and hang out here; we would have fought; they are lazy”; “Syrian women are overdressed and too made-up”; or “they don’t take care of their children, they take care of themselves”).33 Finally, circulating myths about Syrians around admittance to university or distribution of citizenship increase the resentment of locals who assume unfair treatment.34 These processes inevitably shape the impact that civil society can make in terms of strengthening co-­existence. They are significant challenges that undermine the possibility of constructing an inclusive common public sphere. The fact that processes of Othering are becoming more prevalent is not only an observation made by CSOs but is also based on common daily life experiences that Syrians share.35

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Another constraint in building a peaceful co-existence and networks of trust is the isolation of refugees from local communities. Refugee communities remain isolated to a large extent and interactions as traders and neighbors are informed largely by tolerance. Refugee and local community engagement based on tolerance often occurs in the private sphere (e.g. being neighbors) rather than developing from politicized solidarities. These neighborly relations, conducted in the terms of the private sphere, do not go beyond aid or charity and, as such, do not give rise to participatory commons forged mutually by the locals and newcomers. Rather, these are encounters without cross-engagements and are just as likely to reproduce prejudices. Grassroots Approaches to Facilitating Living Together In strengthening governance, it is important to recognize that civil society adopts different approaches, some of which are more likely to contribute to building trust from the bottom-up. Civil society actors work on similar issues in relation to refugees. Since newcomers mainly face challenges in accessing services, as well as adapting to a new life and country, CSOs focus their efforts on supporting refugees in their ability to access relief items and services, as well as integrating within the host society. However, civil society actors differ in their approach to handling these issues. Some CSOs, mostly local/grassroots organizations have, from the beginning, held an understanding built around living together. Thus, they criticize the service-based approach, predominant in civil society working with refugees, for not being conducive to the mutual interaction and participation of both communities, as well as for failing to take into account the perspective of service receivers.36 For instance, a local grassroots organization, which emerged in 2010 before the arrival of Syrian refugees in Turkey, defined their interaction with newcomers as one of solidarity rather than a passive relationship between service givers and service takers. This interaction is based on the recognition that living together can be realized through co-creating common ground. As one activist who is an NGO worker has comparatively discussed: … we had, in effect, set up a community center without any funds. One gave dance lessons, another, Turkish, another was taking Arabic lessons … I mean everyone—it is exactly our commons. Everyone gives in the capacity of their talents and takes according to their need. And this without any funds, by

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collecting among us. Yes (there is) free food but it is not charity, it is not like come, we will give you food, but a way of setting a common table, common space. Yes (NGOs) distribute food but don’t establish that (connection). Because (on) the common table there is food yes, but it is food that creates the common space.37

Grassroots organizations that define their work in terms of finding commonalities communicated through arts, cultural events, and culinary experiences prioritize reciprocity and solidarity and explicitly distinguish themselves from organizations that are charity-oriented and carry out protection activities for the refugees who are perceived as “victims.”38 They criticize the approach of larger, mostly international NGOs, which are focused on service provision, working almost like a municipality, and which lack knowledge of the local context and, therefore, devise solutions that are ineffective and unsustainable. The kind of encounters between Syrians and locals that build trust and create the awareness that “these people are no different from us,”39 emerge from bottom-up, reciprocal exchanges. Grassroots organizations engender these bottom-up exchanges, which can result in building forms of radical cosmopolitanism. Through engaging with Others, commonalities are recognized that can serve as the basis of meeting the challenges of the “cosmopolitan imperative” (Beck 2002). Being locally grown is also an important factor that distinguishes the approach of grassroots CSOs from national and international NGOs, with important implications for trust building. Members of one locally situated grassroots organization, which originally emerged in response to urban regeneration and gentrification, were already meeting with the residents of their various neighborhoods to talk about what could be done in relation to the problems residents were experiencing when Syrians began arriving and settling. As an extension of their work in these neighborhoods, which was motivated by the question of what they could do for their neighbors and how they could show solidarity with one another, they felt that they had to ask the same questions in relation to the newly arriving refugees who were also becoming their neighbors. Since they were already embedded in networks marked by trust and solidarity, they did not have issues of access that large NGOs faced in entering neighborhoods.40 These grassroots organizations aim for the active inclusion of the members of the neighborhood. Their participatory approach has important implications for both sustainability and living together. The common

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denominator of “getting to know one another” facilitates sustainability by establishing networks at the grassroots level, which can also build trust for living together by expanding the networks to newcomers. In this way, locals and newcomers engage with one another beyond tolerance or co-­ existence, as conceptualized by radical cosmopolitanism. The participatory aspect of living together is also shaped by the concerns that grassroots organizations have in developing a humanitarian response to problems that refugees experience and, in particular, around the rights of refugee children. In this respect, one organization has developed certain ground rules, such as avoiding using images of bad living conditions or the “cuteness”’ of children to appeal to aid, exercising discretion when distributing aid and not using cameras without the explicit permission of those being photographed or filmed.41 These ethical concerns help shape a humane and solidaristic approach that establishes relations of trust. The importance of local relationships is becoming more widely recognized as some institutionalized CSOs have started promoting “community-­ based protection” where refugees can start up networks by participating in the activities of community centers or encouraging community members themselves to raise awareness about crucial issues such as child marriage. Some representatives of CSOs are concerned that when they carry out protection activities on behalf of refugees, refugees will not be able to develop capabilities to adapt to their new society. In this regard, dealing with government institutions, making petitions, and making rights-based demands are all part of refugees getting out in the public sphere and increasing their own empowerment. The Impact of Funding Stipulations In addition to Othering processes and the different civil society approaches taken to foster interactions and build trust at the grassroots level, the final factor to consider is that of donor conditions which are attached to the funding of CSOs’ activities. Even though external funding increases the capacity of CSOs to maintain their activities, CSOs have to contend with challenges that arise with donor conditions. First, when funders stipulate that the funds are to be used only for the Syrian community, this contributes to the tension between newcomers and host communities and undermines co-existence. Since a substantial portion of civil society work is implemented in terms of projects, it is important to emphasize that they

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do not necessarily foster co-existence if, and when, they only target Syrians. Projects that only include Syrians undermine the sense of living together with new neighbors and the social acceptance of newcomers. Recognizing this, CSOs take care to include both newcomer and local communities when distributing aid items or organizing activities to countervail social tension and polarization. Funding agencies are also criticized for being unaware of local dynamics and for applying standardized models, which are often unsustainable, across a variety of different localities. In spite of the large amounts of money spent, top-down approaches fail to address local needs and to present long-term solutions. Another adverse impact on sustainability has to do with the short time horizon of projects. CSOs point out that most projects are designed to be completed within a year or two, which is insufficient time for preparation, analysis, evaluation, implementation, feedback, and improvement.42 In order to ensure sustainability, some CSOs focus on transferring their knowledge and experiences to the local communities and to empowering them to continue running community centers and programs, such as increasing awareness about the issue of child marriages.43 CSOs find that they have to apply certain methods simply as requirements for obtaining funding and, thus they must disregard their own methods based on an accumulation of local knowledge and experiences. As a result, CSOs not only lose autonomy but their funds may be wasted in fulfilling criteria that might not be appropriate or sufficient to address the problem at hand. Moreover, donor criteria such as beneficiary participation may remain on paper if the conditions for participation are too rigidly set. Instead of using the participatory methods that they have developed over the years, which are also in line with the local needs and dynamics of the community, some CSOs feel compelled to adopt the rigidly and externally defined criteria of donors.44 Finally, the pressure to produce concrete outcomes, as defined by donors, and to comply with imposed conditions regarding issues and methods, means that CSOs cannot work on issues that require long-term effort.45 For instance, there is no time to do in-depth research supported by input from academics even if CSOs preferred to proceed this way. They find that they are supposed to “reach 10,000 people in six months.”46 Some grassroots organizations choose to work with funding they raise from volunteers and the community. This type of “crowdfunding” enables civil society actors to avoid funding-related issues discussed above.

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Conclusion When Syrian refugees started arriving in Turkey, they were welcomed as guests. In the eight years that have passed, Turkey’s approach of hospitality, based on expectations that the stay of the guests would be temporary, has become insufficient to address the refugee issue. We have argued that the immense challenge of hosting and integrating 3.6 million newcomers in Turkey requires a governance process for a sustainable and effective response in a context where ad hoc measures shaped by a discourse of hospitality no longer work. Hospitality falls short of providing a framework strong enough to support living together by negotiating a common public sphere. Our analysis of CSOs and grassroots organizations working with refugees shows, however, that civil society makes an imperative contribution to building co-existence. Not only do CSOs bring together hosts and newcomers in common spaces that create transformative encounters, but they also facilitate trust building. Our research also confirms that political actors and their interaction with civil society significantly shape the scope and nature of the impact the latter can make. Thus, it is absolutely crucial for the state to take an enabling position to expand the bottom-­up practices of civil society, which are fundamental to realizing an inclusive and safe commons for diverse Others. Just as important are the local governments and interlocutors who can strengthen living together by making room for and supporting civil society. Looking at the latest dynamics in relation to the refugee issue in Turkey, it is clear that lack of governance will result in increased tensions between local and newcomer communities, failed integration, and a strengthening tendency of the state to define the refugee issue on an axis of security. Our analysis has shown that state actors need to make ample room for the contribution that civil society can make, as well as to provide full support to practices of living together. Acknowledgments  We are grateful to Günce Sabah Eryılmaz for her meticulous work, assistance, and enthusiasm throughout the research project. We would also like to thank our editors, Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel, whose comments and input greatly contributed to the final version of this chapter. The research work was generously funded by Mercator Stiftung in conjunction with Istanbul Policy Center.

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Notes 1. Twenty-eight reports published between 2013 and 2019 were reviewed. The following reports were relevant in particular: Baban and Rygiel (2018); International Crisis Group (2018); and IOM (2017). 2. Similar period classifications are made elsewhere, for instance, see Sunata and Tosun (2018). 3. This is not to say that emergency relief is no longer on the agenda because communities continue to struggle with poverty and as such, CSOs provide relief items, especially at certain transitional times when need becomes dire, for instance, the start of school year or seasonal transitions. 4. Interview 5, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; interview 6, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; see also the report by Baban and Rygiel (2018) for a thorough analysis of how arts can play a role in facilitating encounters that allow the co-creation of common spaces. 5. Interview 5, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017. 6. Interview 3, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, May 9, 2017; interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018. 7. Interview 3, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, May 9, 2017. 8. Interview 7, CSO representative, national organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; for example, parents from Turkey who were unwilling to send their children to community centers because they were worried that they might catch a disease from Syrian children became used to the idea once activities involving both groups became routine (Interview 12). 9. Interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 10. Interview 5, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017. 11. An education forum has been established to this end (Interview 10, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017). 12. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018. 13. Interview 19, CSO representative, Syrian organization, Istanbul, November 14, 2017. 14. Interview 15, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 24, 2017. 15. Interview 3, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, May 9, 2017.

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16. Interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017. 17. Interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 18. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018. 19. Interview 6, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; interview 7, CSO representative, national organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017. 20. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018; interview 19, CSO representative, Syrian organization, Istanbul, November 14, 2017; interview 21, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, October 25, 2017. 21. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018. 22. Interview 7, CSO representative, national organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; interview 15, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 24, 2017; interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017. 23. Interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017. 24. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Interview 14, CSO representative, national organization, Hatay, January 18, 2018; emphasis added. 28. Interview 3, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, May 9, 2017; interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018; interview 20, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017. 29. Interview 21, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, October 25, 2017. 30. Interview 11, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, October 25, 2017. 31. Interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 32. Ibid. 33. Interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; interview 20, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017.

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34. Interview 12, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, October 4, 2017. 35. Interview 1, CSO representative, Syrian organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; interview 2, CSO representative, Syrian organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; interview 12, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, October 4, 2017; interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017; interview 20, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017; focus group Istanbul. 36. Interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017; interview 5, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017; interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 37. Interview 4, CSO representative, international organization, Gaziantep, May 22, 2017. 38. Interview 5, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Gaziantep, May 23, 2017. 39. Ibid. 40. Interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017; interview 18, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, March 29, 2018. 44. Interview 20, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017. 45. Interview 13, CSO representative, national organization, Gaziantep, May 25, 2017; interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017; interview 20, CSO representative, grassroots organization, Istanbul, September 29, 2017. 46. Interview 16, CSO representative, national organization, Istanbul, June 8, 2017.

References Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2014). Snapshots from the Margins: Transgressive Cosmopolitanisms in Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 17(4), 461–478. Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2017). Living with Others: Fostering Radical Cosmopolitanism through Citizenship Politics in Berlin. Ethics & Global Politics, 10(1), 98–116.

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Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2018). Living Together: Fostering Cultural Pluralism Through the Arts. Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. Beck, U. (2002). The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(1–2), 17–44. Beck, U. (2005). World Risk Society. London: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2006). Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U. (2011). Cosmopolitanism as Imagined Communities of Global Risk. American Behavioral Scientist, 55(10), 1346–1361. Biehl, K., Cloeters, G., Hohberger, W., Osserian, S., Paker, H., & Üçkardeşler, E. (2018). Syrians in Turkey. Istanbul: Istanbul Policy Center. Brzezinski, Z. (2012). Strategic Vision. New York: Basic Books. Center for American Progress, the Istanbul Policy Center, and the Istituto Affari Internazionali. (2017). Trends in Turkish Civil Society: Turkey 2023 Task Force. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https://www.americanprogress. org/issues/security/reports/2017/07/10/435475/ trends-turkish-civil-society/. Edwards, M. (2009). Civil Society (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Erskine, T. (2002). ‘Citizen of Nowhere’ or ‘the Point Where Circles Intersect’? Impartialist and Embedded Cosmopolitanisms. Review of International Studies, 28(3), 457–478. Evans, P. (1995). Embedded Autonomy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Evans, P. (1996). Government Action, Social Capital and Development: Reviewing the Evidence on Synergy. World Development, 24(6), 1119–1132. Fisher Onar, N., & Paker, H. (2012). Towards Cosmopolitan Citizenship? Women’s Rights in Divided Turkey. Theory and Society, 41(4), 375–394. Hall, J.  A. (1995). Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison. Cambridge: Polity Press. International Crisis Group. (2018). Turkey’s Syrian Refugees: Defusing Metropolitan Tensions. Europe Report No. 248. Brussels: International Crisis Group. IOM, International Organization for Migration. (2017). Social Cohesion Assessment: Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Host-Refugee Cohesion in Three Districts in Turkey. Ankara: IOM/Turkey. Keyman, E. F. (2005). Modernity, Democracy, and Civil Society. In F. Adaman & M. Arsel (Eds.), Environmentalism in Turkey (pp. 49–64). Oxford/New York: Routledge. ̇ Keyman, E. F., & Içduygu, A. (2003). Globalization, Civil Society and Citizenship in Turkey: Actors, Boundaries and Discourses. Citizenship Studies, 7(2), 219–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362102032000065982. Kothari, U. (2008). Global Peddlers and Local Networks: Migrant Cosmopolitanisms. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 500–516.

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Levi, M. (1996). Social and Unsocial Capital: A Review Essay of Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work. Politics & Society, 24(1), 45–55. Migdal, J.  S. (2004). The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination. In by J. S. Migdal, A. Kohli and V. Shue (Eds.), State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (pp. 7–36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paker, H., Adaman, F., Kadirbeyoğlu, Z., & Özkaynak, B. (2013). Environmental Organizations in Turkey: Engaging the State and Capital. Environmental Politics, 22(5), 760–778. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2013.825138. Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rothstein, B. (2001). Social Capital in the Social Democratic Welfare State. Politics & Society, 29(2), 207–241. Rothstein, B., & Stolle, D. (2008). The State and Social Capital: An Institutional Theory of Generalized Trust. Comparative Politics, 40(4), 441–459. Sunata, U., & Tosun, S. (2018). Assessing the Civil Society’s Role in Refugee Integration in Turkey: NGO-R as a New Typology. Journal of Refugee Studies. Advanced Publishing Online: 17 September 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/ jrs/fey047. UNHCR. (2018). Syria Emergency. Retrieved September 12, 2019, from https:// www.unhcr.org/syria-emergency.html.

PART II

Everyday Practices of Living Together and Community Building Through Culture and the Arts

Introduction to Part II: by Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel The chapters in this book’s Part II, “Everyday Practices of Living Together and Community Building Through Culture and the Arts,” provide examples of various grassroots and civil society initiatives, whose principal objectives are fostering pluralism and promoting alternative forms of living together, using arts and cultural platforms to build more inclusive communities. The chapters are written by members, and in many case, the founders, who write from their first-hand experiences about the ideas of their organizations and initiatives. They also share their experiences of how artistic and cultural platforms become vehicles for welcoming newcomers and for making spaces in which to build inclusive community. The contributors, whether they are artists, activists, academics, writers and journalists, film makers, or food engineers, share a conviction in the importance of fostering more inclusionary ways of living together and a belief that this can be done through the venues of cultural and artistic platforms. We have invited these contributions based on our belief that the examples explored in this second section demonstrate a spirit of what the book’s Introduction discusses as radical or transgressive cosmopolitanism. Radical or transgressive cosmopolitanism is grounded in a belief in the normative importance of connectivity, an exchange in which individuals engage with each other and do so, not by ignoring or transcending particularities, but

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by being motivated through one’s own particularities to open oneself up to the other and to the experiences of being transformed by the exchange. In the following chapters 6 through 10 of this part, the contributors detail their projects and platforms to demonstrate how this idea of transgressive cosmopolitanism is not just a lofty ideal but rather a practical one, materialized through hard work, commitment, passion and creativity. They also share a conviction that the struggle to do so in a necessary one in order to address migration and the movement and settlement of newcomers in our communities but in ways that counter xenophobia and racism. The chapters deviate from more traditional academic texts in that contributors find their own language to express forms of connectivity, whether through dialogue and mutivocality, photography and drawing, poetry, and other forms of artistic expression, all of which are used to evoke the idea of pluralism and living together. These chapters are situated in conversation with the chapters found in Part I, which are written in a more academic style and outline some of the key concepts of the book such as cosmopolitanism, conviviality, solidarity, and co-existence, in order to encourage dialogue between academics, activists, artists and members of grassroots organizations. Written by those immersed in arts and cultural forms of production and founders and members of grassroots organizations that embody the philosophy of opening communities through the arts, the chapters in Part II show how such concepts can be operationalized on the ground through artistic and cultural platforms and forms of production.

CHAPTER 6

Stitching IMMART: Overcoming the Challenge of Inclusion Without Exclusion Through the Arts Nicol Savinetti, Sez Kristiansen, and Sacramento Roselló Martínez

Introduction International Migration Meets the Arts (IMMART) is an arts organization working to create opportunities for foreign artists and, in the process, to diversify the artscapes of the countries they are in. We do this by developing a local artist network and holding networking activities, by executing collaborative projects and events, and by contributing to the discourse on migration and integration. While IMMART has been in conversation with various arts and culture institutions and academics worldwide since its inception, thus far we have mostly been active in Denmark, and in 2019 we began activities in Sweden and Finland. We plan to reach even further afield. IMMART is in constant evolution and strives to listen and react to

N. Savinetti (*) • S. Kristiansen • S. R. Martínez IMMART, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_6

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the voice of its members. This has both challenged and motivated different participants at different times—listening and reacting take time. The idea of creating an inclusive organization that does not create its own exclusion of others in Denmark is a challenge largely because the notion that difference can be a powerful resource in society, which can be celebrated and can simply be, is both relatively new and challenging for a society that has a geography and history of uniformity and conformity.1 Before delving into the creation or stitching together of IMMART in the next section, this introduction presents some brief insights into modern-­ day Denmark in order to give more context to the organization’s foundations, trajectory, mission, and goals. Until the 1980s, Danes were born into a relatively homogenous society. The country’s geographical area is small and relatively uniform, with much of it consisting of flat countryside and agricultural land, small forests, long coastlines, and few city regions. By comparison, other Nordic countries, such as Sweden and Finland, are more diverse, and containing small populations spread over much vaster areas consisting of different landscapes, industries, and histories of indigeneity, foreign occupation and immigration, all of which result in greater diversity—and perhaps also a better understanding of this concept—and with different languages spoken. The state has a great influence on child-rearing in Denmark as in other Nordic countries. Children spend several hours a day in daycare institutions, from as early as the age of six to twelve months, and participation rates in daycare in Denmark are over 60% for children ages zero to two-year-olds and over 90% for three- to five-year-olds (OECD 2018: 32). In the vast majority of schools, children stay with the same class members for all of their subjects and throughout their nine years of basic schooling, with many also having attended daycare with the same cohort as well. Among adults, the tradition of forming clubs and associations is very strong and membership is encouraged. Work is also a very strong core part of Danish people’s identity (Jenkins 2012). To my mind, it must be natural for difference to be of interest and perhaps also challenging if one has grown up with such homogeneity and social engineering that encourages social interactions with the same people or people who have the same interests. Problems arise however when difference becomes an overriding, dominant discourse that is used as a basis for judgment, discrimination, and maltreatment of denizens. This has been the case in Denmark, steered by the media and government arguably since the turn of the twenty-first

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century. The then-recent advent of 9/11 meant an increased focus on Muslim communities around the world and Denmark was no exception. In 2001, the right-wing Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) received more votes than ever before and became a part of the new coalition government led by the center-right Liberal party (Venstre). This was the first time since 1924 that the Social Democrats had not won the most seats. Since then, Denmark’s reputation for being tolerant, open, and laid back has taken a 180-degree turn; the country has become infamous for its anti-immigration policies (Abend 2019) and structural discrimination (Skadegård 2017; Skadegård and Jensen 2018). The continuous struggle for newcomer integration in Denmark is reasonably well known (Jørgensen and Thomsen 2013). The IMMART initiative began with an intention to conduct evidence-based participatory action research that could shed some light on why some of the current failings of integration occur. In this chapter, we delve into the multi-faceted identity of our organization and highlight concomitantly how IMMART fosters pluralism through our considerations, existence, and actions. We use collaborative ethnography as a method and believe that our chapter is strengthened by the explicit and deliberate revealing of the individual voices and identities of the contributing authors. You are now reading me, Nicol Savinetti, the founder and current Director of IMMART. I hold a PhD in social policy and migration, which focused on social citizenship among privileged migrants. Born in the UK to migrant parents, I am a visibly ethnic “other” in Europe and have lived abroad for the greater part of my life and, in Denmark, permanently since 2000. You will continue to read me here and in the next section, Stitching IMMART, where I take a reflexive approach to explaining why the organization began and where I consider its inclusionary and exclusionary capacity, which manifested itself in the evolution of our name. In the third section, According to Our Members, you will read Sez’s (Sarah Jayne Kristiansen) words. Sez is a published author and creative talent. Born in South Africa to British/Polish parents, Sez has lived in Denmark since 2012. She has been a supporter of IMMART since its inception, has completed two internships with us and has been an active part of the core team. Sez bases her writing on her own experiences and the semi-structured interviews she carried out with core-team members, artists with whom we work, and other stakeholders. The purpose of conducting these interviews was to collect a diverse representation of IMMART’s transformative role in its members’ lives and its importance in

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terms of fostering diversity and allowing space for the expression of cultural difference in art. In the fourth part, Food Memories. A Case Study in Pluralism through Solidarity, you will read Sacra’s (Sacramento Roselló Martínez) words. Born in Spain to Spanish parents, Sacra completed her PhD in Modern Literature in the United States where she also lived for several years, before moving to Denmark in 2012. Sacra has been an active member of the core team from very early on and has worked on all three of our community projects. Sacra describes the process and outcomes of one of the projects she worked on, Food Memories, a multi-disciplinary community project where she taught a group of women the skill of life writing. This section focuses on the concept of pluralism through solidarity by looking at a specific project that illustrates IMMART’s development and implementation of a community-based praxis. The Food Memories project (Fig. 6.1) is a prime example of how IMMART promotes. You will read our collective voice in the Concluding Remarks.

Stitching IMMART: Nicol Savinetti IMMART was born out of a desire to make a positive change in society through an initiative grounded in scientific research and using the medium of the arts. Over the years, we have created a virtual meeting point through our Facebook network. We have curated dinners that have brought artists and cultural workers across different ethnicities, disciplines, and industries together. We are co-creating spaces where artists of all nationalities, with different assigned and acquired social statuses, can meet one another and feel that they are an equal part of a whole. We have also focused on strategic partnerships with a variety of local actors and stakeholders, from municipalities, and both Danish and migrant-led or migrant/migration-­ focused arts and culture organizations and businesses. In this chapter, I share details of why and how IMMART was originally conceptualized and our reflexive approach to understanding the inclusionary goals and exclusionary capacity of our organization. Fostering “Linking Social Capital” Having lived, studied, and worked in Denmark for over the past 20 years, I have learned and been fascinated by the seemingly strategic nature of making friendships and new acquaintances. Related to this is also the extraordinary emphasis placed by employers and the state on the

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Fig. 6.1  Photo taken for IMMART by Mayra Navarrete

importance of having a “network” whether that is for social or professional purposes. I delved further into this topic during my doctoral research, which among other things explored the forms of social capital (Bourdieu 1984) that highly skilled and highly educated Danish citizens used during their time as privileged migrants abroad (Savinetti 2015a, 2015b). When conceptualizing IMMART, my research findings and life experiences, thus, led me to work on the hypothesis that with migration, and the migrant context in Denmark in particular, an approach to building

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social and professional networks and co-creating community is needed whereby connections are made with both like and unlike persons, institutions, and organizations. As such, a central part of the activities that IMMART would undertake revolve around networking and community-building. The act of creating strategic ties across social differences, or with people and institutions unlike oneself, was coined by Michael Woolcock (2001) through the term “linking social capital.” The relationships and type of networking that have been fostered in Denmark traditionally2 tend toward creating “bonding social capital” which involves forging ties with other people based on a common sense of identity, such as, for instance, close friends, family, and people with the same culture and ethnicity. “Bridging social capital” extends beyond that inner circle to distant friends, associates, work colleagues, and people we share hobbies with, for instance, and is also clearly visible in Denmark.3 There is an increasing body of literature identifying the health and social benefits of utilizing and enhancing “linking social capital” (Sundquist et  al. 2007; Sundquist and Yang 2006; Delhey and Welzel 2012; Savinetti 2015b). This, together with observations in Denmark, and my own life experiences were the motivators for insisting on both the inclusion and participation of all artists regardless of legal status, ethnicity, sexual, or political orientation. This principle extends to the range of institutions we wish to engage with, and to our goal of taking the organization into the mainstream Danish arts and culture scene, rather than confining ourselves to migrant/migration-focused arenas. Linking social capital is also proven to offer “pathways to longer term survival and wider neighborhood and community revitalization” (Hawkins and Maurer 2010: 1777). As Sez expands upon in the following section, the core team of IMMART, our partners, artists, and supporters, aim for the long-term survival of our organization, of our neighborhoods, and the revitalization of the artscapes in Denmark and beyond. We believe that this can happen through a process of diversification, which includes the recognition of the value of the numerous outcomes of international migration, and acting upon them, and through a better understanding of the importance of meeting one another on a level playing field while appreciating and accepting our differences. The Power and Impact of the Name As outlined above, the goal was to create an all-inclusive initiative. I wanted to create an institution that would precipitate a lasting change to

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society by improving and creating opportunities for paid work for artists of foreign origin living in Denmark. The organization was to be about the artists’ skills and profession and not their immigrant status or identity. This had to be a space where both Danes and foreigners could exist and grow together. I was overwhelmed by the absence (to my knowledge) of any arts organization that paid attention to the different needs of artists of foreign origin. It was therefore important in this age of migration (Castles et al. 2014) that the messaging be unambiguous that this organization, while being open to all, had the interests of artists who had moved to Denmark at its core. The organization needed a name. I wanted to make use of the term immigrant because it has a simple meaning (someone who has moved from one country to another to live). This term has been slowly but surely distorted in recent years, arguably by being used in local and global media platforms when reporting on the problems and challenges with different forms of migration.4 I wanted to build an organization that would once again contribute to a positive association with the word. I was eager to get things off the ground, so while the consultation with experts in the Danish arts field was ongoing, I relied on my own expertise in social policy and migration and decided to use the name ImmigrantART. Dobusch (2014: 230) highlights that “every identity-blind or identity-conscious measure implies including or excluding effects, which stabilize or challenge power relations.” I very quickly learned that the name had inclusionary effects that I had considered and exclusionary effects that I had not considered. The idea of creating the organization came about in February 2015, and in March 2015 I created a basic webpage, started a Facebook group, and went public with the name and the new initiative. For two years after that point, I was in constant dialog about the name with our core team, with artists we met, and with different kinds of experts in the Nordic countries and beyond: historians, human rights specialists, activists, and academics who focus on discrimination and racialization, artists from different disciplines and actors from other arts and culture institutions. While supportive of the initiative, many of them were challenged by the name ImmigrantART. They found it incongruent with the goals of the organization, and they thought that the name suggested and supported the pejorative classification and exoticization of art made by visibly ethnic others in white-majority countries. Another critique was the implied exclusion of Danes, including visibly ethnic other Danish citizens, who were confronted regularly with similar forms of discrimination as artists with

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non-­Danish citizenship. Over time, it became increasingly apparent that the name ImmigrantART was also negatively perceived by many of the organization’s target group. Numerous artists of foreign origin living in Denmark would not engage in projects with us because they were fighting to get away from being both personally and professionally defined by terms like “immigrant” and “refugee.” In spite of the explicit messages relayed via our various online platforms and word-of-mouth, people received and interpreted a different message from our name “ImmigrantART” than we had intended. I understood that the challenge I had wanted to pose to the power-imbalances I had identified in the art world could not be achieved if our name disempowered the very people we were striving to empower. In hindsight, I realize I was not being mindful enough of my own privilege. I had experienced an extremely empowering childhood, youth, and adulthood, growing up in white-majority areas, with parents (both of whom are of Afro-Caribbean origin) who educated me from birth about racism, discrimination, egalitarianism, and inclusion/exclusion. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s in Britain, racial tensions were high, civil action was rife, and major changes in the way race and racism were dealt with in society and the labor market occurred. Despite being exposed as a child to racial abuse on several occasions, I knew precisely how to confront it and have no recollection of feeling excluded; the opposite in fact. I felt very much included at school, I had a healthy social life, and our family was very much a part of our local community with close relationships to our neighbors and on first name terms with local business owners. We spent time regularly in London with my extended family in Brixton, Tulse Hill, Deptford, and other boroughs highly populated by people of Afro-Caribbean descent. I also spent a significant amount of time with my parents’ friends, many of whom were extremely engaged in anti-­ discrimination activism and worked with equal opportunities in their workplaces. Most of them were white Britons. I grew up across cultures and colors, and I was regularly exposed to people working across ethnicities to empower denizens with fewer resources and for equality of opportunity in the workplace and in politics. As a consequence of the public discourse on discrimination, difference, racism, and racialization intensifying in Denmark in 2016 and 2017, I became more mindful of my privileges. I heard the critique about the name ImmigrantART. I understood it. But the question remained: how

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could we define the organization by name so that the focus on migration remained but with a diminished exclusionary capacity? One of the somewhat unexpected outcomes of the growth of our network has been the number of artists and non-artists with Danish citizenship that have found a space that they appreciate and enjoy within the organization. Just like the artists of foreign origin, these Danes are internationals. Some of the artists carry out their work frequently in different languages, often together with foreigners inside and outside of Denmark; some are foreign-born Danish adoptees; some are persons of foreign origin who have acquired Danish citizenship; some are of mixed heritage having one Danish and one non-Danish parent. Several of the network members have their own civil society initiatives working with issues of inclusion and the appreciation of difference, race, discrimination, colonialism, and human rights and have been prominent voices in the public discourse on these subjects in Denmark, particularly since the 100-year marking of the “end” of Denmark’s colonial history in 2017.5 All of our members and their art or work have international (and trans and cross-­ national) dimensions. All of the people we meet through our network have in some way been impacted by international migration. This dimension needed to be reflected in our name and identity. Since the very beginning we have used the abbreviation “immart” within our core team, for our social media and our online office. We are a young organization and while a name change was necessary, it was also important to retain key aspects of our identity. In light of this and all of the aforementioned considerations, in November 2017 we began the transition to IMMART, which stands for International Migration Meets the Arts.

According to Our Members: Sez Kristiansen IMMART is two things to me: a social integration platform and a work integration platform. It both serves as a multi-faceted network of people who want to meet others with similar artistic expressions, as well as those who want to gain lucrative recognition for their art in Denmark. IMMART allows immigrants from all backgrounds to engage in a space of sharing and receiving that benefits all. IMMART’s dynamism opens up opportunities for those wanting to integrate their art (and themselves) into the Danish cultural scene through art galleries and organizations, which benefits both the richness of diversity and also the appreciation of difference.

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IMMART provides a space for people who live in Denmark but do not share the mainstream view that the country should be culturally homogeneous and that assimilation is the best approach to achieving successful integration. In contrast to this view, IMMART is an organization based on sharing, learning, and teaching between cultures, including Danes and non-Danes, about the language of art, which has creativity at its heart. Through creativity, and being able to express, share, and monetize their creativity, the members of IMMART feel more integrated within Danish society on a deeper level than without its presence. IMMART provides an encouraging environment where freedom and diversity of expression are celebrated. Through extensive interviews with various members of IMMART in the winter of 2018, the importance of connection was noted as an important factor contributing to their feelings of inclusiveness, understanding and acceptance in Denmark. Through IMMART, members develop feelings of belonging to something greater than themselves, while also maintaining a nostalgia for their home countries and cultures and a community in which to share experiences of feeling disconnected from home and culture as well. This is why the IMMART dinners became a fundamental social platform for building community.6 In contrast to assimilationist views of integration, IMMART shows that a mutual sharing of cultures encourages people of all backgrounds, both Danes and non-Danes, to feel more stable, at home and integrated within Denmark. Even though language along with the understanding of laws and customs are crucial, successful integration also requires the ability to express one’s own cultural difference and the deeper feelings of compassion and humanity that accompany this. I continue with reflections on a selection of interviews I carried out at the end of 2018 to assess the impact IMMART has made and the direction of its future. This material provides a record of experiences from every facet of IMMART’s contributors. The findings highlight the organization’s ability to create common ground, our greatest challenges, and how we have tackled them. Behnaz, Iran/United States The very first festival we organized, Artival, focused on raising awareness about the diversity among artists living in Denmark. Behnaz, an artist from Iran, who spent most of her life in the United States, exhibited her work at a joint exhibition of three artists at the Global Art Gallery. Her

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work was spotted during the festival by the owner of one of the most well-­ known galleries in Denmark, Galleri V8. She was invited to exhibit there, sold several pieces, and went on to exhibit in another gallery in Copenhagen as well. In another project, IMMART worked together with the anti-trafficking NGO HopeNow on a multi-media pop-up exhibition at the Arbejdermuseet (The Workers Museum) in Copenhagen as part of a year-long exhibition, StopSlaveri!7 The exhibition raised awareness about the work that HopeNow does and the issue of human trafficking, which is commonly referred to as a form of modern-day slavery. Five artists from the IMMART network contributed works to the exhibition, including Behnaz, who explained, “IMMART opened every door you can imagine for me!” Behnaz explained the paradox of feeling at home in a new country and how her art was to be appreciated for the quality of work rather than her status as an immigrant: “I don’t want my background to dictate whether my art sells. It takes the credit away from the art.” In contrast, other members of IMMART want to sell their story as an immigrant because they have suffered from their displacement, an experience that they then channel into their art. Yet, as Behnaz’s experience points out, the stories relayed by foreign artists can be met in various ways by Danish culture. A common challenge for many artists here is that the local public perception is heavily influenced by cultural consensus, in part, created though the media, the long history of social democratic thinking, and deeply rooted customs (Jenkins 2012), which have all created general opinions that are difficult to deviate from due to the lack of acceptance of individual differences. As Behnaz explains, based on her experiences: “Here in Denmark, it is either/or. They either love you because you are an immigrant or hate you for it.” The contrast in people’s opinions about immigrant artists has given more meaning for IMMART’s presence in Denmark. Improving understanding about the diversity that exists among migrant populations is one of IMMART’s main goals and this is most effectively achieved by creating a platform that is all-inclusive and encourages local members to be active in project participation. Josette Simon Gestin, France I interviewed Josette, a French visual artist, who studied at the Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France, about her experience with IMMART. She articulated her reason for her active participation in IMMART (a reason common to

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many of IMMART’s members) as the desire to network for job potential and for the social aspects, both of which have contributed toward her emotional well-being in Denmark. As Josette explains, “I was able to meet other artists who were foreigners like me. I felt less alone. I was part of a group with which I share the same challenges. I was invited to show in a gallery with an Iranian artist and an Indonesian one to start with and other exhibits followed. On the social side, my life got much better too.” Just as she was beginning to exhibit at various art galleries in Copenhagen, Josette’s life took her back to France, where she felt bereft of an inclusive space to promote her talents but also to share her turmoil. As Josette again explains, “It would be wonderful for IMMART to develop an active network in other countries. Then the work started in Denmark could blossom in other countries, keeping the links created in Denmark. For us members of IMMART who have left DK, how can we build on the foundation laid in Denmark?” This question reiterates the need for a chain of organizations like IMMART to exist around the world, so that we can continue to provide fundamental support for members who have transient lives. Tina Lorien, Denmark/Italy Tina Lorien was born and raised in Denmark, but lived for more than 20 years in Italy, where she received her practical education in the field of the arts. Upon returning to Denmark in 2014, she opened her own gallery, Gallerie Lorien, which has provided a fundamental support system to IMMART. Tina is aware of the implications that nationalism has had on the art world, and she would like to see diversity embraced in her own country with regard to foreign artists. This is illustrated by her comment, “The tendency to be very nationalistic has affected the art world and I think it’s important to insist on having this variety.” During our interview, Tina remarked how IMMART has created an open and accepting space where people, in spite of their belief systems, are able to collaborate on their mutual passion for creativity. She noted that “IMMART is a great platform for artists to meet across political views or backgrounds. It’s a chance to join and work together on something we burn for.” Tina felt very strongly about the many stigmas attached to the original name, ImmigrantART, and she was insistent that name be kept in its original form. “We have to break up the negative connotations of the word

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‘Immigrant’. We need to maintain this word in order to educate,” she explained. As Nicol highlighted previously in this chapter, although as an organization we wanted to re-educate the public by keeping the name and thereby changing the stigma, the name on its own proved to be insufficient to make this happen. The negative connotations attached to it were actually harming the reputation and future of the organization by creating an immediate negative reaction before the public even had the chance to learn more about the organization’s goals and its benefits. Tina agreed that our goal is to create a fully supportive organization, one which might inspire the development of similar organizations in other countries, and she understood the importance of brand and identity, suggesting that “We need an umbrella brand that other countries can adopt into their own countries.” Tina is not only a patron for IMMART’s existence in Denmark today; she is a proponent of its future by continuing to support diverse talent in her gallery. Tina is a representative of how some local businesses can have both the means to support IMMART and its members and a strong desire to integrate a distinction of talent into their business. Mikkel Andersen, Denmark Engaging with local Danish artists is a vital component in the acceptance and participation of IMMART, and we have been fortunate to have also interacted with some exceptional local Danish artists in the community. One of them is Mikkel Andersen, a musician who joined IMMART in its first year. I interviewed Mikkel about his experience with IMMART and we discovered another layer of the organization’s ability to connect, share, and profoundly impact the lives of locals. As Mikkel explained, “IMMART is not only one event, one unique experience, but [a] whole idea of belonging to something which is bigger than myself, my nationality and my art.” Mikkel went on to say that his life in Denmark has enabled him to appreciate the diversity of others because of the lack of contrasts and diversity within the Danish culture. As a creative, he believed his cause for demolishing the stigma of immigrants in his country came through the collaboration with other artists within the network: “IMMART is a political organization. It’s a way of pointing out how we see immigrants.” Mikkel describes himself as an individual who feels isolated in his own country because he feels that his culture is not his own. As an artist with a love for color, music, and alternative thinking, he was drawn to IMMART

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not only for the community of artists but also for the connection with others who are also not in their “home.” Mikkel said, “I think it’s really important to have this organization, not only for the immigrant but also for a person like me.” The sharing of difference is universal and so those who have been attracted to IMMART are immensely diverse. Mikkel is a present reminder that local culture can also be alienating to its own country nationals who have different beliefs and alternative forms of expression. Mikkel has been taught and influenced by many international artists to whom he credits his skills and expertise. When he joined IMMART, he felt like he had found a community that would continue to support his unique challenge of being “home” without a sense of belonging. Charlie Brown, Australia Our social media volunteer, Charlie, was interviewed on the challenges she faced as IMMART’s front contact. She feels that as dynamic as the members are, a strategic approach to what was shown and shared on Facebook was needed. Charlie comments, “I think Facebook is a great medium which is fairly inclusive and allows for various different methods of organization. […] We are trying to focus on art/projects/articles done by local immigrants and [Danes] as opposed to art that focuses only on immigration.” The ongoing consideration of inclusivity is something that continues to be monitored, yet Charlie still filters many different types of posts coming in from different members. IMMART needs to ensure that the objectives of the organization are clear and inclusive by presenting a wide range of interests and events, rather than posting political messages and actions that focus on the issues of immigration rather than art. She relays, “I think it’s important for people to feel that their ideas will be accepted on the Facebook group, as we are a fairly [broad] network of people.” Our strength as a supportive community currently relies on our online platform. Through social media, we have been able to connect with members of the public and link local and international businesses to artists living in Denmark. Charlie comments, “A lot of people post about their own projects which others can get involved in and, on a personal note, I really like that stuff as it promotes ‘a network’ more than just a person.” Charlie has continued to support IMMART with an intense passion to structure, focus, and prioritize its platform for the benefit of its members

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and potential members. This has enabled IMMART to create the right content for the right audience and expand in the right direction. Charlie brings her passion to IMMART by making sure that it has the foundations that are needed to reach its most valuable members. She is another person that represents IMMART at its core, and she continues to use her international knowledge to better the organization. Reflections Having experienced a small portion of all the participants’ lives through this interview process, I feel bonded by the common denominator that brings all members to IMMART. Belonging has a very profound meaning for all of us who are living as artists, because it makes us feel most alive, most connected, and most at home. I knew before doing the interviews that I would encounter the need to connect to other similar-minded people as a foreigner, but I did not expect the level of connection that most people talked about—it was deeper than I was ever conscious of. It is in this depth that foreigners and country nationals with diversities feel most integrated to where they live. I have lived in Denmark for seven years, I am married to a Dane, and I have long believed that knowledge of the local language and customs is a means to feeling like I belong and am integrated within Danish society. However, it is in fact the opposite of this cerebral knowledge where I feel most integrated. It is the heart-feeling of belonging, the feeling of roots, the feeling of community, of sharing and the feeling of being able to express my own art that has allowed me to live here without the isolation and displacement that comes with nomadic living. There is much to be said for intellectually learning the localities of a country, but it does little for the sincere acclimatization that is so necessary for those of us intending to stay for the long term. My work with IMMART has been my means of staying in Denmark for the foreseeable future, as well as my pathway to a deeper level of integration into its society, culture, and local community, because, in the end, I am not Danish but want to thrive here. I wish to be both a contributing minority to its artistic community as well as the authentic version of myself without losing either.

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Food Memories: A Case Study in Pluralism Through Solidarity—Sacramento Roselló Martínez This section focuses on the concept of pluralism through solidarity by looking at a specific project that illustrates IMMART’s development and implementation of a community-based praxis. The Food Memories project is a prime example of how IMMART promotes a culture of collaboration, where both members and non-members can participate, contribute, and share with others. Upon completion of the artistic actions in the Food Memories project, we had a “post-mortem” assessment that clarified what worked and what did not and why. This allowed us to learn about both the allowances that need to be made for an organization such as IMMART to bring together artistic expression and activism through solidarity and research outcomes. The project came together in an organic and multi-faceted fashion. An integration center for immigrant women with whom IMMART had a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to the co-creation of artistic projects, Integrationscenter Kringlebakken, was in search of a hands-on project to involve the women it serves in celebration of International Women’s Day, 8 March 2016. Two IMMART members, myself and an artist from El Salvador, were searching for a collaborative platform to facilitate different forms of artistic expressions, in this case—writing and photography. As the workshop designers, we were also interested in assessing the value of multilingualism and life-writing in integration activities. Each individual involved was moved by a need to discuss migration and integration in a way that would engage with the challenges of fostering pluralism and invest in overcoming these challenges through solidarity. In the following, I describe the project and analyze its results. I do so based on a notion of life-writing that enacts pluralism by expanding the notion of the self in a shared experience of otherness. Life-writing is an excessively broad concept that is bursting with interdisciplinary approaches. When in search of a clear definition of life-writing, what surfaces is the notion of impulse—that is, the impulse to tell one’s life, but not by merely letting others know the chronological facts that made the narrative of our lives, but rather by bringing them to an understanding of how those facts shaped our experiences and gave meaning to our very existence. From the perspective of the history of literature life-­ writing is a convoluted intermingling of genres. The homepage for The

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Oxford Center for Life Writing, for instance, defines it as follows: “Life-­ writing includes autobiography, memoirs, letters, diaries, journals (written and documentary), anthropological data, oral testimony, and eye-witness accounts. It is not only a literary or historical specialism, but is relevant across the arts and sciences, and can involve philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, ethnographers and anthropologists.”8 Critical studies in the last few years have been wrestling with the life-writing impulse trying to bridge theory and practice from a range of fields of study including comparative literature (Braidotti 2014), international relations, human rights studies and comparative politics (Kurz 2015), and memory and trauma studies (Rippl et al. 2013; Bolton and Ihanus 2011), just to mention a few. As the creator of the workshop, however, I found it unsettling that the materials (the pedagogical activities related to designing a life-writing workshop) tended to be framed within the parameters of social and clinical psychology, thus prompting the issue of migration as a pathology diagnosed by political elites, and in which writing the self was left as an experimental option for integration. Nevertheless, my inspiration came from Braidotti’s (2014: 164) notion of writing as nomadic subjectivity in which she states that “writing is living intensely and inhabiting language as a site of multiple others within what we call, out of habit and intellectual laziness, ‘the self’.” In the process of putting together this workshop and throughout its duration, language—both as the means of communication but also of self-­ reflection—transformed into an encounter with the otherness within and the otherness we face in our fellow humans. The women participating in the workshop had come together by mere chance; there was no prescription for the nature and depth of their connection to one another, just as there was no obvious reason for their connection with the staff or the facilitators. Notwithstanding the desire to present ourselves as a community in solidarity, the truth is that it was only through the understanding of writing as a strategy for the encounter of others that we could overcome the contingencies of our coming together and, consequently, the pathologizing of our migrant memories. Remembering who we were, in the context of who we are now, was no longer an impediment for integration, an idea that had been expressed as a source of anxiety in conversation with the staff at the integration center, Kringlebakken. Food Memories involved a diverse and eclectic group of people: we had the leaders, workers, and teachers at Kringlebakken; we had the women participating in the language classes; and we had a writer and a

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photographer as facilitators on behalf of IMMART.  The workshop was not planned in advance, nor was it created and then implemented, but rather it came together in a process of creative design, following a collaborative methodology in which all members were equally involved. This is one of the reasons why, when we assessed the project, it was clear that we needed to think in terms of pluralism and solidarity, as these notions were already present and always in the making throughout the process. The women involved, both the facilitators and the participants, embodied the idea of cultural pluralism by reinforcing their identity through memory recollection and journaling, while at the same time letting themselves be open to integrating their experiences as newcomers in Denmark. This came across in the participatory discussions during the presentation of the materials and in their final writings. The discussion left no category untouched, whether it related to gender relations, the use of technology, traditionalism, modernity, or even Danishness. All of these concepts were critically explored and challenged as the women, in their writings, presented themselves as being in the process of becoming and as they envisioned Denmark as a plural society. The design of the workshops was based on trial and error, which allowed for a necessary taming of everyone’s expectations. The women discarded initial ideas, such as handcrafts or performances, because they had been done in previous years, were unsatisfying and/or were not completed in a manner that could drive public awareness. The center’s leadership also expressed the need for a final product that would invite a deeper conversation about migrant women and their everyday lives in Denmark. It would be nice to say that the final decision was part of some masterminded strategy, but the truth of the matter is that all these conversations were taking place in the kitchen, at lunchtime, as we were all sharing our lunchboxes (the lunchbox [madpakke] is a ubiquitous occurrence in Danish everyday culture). As we all opened our Danish boxes with our Salvadorian, Afghani, and Iranian snacks in them, planning was interrupted by tasting food and sharing recipes and occasionally also sharing the memories that those recipes brought to life. It was during the natural course of those planning conversations that we came up with the idea of having a life-writing workshop on the topic of food and memory. The workshop would take place during the Danish language lessons over a period of three or four weeks. In class, there would be discussions of vocabulary related to food, ingredients, utensils, and methods of cooking, all as part of the language practice. There would be a series of short

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texts in each class session and then the participants would be given notebooks in which to continue writing independently. Participants would be free to write in whatever language they wanted and to describe their dish of choice; a few decided to write in their mother tongue, while others chose to write in Danish or English as a second language. The workshop’s exercises prompted a variety of memories, not all related to food but valuable within the workshop’s discussions. In the end, the raw material would be worked through collective and individual editing. Participants would have full control over the selection of texts that they wanted to share publicly. The second part of the project was the transition from writing to the photographic image. After finalizing their texts, there would be a photography portraiture session in which the women would decide how to present an image of themselves with elements that referred to their food memory. From the point of view of IMMART as an artist network, the multi-faceted structure of the project posed a few questions: was this a photography project? Was it a writing project? What would be the final product? Moreover, since the actual producers of the workshop’s outcomes (the women at the integration center) did not self-identify as artists within a network, what was their status in relation to the organization? Were we facilitating the workshop for their benefit or the Center’s or both? And more importantly, how would the women engage with writing? Would this simply be a task in their Danish class or would we be able to make the writing a more personal engagement? We knew that the women attending the Danish language courses were sometimes absent; therefore, whatever activity we proposed had to be not only meaningful but sort of “in the moment.” Their language teacher was worried that taking time from the language classes to do another kind of project would detract from their progress, so the facilitators had to integrate their acquired knowledge while giving them the freedom to write in their own language. Ultimately, the solutions to these challenges came along through conversation and a high dosage of caffeine. The center’s staff and the artists, both of whom had also experiences of mobility, relocation, and the challenge of belonging to a new society, frequently sat around the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and talked. As we moved along with the workshop, we shared our own stories, thus building up a common and recurrent vision for the project. This vision was based on a rejection of the notion that in order to successfully integrate within a new society, one has to dismiss one’s own roots, coupled with the belief that in

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order to find a place in a new social environment, one needs to be able to integrate formative experiences and memories. The very design of Food Memories followed the structure of a traditional writing workshop in which props, pictures, and the experience of the facilitator was brought in to foster discussions on the connection between food, experience, and memory. There was a discussion of favorite dishes, how they were made, who taught us to make them, whether it was possible or not to make them with the produce available in Denmark, what substitutions worked, and how that process made us all feel. The idea was to have as much opportunity as possible for unscripted free writing and to let the women express themselves as they felt. Most of the participants were women in their 20s and recently married or women who had recently become mothers for the first time. My assumption as the workshop facilitator was that their experiences would be similar to my own: a migrant woman, who at that time was also missing home, family, flavors, smells, and everything in between. The discussions, and the writing they fostered, brought a different picture out in the open. A handful of the women had not learned to cook at home with their mothers. Their mothers, and particularly their fathers, with whom many of them recalled having a loving relationship, did not want them to learn to cook because if they did learn then this would mean that they might have to do it. They sent them to school instead. A couple of them reported learning to cook with their husbands, and they talked candidly about how this had brought them together as a couple. One particularly timid young lady regretted that she did not miss her mom’s cooking because she could reproduce it quite well, but she longed for this one dish that she had tried at her mother-in-law’s house and she could not cook herself, because she could not find some of the ingredients in Denmark. The conversations were candid, vivid, and full of laughter. There was a joyful expectation about our life in Denmark that made it into our stories in the form of humor and irony. The participants were told to write at their own pace in their notebooks during the week and to bring their writings to class where they would be shared and where we could work on translating and editing them if they wanted to. Most of them wrote in English, which had become a de facto vehicular language, or in their mother tongue; a couple ventured into writing short texts in Danish, which boosted their sense of accomplishment. Azra wrote in Danish about apples and how Danish apples reminded her of picking apples from the trees with her mom and eating them

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together. Gita wrote in English about her father making Namkeen, a sweet from Nepal. When her father was away, she refused to eat anything else, and her mother, who didn’t know how to make it, had to bring it from the market. Rose, from the Philippines, wrote about a very common dish, Chicken Adobo, which was the only thing her father knew how to cook. She wrote about cooking it together with him and this being the time when she felt a bond with him. Hasnaa from Morocco chose to write in Arabic—she listed the ingredients and then wrote the method, interlacing small anecdotes about different times she had made the dish with her family. Nila from Afghanistan wanted to talk about Kechri, a national dish. It was her favorite and she felt proud of the fact that her favorite dish was a national dish. She researched and wrote about what it meant for her national identity, telling the history and evolution of the dish. Hannah, the Danish teacher, wrote about rye bread (rugbrød), about baking when she moved to Greenland with her husband and about making bread from a mother dough that lasted over ten years and how she had to start a new one when she returned to Denmark. These stories, in whatever language they were told, and with the open, integrative nature of the genre and structural choices made by each narrator, became a metaphor for their own process of integration. The project’s initial driving force was empowerment. We wanted to empower the participating women to engage with what we understood a priori as a burdensome feeling of otherness. Whatever our intentions and preconceptions, the workshop itself, and the multi-media exhibition that came out of it, transformed otherness into pluralism. It became clear that the relations between IMMART and Kringlebakken, on the one side, and the women, on the other, which we have perceived as deeply rooted in our differences, became sources of solidarity. This is in line with what Birgith Rasmussen, social worker and manager of Kringlebakken, said: “IMMART and the integration center have put out a product into the world in the form of photos. These capture a person, their thoughts and memories. You don’t hear these stories on the news—the childhood of the Kurdish woman cooking with her family. […] When we share emotions, it brings something closer and makes it all the more important.” Birgith was interviewed by Sez as part of our assessment of the project. She also shared her thoughts that she believed that Denmark was in dire need of a mutual platform, a common ground where everyone could relate to one another, and that this is why the project was such a success. The project gave women a voice and a physical product in the form of the

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photos and the text that captured their joy and which became the Center’s exhibition for International Women’s Day. Birgith also confessed that as a Danish citizen, born and raised in Denmark, she had very set ideas of what she thought was possible, but that IMMART exceeded all her expectations of what she thought was achievable.

Concluding Remarks The process of founding IMMART, our initial activities, and the reflexive practice that we have integrated into our way of working coincided with a series of governmental shifts toward stricter rules for migrants of all types (students, international secondments, privileged migrants, and EU migrants, as well as asylum seekers). These circumstances gave us a sense of urgency, and it is also possible that it made Danes ready to hear us and get involved. This was especially the case for those Danes who did not agree with the discourses of exclusion that sanitized xenophobia, who had experiences of migration, and/or who had experience of issues related to belonging. The organization’s network grew initially through personal connections, word-of-mouth, and outreach work with different types of stakeholders in the Copenhagen area. But the growth would soon be attributed to a chain reaction based on engagement with and a commitment to a form of pluralism that, as we have shown above, could only be enacted through different forms of solidarity. As we write, we are three years into the initiative, and it is clear that there is a space and desire for the organization we are gradually building. IMMART has made a positive social impact in Denmark. In 2018 we were contacted by numerous organizations abroad, holding similar goals and concerns about the arts scene that would like to collaborate on international projects, and we have been particularly active in the Nordic region recently. Regional networks and collaborations are essential in the Nordic region. They drive growth, feed on innovation, and produce knowledge through the sharing of knowledge about the challenges that like-minded organizations face and how they are confronted. The Nordic countries are not equal and, although quite homogeneous, there are internal differences from which we can learn. By applying our model of collaboration with our contacts with other actors in the region we have successfully fostered new working relations between artists in our network and artists in Finland and Sweden, for instance. Furthermore, this Nordic collaboration has resulted in an evidence-based report of actions

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and outcomes that we hope will allow us to successfully apply for funding and develop a more sustainable organizational structure. The benefits for the organization and for the local community and broader society of having an inclusive network with greater societal goals should not be underestimated. It is, however, also essential to be continuously mindful of the impact that our existence and actions have on the very people and communities with whom we are working, whether or not they participate in our network, and whether or not they agree with our mission.

Notes 1. Janteloven (Law of Jante) is a social code specific to the Nordic region and particularly Denmark. According to it, non-conformity, doing things out of the ordinary or being personally ambitious are deemed inappropriate and unworthy. See Jenkins (2012: 45) for the history behind the concept. 2. As outlined in the Introduction to this chapter. 3. See Woolcock (2001) and Szreter and Woolcock (2004) for broader definitions of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital. 4. For example, referring to the arrival of protection seekers and labor migrants in Europe in recent years, collectively referred to as representing a migrant “crisis” for European countries. 5. See Yong Sun Gullach’s work on Transnational Adoption in Denmark (Gullach 2015), Tone Olaf Nielsen’s work with CAMP—Center for Art and Migration Politics (http://campcph.org/) and Trampoline House (https:// www.trampolinehouse.dk/), Anna Klitgaard and Catarina Bettencourt’s initiative World Kitchen (https://www.facebook.com/verdenskoekkenet/; http://folkekirkenshus.dk/event/verdenskoekkenet-the-world-kitchen/) and Tara Skadegaard Thorsen’s work confronting structural discrimination through her writing, and the magazine FRONT (https://frontnu.wixsite. com/home; https://www.facebook.com/frontnu/) for example. 6. See www.immart.dk for more information about the IMMART Dinners. 7. See the final report for the StopSlaveri! exihibition (Halberg 2018). 8. See https://oxlifewriting.wordpress.com/what-is-life-writing/.

References Abend, L. (2019, January 16). An Island for ‘Unwanted’ Migrants Is Denmark’s Latest Aggressive Anti-Immigrant Policy. TIME Magazine. Retrieved September 21, 2019, from https://time.com/5504331/denmark-migrantslindholm-island/.

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Bolton, G., & Ihanus, J. (2011). Conversation About Poetry/Writing Therapy: Two European Perspectives. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 24(3), 167–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2011.593395. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Translated from French by Richard Nice. Routledge Classics Edition, 2010. Abingdon: Routledge. Braidotti, R. (2014). Writing as a Nomadic Subject. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(2–3), 163–184. Castles, S., de Haas, H., & Miller, M.  J. (Eds.). (2014). The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (5th ed.). New York: The Guildford Press. Delhey, J., & Welzel, C. (2012). Generalizing Trust. How Outgroup-Trust Grows Beyond Ingroup-Trust. World Values Research, 5(3), 46–69. Dobusch, L. (2014). How Exclusive are Inclusive Organisations? Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 33(3), 220–234. Gullach, Y.  S. (2015). A Critical Voice of Transnational Adoption in Denmark. Retrieved September 21, 2019, from https://www.adoptionspolitiskforum. org/a-critical-voice-of-transnational-adoption-in-denmark-by-yong-sungullach-chairwoman/. Halberg, R.  L. (2018, August). StopSlaveri!, Særudstilling på Arbejdermuseet 31/3 2017–2/4 2018, Afrapportering. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https://www.arbejdermuseet.dk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/stop_ slaveri_afrapportering_2018.pdf. Hawkins, R.  L., & Maurer, K. (2010). Bonding, Bridging and Linking: How Social Capital Operated in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. British Journal of Social Work, 40(6), 1777–1793. https://doi.org/10.1093/ bjsw/bcp087. Jenkins, R. (2012). Being Danish. Paradoxes of Identity in Everyday Life (2nd ed.). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Jørgensen, M. B., & Thomsen, T. L. (2013). Crises Now and Then—Comparing Integration Policy Frameworks and Immigrant Target Groups in Denmark in the 1970s and 2000s. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 14(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-012-0238-4. Kurz, K. (2015). Narrating Contested Lives: The Aesthetics of Live Writing in Human Right Campaigns. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag. OECD. (2018). Is the Last Mile the Longest? Economic Gains from Gender Equality in Nordic Countries. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/1 0.1787/9789264300040-en. Rippl, G., Schweighauser, P., Kirss, T., Sutrop, M., & Steffen, T. (Eds.). (2013). Haunted Narratives: Life Writing in an Age of Trauma. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Savinetti, N.  F. (2015a). Encountering Difference—The Experience of Nordic Highly Skilled Citizens in India (Lectio Praecursoria). Siirtolaisuus Migration,

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3: 19–23. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/files/pdf/siirtolaisuus-migration/2015_3.pdf. Savinetti, N. F. (2015b). Encountering Difference: The Experience of Nordic Highly Skilled Citizens in India. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press. Skadegård, M. (2017). With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies. Structural Discrimination and Good Intentions in Everyday Contexts. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 7(4), 214–233. https://doi.org/10.1515/ njmr-2017-0033. Skadegård, M., & Jensen, I. (2018). ‘There is Nothing Wrong with Being a Mulatto’: Structural Discrimination and Racialized Belonging in Denmark. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(4), 451–465. https://doi.org/10.108 0/07256868.2018.1484346. Sundquist, J., & Yang, M. (2007). Linking Social Capital and Self-Rated Health: A Multilevel Analysis of 11,175 Men and Women in Sweden. Health & Place, 13(2), 324–334. Sundquist, J., Johansson, S. E., Yangb, M., & Sundquist, K. (2006). Low Linking Social Capital as a Predictor of Coronary Heart Disease in Sweden: A Cohort Study of 2.8 Million People. Social Science & Medicine, 62(4), 954–963. Szreter, S., & Woolcock, M. (2004). Health by Association? Social Capital, Social Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health. International Journal of Epidemiology, 33(4), 650–667. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyh013. Woolcock, M. (2001). The Place of Social Capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes. ISUMA.  Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 2(1), 11–17.

CHAPTER 7

‘I Have Never Met a Refugee’: KUNSTASYL—Creating Face-to-Face Encounters Using Performative Art barbara caveng and Dachil Sado

Introduction KUNSTASYL—literally KUNST ASYL or ART ASYLUM—means a space, which provides shelter through art (in this context asylum is used in its classical sense of being a space safe from deprivation). Founded in Berlin in 2015 by Swiss-born artist barbara caveng, KUNSTASYL is a participatory art platform bringing together people with diverse backgrounds who use artistic forms of expression to respond to pressing social and political questions of our times. KUNSTASYL describes itself on its website as a ‘platform for a diversified exchange between displaced persons and the local, “domiciled,” population.’ Below, caveng, in dialogue with artist and board member Dachil Sado, speaks about the creation of

b. caveng (*) • D. Sado KUNSTASYL, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_7

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KUNSTASYL, its progression, transformation, and various projects through which KUNSTASYL has evolved. One of the first projects discussed below was initiated in February 2015 with residents living in a home for asylum seekers (daHeim), Staakener Straße, in Berlin. The project was motivated, in part, by a desire to consider ways that the temporary space of the residence could be transformed into more of a living space and ‘home.’ The project questioned ideas around living space, what it means to live together, and the sharing of space with newcomers. The project aimed to question what it means to have a home, both for many people who are displaced through war and other reasons and forced to leave their homes, but also raising questions about the making of new ‘homes,’ often found initially in the temporary rooms provided to them in the residential centres for asylum seekers— spaces that are often outside of the public eye (Interview with KUNSTASYL members, Berlin, 17 August 2016). In initiating the project, caveng and the residents of the shelter began the project through a workshop process designed around the question, ‘How can living—instead of accommodating—be determined and created more by the residents of the shelter themselves by “conquering space?” What concepts and strategies can be developed in cooperation with locals and migrants by employing art as a catalyst to transform provisional arrival into integrated residence?’ (website: http://kunstasyl.net/en/). As caveng explained about the project in an interview: ‘This project is mainly about space. We in Europe are now fighting for our space: closing and reinstalling borders. Using words that divide: what is this space, and what about me? How much space am I ready to offer to somebody? Am I able to step back to make space, or am I just saying, “Look, this is my space. Yes, you can also move in this space, but it’s my space?” These are questions I’m really, really interested in’ (Schumacher n.d.). Out of this initiative the exhibit daHeim: Glances into Fugitive Lives was born. The exhibit daHeim: Glances into Fugitive Lives was a collaborative initiative between KUNSTASYL and the Museum of European Cultures (Museum Europäischer Kulturen), shown in Berlin from 22 July 2016 to 2 July 2017. Since then, KUNSTASYL has grown to include a variety of creative undertakings and artistic projects, including workshops and the creation of creative common spaces to bring people together to build community. As explored in their dialogue below, KUNSTASYL uses various forms of artistic expression to create a transformative space to build community. As caveng has explained elsewhere: ‘you could say

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weaving, knitting, knotting, and sewing is a metaphor. My work always has a lot to do with these kinds of processes. It is about making connections, within our community here, but also between us and the outside’ (Schumacher n.d.). In the remainder of this chapter, caveng and Sado discuss the various political and social questions that have informed them and other members and their artistic initiatives, along with the ways in which KUNSTASYL’s meaning has evolved for each of them. Using a dialogical form, this chapter unfolds in the moment of being together in conversation, but also by juxtaposing the present with past memories, both their own and those of other members in the collective. Their conversation also embodies the spirit of KUNSTASYL: it develops by employing a variety of artistic forms of expression. This includes poetry, drawing (Fig. 7.1), and blog posts, forms that also enable the inclusion of the voices of other KUNSTASYL members, including those who are still active and others who have chosen or have been forced to move away, but whose voices contribute to the dialogue through their poetry and blogs.

Fig. 7.1  Omar Alshaer | mutiny of self | 20111

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Cognisant of the fact that learning to ‘live together’ also requires learning, listening, and sharing through different ways of communicating, caveng and Sado embody this sensitivity by incorporating different forms of expression into their chapter that communicate and move us to learn and listen in different ways. Interspersed among the dialogue, for example, are references to KUNSTASYL’s Declaration of Human Rights denoting the shared system of values held by KUNSTASYL’s members. This Declaration emerged as part of the six-month working process of one of the projects discussed below, The Kings—UTC-7 HOURS PARALLEL PERFORMANCES in 2017. In The Kings, the 30 protagonists formulated their own Declaration of Human Rights. The proclamation of the charter formed the final point of the performance (for the full text of the charter see KUNSTASYL n.d.). The dialogue below also explains KUNSTASYL’s use of poetry as another important form of expression. As caveng explains: ‘you find poems in our text because we are an art project and we are open to all forms of expression. Verbal expression is crucial. We didn’t ask for poems. But they were written by Serdar and Aymen (members of KUNSTASYL), and others, because they felt moved to write in this way. Where do the poems come from? They come from three years of collaboration through the Heim, the Museum of European Cultures, and various public performances.’ Reflecting on the use here of poetry, caveng explains that she was inspired to think about the role of poetic expression, in part, through the work of German researcher, Michael Moll, whose 1988 doctoral thesis ‘Poems in a Dehumanized World,’ explored the power of the lyrics written in Auschwitz, in which the youngest author of the collection was 13 and the oldest 90 years of age. In her reflections, caveng remarks: ‘One thing I learned from the women, men and children whom I met in the Heim for asylum seekers in 2015/2016 is that through the severe physical and mental shock of living through war and flight, one’s language capabilities change. After such shock and trauma, one’s verbal abilities and the power of expression are no longer used only for simple communication but create strong images extending and crossing linguistic borders but also that in our everyday communication, language is often used as a prosaic tool, loosing its poetic power.’ The inclusion of poetry contributes here to the dialogue through the power of the poetic, intended to evoke strong images and feelings to accompany the discussion, thereby creating a deeper dialogue that communicates on multiple levels with the reader.

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Box 7.1 Art. 1

Every human being has the right to be called a human being.2 KUNSTASYL is an initiative of artists, creative minds, residents, and itinerants, founded in 2015 in Berlin. KUNSTASYL sees itself as a platform that uses artistic expression such as visual art, performance, intervention, and installation, but also applied art, like fashion and furniture, design or cooking, to create a diversified exchange between displaced persons and the local, ‘domiciled’ population. barbara caveng and Dachil Sado met in February 2019 to engage in a conversation about their common art project KUNSTASYL, reflecting on its development from 2015 until now. barbara is a Swiss-born artist with a focus on participatory art. She founded KUNSTASYL in 2015. Dachil Sado was born in Shingal-Mosul/ Iraq and came to Berlin seeking asylum. Since 2016 he is board member of the KUNSTASYL association. Dachil is studying and doing project-­ based teaching in visual arts at Kunsthochschule Weißensee, Berlin. * * * THE MAN WEARING A HAT. by Serdar Yousif (n.d.).3 This man, wearing the hat, this man who can set the entire world on fire… A kraken… Everything will be destroyed along his starved and burning coastline. Childhood, birds and even dreams. This man truly reminds us of a mythical monster, starved and furious, As extinct dinosaur, revived in the shape of something that has never been there before. * * * Box 7.2 Art. 2

Every human being has the right to determine his or her future independently and freely; to dream and to realize his or her dreams, insofar as one does not interfere with or hurt other people.

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Dachil: What led you to the founding of KUNSTASYL? barbara: In April and May 2011, I had been to Syria. Back then, the country’s so-called crisis turned into a war. A year later, a desperate Syrian on the run screamed ‘I am a human being’ into a journalist’s microphone at the Turkish border. In 2014, I went to Lampedusa. There were broken boats, piled up on the Italian island, boats which had carried people from the North-African coast to European lands full of promise. Every day, women, children and men drowned in the Mediterranean, at times several hundred in just one day. At the same time, thousands, later hundreds of thousands—many of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan—fled across the so-called Balkan route to Europe. In 2015, around 55,000 people made it to Berlin—so many, that I did not understand. I did not even know who they were. People would refer to them as ‘refugees,’ regardless of whether they came from Africa, South-Eastern-Europe or the Middle East, and regardless of whether they were women, men, or children. Hence, I decided to learn from those who came to Berlin. I was determined to find out if—regardless of people’s differences—it might be possible to change future society through forming a community and sharing space. Would we have values in common? This is what led to the foundation of KUNSTASYL in 2015. We received initial funding from the Senate of Berlin and the Socio-­ cultural Fund, financed by the German Government. This, along with an invitation at that time from Gordon Grunwald [manager of the Heim for asylum seekers] to work on these issues with the residents of the emergency and community accommodation for asylum seekers in Spandau, was crucial for the further development of the project. I formed a team. On February 24, 2015, Aymen Montasser, an architect from Tunisia, Therry Kornath, a visual artist and carpenter of German-­ Polish decent, Till Rimmele, a photographer from Southern Germany, and I introduced ourselves to you, the then residents of the home for asylum seekers in Berlin-Spandau. This is where we met for the first time. Almost a year later, on 19 January 2016, you and I took a trip to Berlin-­ Hohenschönhausen. You showed me the building where you had spent the first days after arriving in Berlin. It was a gym that had been turned into an emergency shelter. It is now March 2019. You’re in your third semester studying visual arts at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee. In this four-year-journey, that you lived through—inwardly as well as outwardly—what does KUNSTASYL mean to you? Box 7.3 Art. 3

Every human being has the right to choose and to be accepted by the society in which he or she wants to live, at the same time one has to accept and integrate oneself in all conscience.

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Dachil:

Because of what I had experienced at Domiz Camp in Northern Iraq, I was skeptical when attending this first meeting on 24 February 2015 at the home in Spandau. Over and again, when working as a police officer, I had witnessed the UNHCR and several NGOs, as well as private initiatives, exploiting and using people at the camp. They were not interested in working with the latter. Actually, I came to the meeting to complain. But when you started introducing yourself, when you started talking, I realized that this had to be something totally different. barbara: I remember what you said a few months later: ‘Talking about KUNSTASYL is rather difficult. KUNSTASYL opens a window to society.’ Box 7.4 Art. 4

Every human being has the right to freedom of expression, free choice of beliefthe right to gender self-determination, and free choice of ethnic identity. Dachil: I have thought a lot about how my life would have been without getting to know KUNSTASYL.  Probably, I would have ended up in an office, working as an engineer. I am quite sure, that I would have studied engineering and I am very sure that after graduation I would have ended up in an office. I wouldn’t be happy, sitting and working in an office. Due to racist attacks, I had urged authorities to transfer me from Hohenschönhausen to another accommodation. It was by chance, that I was assigned a room in Spandau, a coincidence that Gordon Grunwald had invited KUNSTASYL. Luck had it, that my stay in Spandau had me get to know art. Art found me. I have always been critical, self-critical too. My criticism changed and expanded, but there was always something missing. Art was missing, to critically express my thoughts. Serendipity had things turn out the way they did. barbara: It was of course coincidence, that you and I, Therry, Till and Aymen met in 2015. Just like all other chance encounters of those 120 residents in Spandau with one another and with us. However, it is interesting to see that we are still in contact, even beyond the work of KUNSTASYL. In January 2019, only a few days before leaving for Northern-Iraq, I met Mawlud with whom you shared room 102  in Spandau. He realized his

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dream and is now a bus driver with Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (municipal transport services) BVG. While travelling through Kurdistan, Gazi suddenly calls me from Kosovo and two days after being back in Berlin, I ran into Mazin. He owns a restaurant now, offering Syrian specialties. For me, these encounters are vital. Box 7.5 Art. 5

Every human being has the right to express oneself,knowing that he or she may be criticized and discussed. What is the aim of KUNSTASYL? This is not easy to answer because it is intrinsically about social and political issues. We face these issues in personal encounters—not only in discussions but also by means of artistic actions. A good example might be the exhibition ‘daHEIM: glances into fugitive lives’ at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen (museum of European cultures) MEK in Berlin 2016/2017. The exhibition landscape was created on site during the course of a four-month public process. We were about 25 people, working in the museum, and our common point was the year 2015—the life we shared at the Spandau home. Each individual visualized his or her personal experiences of escape through paintings and drawings, installations, performances, and texts. This is how our questions were passed on to our audience and the public. For me, the importance of KUNSTASYL lies in the fact that people are now interlinked throughout the world, people who see themselves as part of KUNSTASYL—even if they have not achieved their personal goals of being granted asylum in Germany. What we share is the experience of being able to form community. We were able to make this experience because we lived together. * * * ODE TO KUNSTASYL by Aymen Montasser (2015)4 | extraction | published at KUNSTASYLblog, 24 October 2015 I begin with simple words: everyone is asking whether Aymen has changed. One does not recognize you anymore, the friends, the family, the brother, even KUNSTASYL

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Quite simply, my friends: HEIM changes—who does not??? There’s Ruschka, the beautiful, the flower, she left me with Milan towards Novi Sad. Of course, that changes me… When I am waiting for Zain’s smile, lifting my soul, day after day … of course, that has changed me, little Hamouda, who tells me he now knows where Tunisia is located, of course I change; I can’t think of any human being not changing as a result. Can you??? When I look at those pictures of ‘Aylan’ in the papers, the love of Nour, it makes me angry and tired, I think and think again… Al Khaled, the Great, sent by a God I do not believe in, left without saying good-bye—of course, that has changed me… Zineta and Melisa, love of my life … Never a day goes by that I do not think of them, of the great soul of this woman, my ‘Nena’ … and Melisa, who said to Dachil, ‘Daddy, I love you.’ Who can you ask whether I have changed—of course, I have changed. The Sado case, that case that has worn us out, that has taken away our wickedness and repaid it in freedom and beauty, love and greatness of soul, … of course I have changed my friends, my family, and beautiful barbara. Marilyn and Mona Lisa, Brisilda and Dennis who speak Kosovar with me as if I was a Kosovar … that changes, that inspires, don’t you think??? It revives us, a never-ending tune, like a new life … The HEIM changes everyone. And then Fuad who hugs me, the ‘H E L L O’ of little Oldi, the enamored eyes of Fatime, Tasnim’s ‘YES’, the philosophy of Little Khaled, Kumrije’s beauty, the wisdom of Mazim, my friends no matter what … I have told you!!! That changes the world and of course it changes me too. So why do you ask??? Sometimes, I want to leave, retire and vanish, but HEIM pulls me back, the smell, the beauty of the people, my friends, my family, barbara … it’s like being born again … yes, a reincarnation. Maybe I am too connected to HEIM … I don’t know, who knows—maybe everyone who comes here will be enchanted. In short: do you know what brought me back to reality today??? Two couples, who saw me in the garden with the plants, said ‘we’re sorry.’ They did not realize that I am ‘BIG MAN’—they took me for a REFUGEE. TEE-HEE-HEE …, of course I have changed … I am a refugee now … my friends, barbara, and my family * * *

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barbara:

It was never KUNSTASYL’s intention to change someone or to ‘integrate’ people; we had no intention to ‘help’ either. Instead, we wanted to find out how we all change through encounter. This shift of one’s own perspective is the basis of the complex and heterogenous KUNSTASYL body, which is not tied to a specific location. If one were to draw strings between everyone who had, and still has, an influence on this project, a spatial structure would emerge, a construct—obviously a fairly stable one. That is KUNSTASYL to me.

Box 7.6 Art. 6

Every human being has the right to freedom of expression, free choice of belief,the right to gender self-determination, and free choice of ethnic identity Dachil: This is due to the artistic and conceptual approach of KUNSTASYL. Many projects by artists dealing with migration cannot work this way because it takes so much time. There are not many people taking the time to do this. Hence, artists often define a ‘product’ in advance. It may be a movie to be filmed or a city tour with a photo workshop or the like. Right from the start, they have a specific action in mind. That is a very centrist perspective. It does not really work in a socio-political sense. It was the acentric perspective of KUNSTASYL that interested me. For you, KUNSTASYL is a sculpture, for me it’s more of a painting with no single character at its center but with everything being significant. All things happening are more than just the background for a Fig. I think this is crucial if you want to develop such a project without focusing around a product. However, art will probably always produce products, whether they are physical or not. Box 7.7 Art. 7

Every human being has the right to freedom of choice over his or her own body. barbara: But what is KUNSTASYL about? So far, all our projects have been tangible: we have developed a garden, and we designed and built outside furniture. There have been several interventions in urban space. We concep-

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tualized and implemented a huge exhibition and we went through a sevenhour non-stop performance at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen in Berlin. Currently, we are into survival fashion design and, 18 months ago, the autonomous performance group DIE KOMPANIE came into being. However, we resist predetermined action. The longer KUNSTASYL exists, the more I perceive it as a project of practical and applied philosophy. Box 7.8 Art. 8

Every human being has the right to save his life through escape. We always work with the concept of a platform, a stage, where specific questions turn into ideas and find their artistic expression. These are the structural elements of the KUNSTASYL rhizome. Perspectives and approaches are linked, the organism runs riot, grows, and if things work out we grow with them. Dachil:

A lot of people are afraid of development. They are not ready for development. Over the last four years, all of us made progress and changed, of course without development being our goal. It’s all about space and the question how we deal with space, that is to say, what is the space we’re actually talking about. KUNSTASYL cannot be seen as being linear. KUNSTASYL is multidimensional, with time being the fourth dimension.

Box 7.9 Art. 9

There should be social globalization. Freedom of travel and the right to mobility should apply to alland always: whether planning a vacation or deciding on the main place of residence. Many projects request responsibility and obligations, which have to be fulfilled by everyone. There was Khaled5 for example. Khaled’s presence was just as important as yours. Khaled decided to just hang out on the deck chair in our ‘Utopia garden.’ His being there was just as important as everybody else’s contribution and acting. Shortly before he was deported, he wrote an

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open letter about KUNSTASYL and how he understands the project, its meaning, and impact. That’s a decision everyone has to make on his or her own. I never dreamt of becoming a bus driver. Hence, today it is not me behind the steering wheel. I am sitting here and we’re talking about KUNSTASYL. Everyone is interested in something. That something can be nothing. One can be interested in nothing. If nothing is expected, a project can still work out. It is important to think beyond meta-level thinking, to be able to experience and to experiment with sociological situations, to make room for spatial and horizontal thinking, instead of the pyramid principle or vertical thinking, to overcome isolation and to question the concept of objectivity and subjectivity itself—to unlearn our perception. Box 7.10 Art. 10

Every human being has the right to citizenship, but also the right to no citizenshipon the condition that they officially declare their place of residence. barbara: Our ‘Utopia garden’ in Spandau, which we all loved, our Arcadia in the industrial outback, was an attempt to create a place of coexistence that would offer each of us the greatest possible freedom—on the grounds of house accommodation for asylum seekers. However, we had problems with commitment, too, at KUNSTASYL, with this approach. At a certain point, when rehearsing for the seven-hour performance, ‘The Kings,’ we had everyone decide on whether they were for co-­ authorship or against it. The question is: when do people have a feeling of belonging? Who is able to belong? Only those who feel they belong take on responsibility. Belonging to a small community or to society, to a place or to a country—what does it mean to belong? If people weren’t up for it, they did not show up. But that way, it is impossible to share an idea which claims that everyone is involved, as opposed to many carrying out the idea of an individual. Box 7.11 Art. 11

Every human being has the right to a place to live, that is: a habitation.

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Dachil: One has to accept this experience when working with people who have fled. They do not lead a normal life. There is no daily routine, no job or school where one can go every day. When the whole system collapses in a blink of an eye, when you lose everything you’ve ever had only to find yourself in a totally different environment, that is tough. Especially, when coming to Germany, where everyone considers you as ‘the other.’ You come out of this shock, you know that everything is somehow essential and at the same time that everything is meaningless. It is easy for me to oversleep a super important appointment. For example, I did not attend the granting of an award to the foundation Class.6 I had other priorities and went to Greece instead. Today, it is easy for me to miss out on ‘important’ events. I see things differently. Meaning and meaningless-ness are actually close to each other. Plus, there is a lot happening in my head at the same time. Hence, if you want to work with someone in my situation, you have to understand and accept that. barbara: When travelling to Iraqi Kurdistan in January and February 2019—reflecting on the country and interacting with the people—I wondered how it had been possible to jointly develop a project like KUNSTASYL. The fact, that over one hundred people were able to engage with the socio-utopian idea, while each and every one of them was in search of sanctuary in this foreign land—today, that’s a miracle for me. Box 7.12 Art. 12

Every human being must take responsibility for himself and his actions, with name and face,including those who hold positions of power. Apart from me going to Iraq—where you once lived—all by myself, we made trips together in the past. We went to Bosnia. We travelled to Albania and Kosovo, partly together, partly alone. These trips were an opportunity to learn about the emotional baggage and historical heritage that people carry upon arriving in Germany. If I had known in 2015 what I know today, I may not have started the whole project. However, not ‘knowing,’ being ‘naïve,’ was the starting point for asking ‘who are we talking about when we speak of the many people who took the risk to come to Europe’ and to listen to their life and war stories and about what made them leave on the run.

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I believe that learning and understanding are bound to direct encounters. However, encounter means to acknowledge that everyone is a stranger to the other. Box 7.13 Art. 13

Politics are no longer allowed to decide for the people. The people should decide for the people. * * * EIN STIFT by Dachil Sado (2015) published in KUNSTASYLblog, 17 August 2015 One day, I walked with Fatime, a seven-year-old girl, through the streets of Berlin-Charlottenburg. This is when I learned that language is the key to avoid situations like the one we got into that day. Bashkim, Fatime’s father, was with us that day. We were looking for a place called paint your style where one can draw their ideas or names on pottery. Being lost, we asked Shamsi to help us. Shamsi, working at the daycare at daHEIM, called the store for directions, starting the phone conversation with ‘ein Flüchtling’—means: a refugee. She was talking about Fatime. Hearing this word from her—being the kind person she is—I felt a bullet break through the bottom of my heart. I immediately asked Fatime, ‘Wer bist du?’, means ‘Who are you?’ She answered: ‘Fatime.’ I repeated the question. The girl shouted: ‘Fatime.’ Then I asked her, ‘Bist du ein Flüchtling?’— means ‘Are you a refugee?’ I couldn’t hold the happiness inside my soul when she answered ‘Was ist das?’—means: ‘What does it mean?’ However, the most wonderful conclusion of the day was, when Fatime saw a paper in my hand, she said: ‘Aha, ein Stift’—means, ‘a pen.’ Then she told Bashkim that I needed a pen. Why do we treat or name ourselves by ‘Othering’ ourselves? Why is the mind of a ten-year-old child filled with our wrong thoughts? Why are we special? Why are you special? Why am I special? Why are they special? Why are we the others? Why are they the others? They are us. We are the others and the others are us. For me I have no answer, but Fatime knows that we need ‘ein Stift.’ * * *

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I remember in 2015, when participating at an event organized by Kulturprojekte Berlin, we were called the ‘language police’ because we refused to engage in a discussion where people were constantly referred to as ‘refugees.’ This led to our ‘Do I look like a refugee?’ project, where we performed for months with cardboard signs around our necks in the city of Berlin. One morning you told me that you had spent the whole night talking to Abd Elrahman. Back then, Abd Elrahman was 17 years old. Being Syrian-Palestinian he had never owned a passport.

Box 7.14 Art. 14

Every human being has the right to actively participate in the political life of the countryor city in which he or she lives, regardless of nationality or country of origin. In this conversation you realized that you felt like a meteorite—all-­ solid, originating from the cosmos, that crossed the atmosphere and hit the ground. Until this day, this metaphor totally makes sense to me—all the more so as parts of a meteorite burn up when entering the earth’s atmosphere. I’ve never met a refugee. Box 7.15 Art. 15

Laws that restrict people in their free personal development should be repealed. We’ve gone through so many phases with this project. Financial resources were always poor. We were always underfunded. We had to raise all of our funds on our own. To this day, KUNSTASYL exists due to either foundation funds or public subsidies. If we were to account for what we have done and perhaps even achieved with the money—how would we phrase it?

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Dachil:

We worked for 1 Euro / hour. Everything else is very difficult to describe.

Box 7.16 Art. 16

People should not volunteer to become victims but be critical and fight for themselves and their rights. barbara: In a certain context, we have become known. The term ‘KUNSTASYL’ stands for something and so do our actions. What is it? How can one specify it? Is it an artistic or social added value? Dachil: Well, … even though we no longer realize projects that are as strong, precise and visual as in the years 2015 to 2017—at least not now— KUNSTASYL still may be a possible answer to how people can work together in an open society, even though they come from different directions in terms of culture, religion, society, and politics. In 2015 and 2016, a large number of people became involved in Germany’s welcome culture, which also attracted a great deal of media attention. Germany’s welcome culture was later equally criticized. Those who were active in such programs found themselves caught in between a ‘welcome culture’ and a ‘deportation industry.’ In other words, on the one hand, money was allocated to promote integration programs. On the other hand, people who benefitted from these integration programs still ended up being deported. Box 7.17 Art. 17

Countries that grant asylum need to allow people who have fled to share and maintain their culture in order to retain their identity. At the same time, everyone must be given the opportunity to learn the new language, traditions and customs. There should be an exchange and thus an understanding between people. Until this day, people discuss Germany’s welcome culture, although there is already so much more to this than what is discussed. Even the city of Berlin realized this too late. Why does it take 10 or even 20 years to see what is already there, showing ways and possibilities of living together? You can look at KUNSTASYL and analyze which actions do or do not work, what is and is not possible. For financial reasons a lot of things were

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not possible. A lot is possible through artistic work. Art cannot be limited by financial constraint; however, it is a way of self-exploitation that is unfortunately taken for granted by most. Instead of discussing a welcome culture, everyone can learn from this artistic knowledge. KUNSTASYL and its work are accessible to all. Not only do we showcase results publicly, we also document all processes in great detail on our website. Box 7.18 Art. 18

In the event of war, people should open their doors and minds and talk to each other,to grow through it as human beings. It’s too easy to say what is the problem or what is wrong. The world has millions of known problems. However, the real problem is with the capitalist system and the fact that you can make many changes but the system remains the same, producing the same problems. Where do we start? With problems or big sources of problems? How to start at all? The problem is actually not the problem, the problem is what we think is the problem. Every single person—male, female, or other—of ‘KUNSTASYL generation 1’ is able to share their personal experiences and talk about the importance of the project: Abd Elrahman Al Salti, Adil Khan, Agron Pjetergjokai, Ahsan Gul, Al Khaled Mohammad, Aleksandra Ferkovic, Ali Zaibak, Ali Alkhadib, Ali Abbass, Ali Akbar Rezai, Amer Muhamad, Amino Douah, Amir Muhammad, Anatol Jr. Marinesku, Anatol Sr. Marinesku, Arita Zeka, Assil Alkhadib, Assra Rezai, Atef Shuaib, Ayiza Jabeen, Aymen Montasser, Ayub Muhammad, barbara caveng, Bashkim Veliu, Bedrie Haziri, Bereket Kibrom, Brisilda Cani, Bruna Bega, Carina von Krosigk, Carolin Bernhofer, Dachil Sado, Denis Cani, Diwali Hasskan, Endrit Haziri, Ez Aldin Torkmani, Farhrije Hoxha, Faris Ghani, Fatima Soboh, Fatime Veliu, Fredie Cani, Fuad Sejdiu, Gazi Latifi, Gordon Grunwald, Hameed Safi, Hanin Soboh, Hasime Zeka, Hiba Talmasany, Hiba Abou Khashab, Housam Mounem, Hussein Rezai, Iman Ghanem, lnaam Sado, Jasin Murati, Jasim Gul, Kasim Biberovic, Khaled Mounem, Kumrije lsufi, Larissa Hermanns, latif Haziri, laura Sulaj, Marsilda Pjetergjokai, Marta Biberovic, Mawlud Hassen, Mazin Talmasany, Melise Biberovic, Milad

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Samavat, Milan Markov, Miriam Abbas, Mohamed Elsayed Mitwalli, Mohamed Ghazawi, Maxim Neroda, Mohamed Firas Soboh, Mohammad Talmasany, Mohammad Hassen, Mohammad Nour, Mohammed Zaibak, Mohammed Alkhadib, Momina Amir, Moustafa Al Batsh, Musaab Alawad, Noart latifi, Nurnon Ashgar, Oldi Veliu, Omar Zaibak, Omer Veliu, Omer Murati, Osman Murati, Parissa Rezai, Pranvera Sulaj, Rafeh Barjas, Ramiza Muratovic, Rihana Kousar, Ruba Mensur, Ruschka Markov, Said Sabagh, Saloua Al Salty, Samuel Pjetergjokai, Sandrinetta Biberovic, Sarah Biberovic, Selma Murati, Serdar Yousif, Serxhio Sulaj, Shaban Haziri, Sham Mounem, Shkendije Murati, Silvan Pjetergjokai, Taghrid Alhska, Tasnim Zaibak, Tatjena Marinesku, Tena Biberovic, Therry Kornath, Tiara Bekirai, Till Rimmele, Tuana Latifi, Valbona Cani, Valdrina Sejdiu, Valentina Sejdiu, Vanesa Muratovic, Vitore Pjetergjokai, Yasir Aabdelkadir, Yassin Bakr, Yousif Bhnam, Zajin Talmasany, Zineta Jusic, Zlatan Muratovic. Box 7.19 Art. 19

The construct of money should be abolished and replaced or supplemented by other value systems. People should help one another and it must be a given for everyone to have a house and food. While working at the Museum of European Cultures at our exhibition ‘daHEIM: glances into fugitive lives’ in 2016, asylum legislation was changing. Balkan people were being deported. We lost Zineta, Melisa, Ruzica, Milan, Omar, Selma, Valbona, Denis, Brisilda, Fred, Kumrije, Fuad, Valentina, Valdrina, Gazi, Arita, Tuana, Noart, Hasime, Zlatan, Ramiza, Anatol Jr., Anatol Sr., and Tatjana. We lost Shaban, Bedrie, Anita, Endrit and Latif, Vitore, Agron, Silvan, Marsilda, Samuel and Serxhio, Laura, Pranvera. It was a time where we didn’t know who would be next. People were being sent from nowhere to nowhere. People who had lived in Berlin for many years were expelled because—economically speaking—they were of no interest to Germany. I, and others—different types of people and im/migrants—were of more interest to the government and to society because they saw an economic or other use value for us.

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Box 7.20 Art. 20

Nuclear weapons, firearms, and chemical weapons must be abolished altogether. How quick work was done, how people were deported after years, can be seen at KUNSTASYL.  Our travels to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania show the effects of political decisions. We have seen how people are forced to live there now. Some of them have a place to sleep, to rest their heads. Others do not. We have documented this and now everyone can see it. That is invaluable. We publish our knowledge and share it. * * * MY HEART CRIES’—THE JOURNEY TO TUZLA7 to Zineta Jusic und Melisa Biberovic | 10 April 2017–17 April 2017 by barbara caveng (2017a)| published on KUNSTASYLblog | 20 April 2017 On 14 April 2016, Zineta and her granddaughter Melisa were deported to Bosnia ‘I do understand that things are unfair as human beings are no human beings—however, why can’t things be slightly less unfair than they are.’8 ‘My grandma loves flowers so much,’ says Melisa. ‘My mother loves flowers so much,’ says Mata. If there was a flower for every tear she cried, the world would be a sea of flowers. Climbing up the mountain to see her, would be like walking over a huge carpet of flowers, sweet with fragrance and full of petals and leaves, to a place where hope is synonymous with ‘Germany.’ Passers-by would admire those cascading plants on her balcony and ask her: ‘Zineta, can I have a flower, please.’ Now, the only thing floral in her life is the pattern on the skirt, she wears on Easter Day to honor us. And the imprint on the plaid, airing over a rope in the courtyard. There is a huge pile of fabric in her mother’s living room, with another plaid on top, folded and quilted. Those two plaids are Zineta’s bed. At night, she spreads the bigger one on the floor, to cover herself with the other one. This is where she sleeps, ever since the came back from Germany to that mountain, surveying the old town of Tuzla**, as one would expect.

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Once, Zineta was young and even happy at times. The building, memorizing the lightness of being she felt back then, is still there—however, war turned it into a ruin. It was at the old movie theater where she fell in love for the first time. They would go there three times the week. Zineta pays no attention to those slices of pizza displayed at the snack bar. She lets her eyes wonder over women’s shoes, set up in a shop’s window. ‘Pick which ever ones you like,’ is what her father had said, when she had passed her school leaving exams. It seemed, as if the eldest of his five daughters had made it: that step into a better life, the young Romni*** was ready to make, in those brand-new brown shoes with pointed toe-caps, she had chosen after careful examination. The heel measured 4.5 centimeters. ‘Take whatever pleases you. Take two of each.’ Mata had been reluctant when her had mother said that. She knew Zineta had barely enough money to make a living. It was exactly how Zineta had felt when her father had offered her the same. Mata was heavily pregnant at the time. 16 years old, she had let pregnancy and the growing child happen. Zineta wanted her grandchild to have a good start into life. They filled a basket with basic equipment: two little pants, two little shirts, and a tiny white hat on top. Safe and secure in her grandmother’s arms—who happened to be her nurse—the baby grew up to become Melisa. A few years ago, Zineta became Melisa’s custodian. MELISA’S SONG Who cares Who cares No house Who cares No sun Who cares No bed Who cares No food Who cares I cried Who cares. ‘I just want Melisa to go to Germany. It doesn’t matter if I go or not.’ All vital force seems to have left Zineta. No more lust for life. Over and again she would go into her house, holding a rope. However, it is hard to hang oneself without a roof truss. Finally, she ended up drinking toilet cleaner. She drank the poison but it was without effect.

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There are no flowers growing out of her tears. They add to the salt in the ground on the hill of Kalevici above the city. * * * Box 7.21 Art. 21

One should strive to believe in the good in man. Dachil:

The deportations and their effect on the people who live here play an important role when it comes to social development in Germany.

Box 7.22 Art. 22

Everyone is called upon to resist the fear of oneself. barbara: Knowledge expansion through encounters is crucial for KUNSTASYL’s activities. In 2015, we learned how limited our knowledge is about the people who live with us on this planet. When you meet people, you are constantly confronted with your own ignorance. Experience, according to Socrates, is that ‘I know that I know nothing’. This is what we learn, when others, aliens so to speak, come to live with us—voluntarily or forced by circumstances. We make these experiences of our own ignorance, and the resulting questions thereof, artistically a subject of discussion. We create space or occupy space. This is how we spark discourse and achieve visibility. In 2015, it was receptiveness among all of us inside the HEIM, which made us become a community through a yearlong process. We were about 120 people from 17 countries, with very different ideals, as well as moral and ethical concepts. Only after this, could the site be transformed into a garden and a place for communication and could we create visibility and open the HEIM to our neighborhood. Then, at the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, we claimed its space for self-representation. Finally, with ‘daHEIM: glances into fugitive lives’ we migrated from the local level to a European level and were recognized internationally. This sequence shows pretty well how we acted and evolved from inside to outside, that is from an inward focus on ourselves to a shift toward our relations with the outside world. But whether it was the space at the HEIM or the space shared with the Spandau neighborhood—the streets you use, the bakery you go to—and

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even more so the space at the museum—there was no space available to us, we had to make it available first. It was very difficult to tackle allocations of space and conquer it. Box 7.23 Art. 23

Humility and mindfulness toward oneself and all other living beings should be considered general good. Dachil: On our first day of our cooperation with the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, I went into the exhibition room, which is about 600 square meters. I took off my shoes to work, but then a museum attendant came to me and asked me to put them back on because bare feet were not allowed in the museum. The second day, I took the ladder and climbed up to see where and how to start my work in this huge room. This triggered the alarm and the museum attendant had 30 seconds to turn it off, otherwise it would cost several thousands of euros. The next day, the museum’s director received a really long report about the incident. After that, whenever the museum attendants saw us coming into the museum, they would turn off the alarm. Box 7.24 Art. 24

You should not work for money anymore, but for your dreams. At the end, we would eat, drink, sleep, and dance in the museum. In fact, we had a very good relationship with them. It started when some of the museum’s attendants began to work with us and participate in the project. Others simply enjoyed our friendship. * * * DAHEIM—GLANCES INTO FUGITIVE LIVES by barbara caveng (2017b) | press release (abstract), published in May 2017 Is it about an exhibition? No—a space of 550sqm was to be debated. A wave rolls through this room. A wave of sea and tears. Its water is salty, gnawing at the construct of culture. The wave’s movement is generated by those who upset us and our notions of humanity. We barricade ourselves not only along

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the European outer borders but defend all territory by means of language ability: Hence, we call them ‘refugees’ rather than ‘human beings’, therewith executing their social exclusion and outlawing. Those who have barely escaped the dangerous sea, are threatening us. Hence—as soon as they reach the shore—we assign the exact same phenomena to them, that are commonly used when referring to the sea—the most dangerous and most powerful element (G.W.F. Hegel)—threatening the life of man: the wave becomes a ‘wave of refugees’, a ‘flow of refugees’ bursting its banks and flooding national borders. Not even a denouncing ‘tsunami of refugees’ is proscribed. Within these boundaries, the MEK has made room for KUNSTASYL and authorized us to act. Participation was not presented as an act but radically carried out. Space within the museum became a place to perform and transform. Differences were not set aside, they were permitted. Within the museum, Europe presents itself as competent. * * * Box 7.25 Art. 25

There should be a redefinition of values and judgments, especially of humanity, winners, and losers. People win or lose all together. Dachil: At the time and in this context, it was really difficult to create a work of art. The question is not only what is done or who did it, the question is also how was it done? How can one observe a work of art in a post-oriental perception? Throughout the past, the question has been raised, whether a specific work was cultural, ethnic, or social. In our case, this question came up through a somehow imperialist/colonialist looking glass. This still needs to be discussed, not only with the audience of Berlin state museums, but with the museums themselves as well as educational institutions, all of them unable to perceive a work of art as a work of art as a work of art as a work of art. Art is pain. Box 7.26 Art. 26

Everyone has the right to dance, sing, read, play, and enjoy their lives, regardless of their age, gender, or background.

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barbara:

That is why I always consider my role in participatory projects a long-term performance. I reach limits—first of all my own, physically as well as psychologically—but then the limits of others too. Social regulations and spatial boundaries add to it. I always try to expand the space that these boundaries describe. An essential means to do this is time; within time it is exposure.

Box 7.27 Art. 27

School systems should become more hedonic and scoring must be abolished. Dachil: It is also crucial how one is able to work, what are his or her possibilities. There are clear-cut limits. If I were to compare the situation over here with what is going on in Iraq, I would say that there is a lot of corruption in Iraq and no funding system at all for a project like ours. Here, however, funding often involves an economic or financial interest. If you use the expected terms, such as ‘welcome culture’ or ‘refugee’ you will easily receive a grant. A priori, concepts are wanted that correspond to the political agenda. KUNSTASYL always has a hard time in receiving funding as we refuse to use such required wording. Hence, those who are ­suspicious or hostile toward us, but who have the chance to see us in meetings and in our work, may eventually change their minds. But when granting funds, adaptation to the sponsor’s ideas usually has to take place when completing the application documents. Box 7.28 Art. 28

Present instruments of ideologies and forms of government are to be discussed in schools, educational institutions, colleges, and universities. barbara: Sure, anything that does not fit into the linguistic and therefore ideological framing, is easily rejected. We experienced the same with political parties, remember? They liked to adorn themselves with us as long as out work harmonized with their humanitarian veil. But when we ran out of money, no one picked up the phone. Today, when thinking of those, who were with us from the start and who now follow their own path in life—Mawlud and his bus for example, Mazin

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at the restaurant, Serdar in Dortmund—I am asking myself if, and how, they look back to the time we spent together in 2015 and 2016. Dachil: No one would want to repeat those times. However, at the time it was very important, because KUNSTASYL offered a space to pause for a moment, to think, and to think ahead. Asylum seekers have very limited opportunities; at the same time, they are underestimated by society. They are seen differently. And they no longer recognize themselves in the perception of others. Now, in 2019, that common space to think, to do brain-work, is no longer necessary. We became friends. We meet at everyone’s individual spaces now: at Mazin’s restaurant, Mawlud’s bus, at the home of Evan or Ezaldin. Friendship arose through that intense experience of brain-working together. We are not human resources. We deal with society and social politics. Of course, our questions change. Of course, it happens that not every question is of equal importance to every one of us. Hence, for some, the brain-work is done. And this is desirable, because only then are we no longer perceived as a resource. We are friends. Box 7.29 Art. 29

Education systems are to be changed and improved, beginning with kindergarten. This should include not only the content, but also the attitude toward other people. In addition, the hierarchical gap between teachers and students should be aligned by treating each other with respect. barbara: ‘Siamo familiga’, Faris9 used to exclaim, when he was happy for a moment. That is to say, among us, friendship was never only a personal relationship but part of the KUNSTASYL organism. Which reminds me of Joseph Beuys and his theory of ‘social sculpture.’10 Dachil: After she had left, I really wanted to a walk with Melisa again and eventually I did in Bosnia Herzegovina. We walked through the city, passing nice shops, green parks and beautiful architecture. It felt, as if Melisa and I were kindergarten kids, running around, heads held high, looking at tall people and big buildings. We passed by a small ice cream shop run by a middle-aged Albanian. Melisa chose turquoise ice cream in a waffle cone. I had a waffle cone too, but with coconut and vanilla ice cream—I loved it. I was amazed by the royal golden and snow-white ice cream sprinkled with lustrous chocolate bits. With its intense and authentic flavor, it was amazingly delicious.

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Probably the best ice cream I have ever had in my entire life. Each time licking, I felt the beauty of Tuzla. I felt happiness. It was like being in paradise. And then the ice cream was gone. To me, thinking begins with seeing—seeing further than my hands can reach. Eventually, seeing is like feeling freedom, freedom of art. Day by day, I see more and more and more. The more I see the more I am limited. Box 7.30 Art 30

Everyone has a right to beauty. I have asked myself and I am still asking myself why humanity should be limited and manipulated. I wonder about the value of art, as long as art does not abolish racism, colonialism, domination and manipulation within the art world itself. What can art be if it does not overcome categorization? Why don’t we cooperate in our different situations instead of pursuing ‘heroic’ ideologies? I think, we need to be active in our conscious instead of being passive in our life. There are no heroes. There are no refugees. barbara:

I still believe in two things: the individual and art. I’ve never met a refugee.

* * * Shamash: Gilgamesh—do you truly believe the gods would answer to you about themselves? You were given the kingship, such was your destiny, King over men, but not judge over gods: your arrogance lives on only in words. For what was also determined from the start was the length of your live, a noose that will tighten. Omniscience or everlasting life was not your destiny: you have heard it, and there is no doubt. The only thing that awards men eternity is not history but a story that is told. Because of this, do not be sad at heart, do not be grieved or oppressed to share your fate with the fate of mankind—after all, dying is part of their being. You

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must have been told that this is what the cutting of your umbilical cord involved: The darkest day of humans awaits you now. (Schrott 2004)

* * * Box 7.31 Art. 31

Everyone has the right to be happy.

Notes 1. Omar Alshaer joined KUNSTASYL in March 2017 and is a participant on THE KINGS project. This drawing by Omar Alshaer was realized at the beginning of the revolution in Syria. The hand symbolizes the rejection of the reality in which we lived. And the moment of the birth of freedom in our soul, heart and thoughts. 2. Shared civil rights and participation require a shared system of values. As part of the six-month working process of ‘the Kings—UTC-7 HOURS PARALLEL PERFORMANCES’ in 2017, the 30 protagonists formulated their own Declaration of Human Rights. The proclamation of the charter formed the final point of the performance (for the full text of the charter see KUNSTASYL n.d.). 3. Serdar Yousif was born in 1966 in Korki Mkhayett, Syria. The agricultural engineer left Syria in 2011 because of the civil war. Serdar was one of the first residents of the Heim in Spandau who joined KUNSTASYL in February 2015 and developed the project with us until he left for Dortmund in s­ummer 2016, after his family arrived in Germany. Serdar was part of the inner circle of the project. 4. Aymen Montasser was born in 1984 in Tunis and is living in Berlin. He is an architect and co-founder of KUNSTASYL. 5. Mohammed Al Khaled was born in 1969 in Syria. Khaled was deported from Berlin to Italy in 2015, due to Dublin III regulations. 6. foundation Class [sic] is a program of Kunsthochschule Weißensee for Artists and Designers in exile who want to study in Germany, who have fled to Germany and/or applied for asylum (for more information, see http://foundationclass.org/about). 7. Tuzla means salt refinery. When she was young, Zineta worked in salt production. 8. A quotation from the character, Elisabeth, in Ödön von Horvath’s play Faith, Hope, and Charity.

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9. Faris was born in 1991. He left Egypt at the age of 12 years old, crossed the desert, spent 45 days in Libya, and three days on the Mediterranean. He lived in Italy for 12 years. Due to great personal difficulties, he moved to Switzerland in 2014, came to Germany in 2015 where he filed a third application for asylum. 10. German artist Joseph Beyus was born in 12 May 1921 in Krefeld and died on the 23 January 1986  in Düsseldorf. He introduced the term ‘social sculpture’ to express his understanding of an expanded concept of art which includes all members of society and aims to change the social, political, and ecological space. From his perspective everyone has the ability to become a creator.

References caveng, b. (2017a, April 20). ‘I Do Understand That Things Are Unfair as Human Beings Are No Human Beings’—Koenige daHEIM.  KUNSTASY Blog. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/en/1-og/ athome/i-do-understand-that-things-are-unfair-as-human-beings-are-nohuman-beings/. caveng, b. (2017b). Daheim: Glances into Fugitive Lives: A Collaborative Project by the Museum Europäischer Kulturen Berlin MEK, barbara caveng and KUNSTASYL.  KUNSTASYL Blog. Retrieved September 24, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/en/eg/4a/. KUNSTASYL. (n.d.). If There Was a War—All of Us Became ‘Refugees’—And Who on Earth Would Want to Have Us Then? Retrieved September 24, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/en/eg/4/. Montasser, A. (2015, October 24). Ode an KUNSTASYL.  KUNSTASYL Blog. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/1-og/daheim/ ode-an-kunstasyl-ode-a-kunstasyl/. Sado. D. (2015, August 17). Ein Stift. KUNSTASYL Blog. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/1-og/daheim/ein-stift/. Schrott, R. (2004). Gilgamesh, Epos. Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer Verlag (Translation of German Text by Author). Schumacher, S. (n.d.). Barbara Caveng’s KUNSTASYL: A Body with Power. Impactmania. http://www.impactmania.com/article/barbara-cavengskunstasyl-body-power/. von Horvath, O. (1989). Faith, Hope, and Charity: A Little Dance of Death in Five Acts (C. Hampton, Trans.). London: Faber. Yousif, S. (n.d.). The Man Wearing a Hat. KUNSTASYL blog. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from http://kunstasyl.net/en/eg/4a/.

CHAPTER 8

Facilitating Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through Film, Art and Culture: Searching Traces and the Mahalla Festival Sabine Küper-Büsch and Thomas Büsch

Introduction: The Roots of Searching Traces and the Mahalla Festival The Mahalla Festival is a traveling festival of contemporary art, film and literature, with several ancillary events running alongside it. Mahalla, as a title for the festival, is a metaphor for a space of diversity and inclusion in the fields of arts and culture. The general vision of the festival is to question a dystopian reality of excluding “the other” in the form of the migrant, the poor, the opposite sex and the unknown. The festival took place first, in Istanbul in 2017, and then in Malta in 2018, with preparations underway for a third upcoming festival to be held in Cyprus.1 The idea first emerged in Istanbul through the activities of the cultural association Diyalog Derneği, founded in Istanbul in 2006 to create a network regarding arts and culture between Turkey and the international scene. The

S. Küper-Büsch (*) • T. Büsch Mahalla Festival, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_8

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association promotes exchange and cooperation in order to facilitate intercultural understanding and cultural dialogue between communities (see www.diyalog-der.eu). As co-founders and board members of Diyalog Derneği, and as German documentary filmmakers based in Istanbul and producing documentaries mainly for German speaking media, the festival was inspired by our thoughts regarding migration and the experiences that we had gained as filmmakers working in crisis regions. The title of the festival refers to the word mahalla, used in many languages and countries to mean neighborhood or location. It originates from the Arabic mähallä, meaning “to settle” or “to occupy,” itself derived from the verb halla (to untie), as in untying a pack from horses or camels to make a camp and in Turkish mahalle is commonly used to refer to the quarter or neighborhood. The festivals brought together cultural actors and initiatives from different fields and backgrounds in Europe and beyond to support an intercultural understanding in the field of migration, inclusion and local communities. This article explores the evolution of the festival, which first emerged as an initiative in response to the refugee crisis of 2014, when attacks of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq caused internal and international mass migration especially from these areas. In the section which follows, the article describes the Searching Traces program, which offers arts-based workshops, most often using film and video. It then details how these workshops led to the founding of The Mahalla Festival and highlights activities from the first two Mahalla Festivals held in 2017 in Istanbul and in 2018 in Malta. The use of film, art and culture to facilitate cross-­cultural collaboration and dialogue between different groups is the impetus behind both Searching Traces and The Mahalla Festival. As Diyalog Derneği (Diyalog-Der 2017) notes on its website: “The principal objectives are the promotion of exchange and cooperation in order to carry out an intercultural understanding to strengthen as well as above all the cultural dialogue between communities.” Both the Searching Traces program and The Mahalla Festival share the objective of using film and the arts in order for individuals to “express their views about cultural identity and community life for a better understanding and to overcome prejudices” (Diyalog-­ Der 2020). Newcomers often find their identities and life experiences represented and narrated by others, whether this be through the media, up-and-­ coming artists, aid organizations, community groups or politicians. For newcomers, such as those living in Turkey like Syrians and others with

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migration backgrounds, the arts are an invaluable vehicle for self-­ representation and a way of informing others about their lives, with the hope of facilitating greater understanding between newcomers and local populations. Through film and arts, newcomers find the means to explain their own reality, which almost always also includes rejecting victimization and other stereotypical images of who they are—images which almost always pave the way for hostility toward newcomers. In the remainder of the chapter, we discuss in detail how various artistic initiatives of the Searching Traces program and The Mahalla Festival have created venues to enable newcomers to express themselves and opportunities to bring newcomers and local groups to develop a new understanding of one another.

Searching Traces Program Established in September 2014, the Searching Traces program was the first step toward developing The Mahalla Festival. Searching Traces was organized by the Istanbul-based cultural association, Diyalog Derneği, in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Istanbul, a branch of the cultural institution of the German government in Turkey. The aim of the Searching Traces program was to introduce film, dance and theater as tools to work with people with migration backgrounds and within the larger context of providing cultural educational programs (Schmidt 2014). Searching Traces began as a series of workshops to help train children, adolescents and young grownups from conflict areas to start a creative process that would help them to express what they had experienced in an artistic and creative way (Diyalog-Der 2016). At this time, most European institutions were demanding that organizations and programs working with people in distress employ some form of cultural work when dealing with trauma. The idea informing the project was to assist displaced people from conflict areas through the arts, initially with the view that art has therapeutic value. However, despite this initial intention, what we discovered from running the first workshops was that people participated in the program for quite different reasons. Most migrants attending the program responded to the association’s open calls over social media. The majority (some 80 percent) were Syrians with urban backgrounds from across different regions of Syria. There were an equal number of men and women participants between the ages of 22–35  years old. The participants were not

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looking for psychological support but were, instead, highly motivated to share their complex experiences about the uprisings against the Assad regime in Syria. They were searching for adequate artistic tools of expression, practical guidance for settling in the city of Istanbul and a functioning network of contacts. While other colleagues working with traumatized children in border towns like Mardin focused on psychological relief, Searching Traces sought a different orientation. We wanted to build a program that facilitated developing relationships as equals between all participants, including the instructors. Rather than viewing their participation in Searching Traces workshops as being simply one of therapeutic value, participants valued the artistic and cultural tools for providing a platform in which to develop and share their own narratives. In other words, they wanted to be able to tell their own stories, to express themselves on their own terms and to find a space and activity through which they could interact with others. In order to facilitate such objectives, the Searching Traces program developed a series of video and film workshops. In the following section, we share several moments from these workshops as snapshots of how intercultural and cross-cultural dialogue can be fostered through the arts. Countering Narratives of Victimization: Snapshots from Searching Traces Video and Filmmaking Workshops Participants in the Searching Traces workshops learned to use a narration style of video-filmmaking. Using smart phones and simple video devices, participants learned how to create short movies of approximately one to five minutes in order to express their personal experiences, visions and aspirations regarding community life. The workshops then facilitated the production of videos, working in groups, in order to motivate participants to cooperate and work collaboratively with one another. In this way, experienced individuals were also able to support beginners. S napshot #1: Discussing the Documentary, Our Terrible Country The first video workshop was conducted in the winter of 2014 by Ziad Homsi, Thomas Büsch and Sabine Küper-Büsch. Syrian Filmmaker, Ziad Homsi, had just completed his documentary, Our Terrible Country, which was a film about the Syrian writer and dissident, Yassin al Haj Saleh.2 He presented parts of the video footage that had been produced using the single-shot mode at this first workshop. This footage included sequences

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of violence between the Syrian military and the Free Syrian Army. The participants were mainly Syrians, as well as two Turkish, one Bosnian and two German participants. When the documentary scenes from Syria were shown, the non-Syrians interestingly started to discuss the possibility that their “Syrian friends” might be re-traumatized as a result. They were concerned that the Syrian participants might not be able to endure the violence depicted in the film presentation, and this concern was also in spite of the fact that their friends had not shown any signs of distress. This exchange led to a discussion about how what some might see as caring behavior could be seen as the infantilization of others. Some basic dynamics of the working relationships were then discussed and defined. This debate was one of the many examples of where Syrian and other participants engaged in exchanges together about representation and where non-Syrian participants’ perspectives were challenged by hearing and learning from the first-hand experiences of Syrian artists. For example, this was a first step in countering victimization narratives, which are often central to narratives about forced migrants and refugees, and which are frequently told by others rather than those who are forcibly displaced. In fact, this initial debate pushed the workshop toward creating a more progressive and innovative working atmosphere. The Syrians mainly expressed an aversion against victimization and being pitied. They had experienced so much violence in their daily lives, through negative media attention in Turkey, and in their home country that it had become a part of their lives, causing much less distress for them than for the other participants. Although the young people had experienced traumatic situations, no one felt that they were suffering from post-traumatic stress. Instead, they wanted to reflect on these experiences in a mature way, instead of being nursed by the others in the workshop. They pointed out other issues. The exclusion from daily city life was more immediately harmful to them due to their desire to be more connected with their peers. Most of the forced migrants were attracted to the workshop expecting to be able to draw on these experiences in their work in a rather metaphorical and experimental way, working together with others. They had a definite dislike against TV-documentary formats showing traumatized kids from refugee camps or Syrians begging in the streets of Istanbul. From their perspective, these kinds of films showed the result of the Syrian crisis in an overly generalized way without saying much about the background causes of the conflict. The result, they argued, was that the images commonly depicted by the

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mass media produced stereotypes of refugees, leading to their stigmatizations. S napshot#2: Discussing the Video, I Love Death Another similar type of intercultural exchange occurred during the second day of the video workshop when the instructor of the theater workshop portion of Searching Traces, Syrian actress, Batool Mohammad, was asked to join the video workshop to show examples of her work.3 Together with Syrian friends, she had finalized a satirical video-film called I Love Death in 2014 that had attracted attention on social media, especially within the Syrian community.4 In the video, Mohammad is performing a parody of the Baath party’s school system in Syria. She is wearing a scouting-like, school uniform characteristic of the Baathist state-controlled youth organization (Syrian pioneers or The Baath Vanguards Organization).5 She is first introduced in the clip by her teacher, who is depicted as an actress wearing heavy make-up and grinning foolishly into the camera throughout the whole performance. The following is an excerpt of dialogue and lyrics from I Love Death by Batool Mohammad: Teacher: Of course, our young comrade dedicates her song to our great and beloved commander. the guardian of childhood and youth. Let’s listen to her. Batool Mohamad: I love to die by the bullets of a Kalashnikov or a sniper. My head and my eyes explode. I want to make my prayers before it’s too late. I love to die while I’m lost in my thoughts. Accidentally I am hit by a mortar. Fuck ideas, we’re here to get lost. We don’t give a shit, There’s no tomorrow.

A chorus of dancers performs in the background of the video. One of the dancers is also wearing a pioneer-school-dress as well. The others are covered and wearing black masks and black sheets, in an absurd mixture of what looks like a cross between the style of dress worn by Islamic State and

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a shroud. In contrast to the horrible content of the words, the music in I Love Death sounds like a children’s song, combined with an atmosphere of ridicule and a groovy feel. In the backdrop of the video, drawings illustrate the propaganda look of the school system of the Baath party in Syria. They show happy workers, farmers and school children. Batool Mohamad performs in I Love Death and is also the author of the lyrics. The clip caused an outburst of laughter among the Syrians in the workshop, while the rest of the group had to process their concern in silence first. The non-Syrians were shocked by the satirical take on atrocities, until Mohammad expressed her intentions behind the work. This clip enabled space for discussion about the simultaneous but discrepant readings of the Syrian war that Syrian and non-Syrian participants held. The starting point for discussion was the Syrians’ point of view and their understanding of the war as depicted through the use of parody and film. This perspective was not immediately accessible to non-Syrians but the activity itself reminded them that what they thought they knew about the Syrian war did not necessarily correspond to Syrians’ experiences of living through it. From the point of view of the artist, starting in 2011 by taking to the streets, Syria’s revolutionary movement demanded political change but also the reaffirmation of the existence of individuality in society. Over the years, personal freedom had been brutally oppressed through the one-­ party dictatorial rule of the Baath party and its state-controlled organizations and trade unions, all of which had strived to ideologically indoctrinate Syrians from an early age into the Baath pioneer organization. Syrians wanted to express their personal identities, thoughts and ideas by reclaiming the public sphere. The protests were accompanied by many public performances containing political content. But at the same time, they were confronted with new questions as Mohammad indicated: “Did we really outgrow our former role as pioneer comrades? Or did the pioneer comrade from the past, who stood in rank and file chanting meaningless slogans, only change his looks and is now chanting Jihadist slogans that are full of the same ‘state pioneer’ spirit of the past?” After her statement, an intensive discussion erupted. Some of the Syrians shared her opinion while others opposed it. The Turkish participants made comparisons with the uprisings in Istanbul around the 2013 Gezi Park movement. The two German exchange students observed similarities between the militarist elements in the Syrian school system with the former one of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). They reflected upon the fact that, in Germany, the content of I Love Death was absent as a topic for discussion

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regarding the Syrian war, while polarizing elements like the observation of religious and cultural differences was omnipresent. This activity encouraged Syrian, Turkish and German participants to further reflect on their own experiences. Seemingly shocking images presented by the Syrian artist, along with her explanation of the film clip, triggered personal reflections on the part of other participants. It challenged their understanding of what they thought they knew about the Syrian war, and those living through it, as well as serving as an important step toward countering narratives of victimization. Instead of being represented by others, the clip provided an opportunity for a Syrian artist’s choice of narrative and images to guide and frame non-Syrians’ understandings of the Syrian conflict. Rather than being reduced to a passive observer or a victim, Mohammad showed the importance for providing space to Syrian artists so that they can present their own images and reality. The presentation of I Love Death in the video workshop also provided a new level of excitement and attachment for the whole group. Everyone experienced something new: the collective exploration of an artistic expression appropriate to the seriousness of the political crisis in the region. The workshop continued in a highly motivated atmosphere, spurred on by the insights that patronized perceptions of forced migrants, and the appropriation by others of their issues, reproducing stereotypical images and narratives of victimization that prevent new experiences, findings and exchange. A mutual interest in others and creating spaces through artistic platforms that enable democratic structures of exchange and dialogue can facilitate collective learning, leading to innovations. S napshot #3: Collaborative Filmmaking and the Making of Beyond the Station The next step in the Searching Traces workshop was to develop film ideas. Beginners, in particular, usually struggle with the gap between having complicated ideas and a lack of technical knowledge. According to the instructors’ experience, the film-examples shown during the introduction trigger the imagination. Besides, it is important to create an atmosphere of mutual sympathy, comprehension and courage for creativity. As demonstrated by the previous two snapshots, this is an atmosphere developed first through discussion of films, which opens up space in which to learn about one another and to create new common ground upon which to build collective practices such as collaborative filmmaking. For example, in the process of conducting some exercises shooting video of the fish market

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near Istanbul’s Karaköy district, a mixed group of participants had formed naturally. Syrian participants are often timid about being visible in public spaces due to the negative reactions they receive by people in Turkey when speaking Arabic. However, they became more confident through the process of shooting videos together and as the group’s collective spirit deepened through collective filming. Given that it is already difficult for Syrian refugees to develop networks and relationships with people and groups related to their areas of expertise, this activity provided a natural environment in which Syrian newcomers developed new networks with those working in films in Istanbul. The formats for the films were not limited to any form or style. Documentary, fiction and experimental were all equally welcomed. Apart from one Syrian, who was a film-studies graduate, all of the participants of the workshop were beginners in filmmaking. The instructors kept the overall theme for the films wide open and the participants were encouraged to brainstorm ideas that could be related to any single experience or emotion, an event of the past or a dream for the future. During the brainstorming sessions the forced migrants were the first to come up with ideas. The reason was simple: they had immediate experiences to process and the desire to share these. The rest of the group had also developed an interest in these experiences due to the new exciting content that they had recently learned about through the discussions of the videos and documentary clips just discussed. The workshop was located in the museum SALT in Karaköy. From most of the windows, historical Istanbul can be seen: the minarets of Sultanahmet and the Süleymania Mosque complex, the bay of the Golden Horn. The Syrians compared the location of the museum with places like Damascus, Beirut and Bagdad. Two Palestinian-Syrians, B. and M., shared the idea of working on a film focusing on a suitcase as a metaphorical object. In the workshop, they discussed the role that luggage played in their lives. For them, the suitcase represented an object similar to that of one’s personal history that travels everywhere with the person. The families of both had migrated from Palestine to Damascus and then to the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in the 1990s and 2000s. B.’s memory was mainly shaped by two main migration journeys: one from Palestine to Damascus and the other from Damascus to Istanbul. M. had undertaken three such journeys. His family had first settled from Palestine to Baghdad where he, as a Palestinian teenager, had enjoyed his life until the American intervention in 2002. He was then forced to leave high school and to

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move to Damascus with his family. He lost an important friend circle in Baghdad and a landscape that he adored. The Tigris river from there appeared in front of his eyes whenever he gazed at the waters of the Bosporus and the Golden Horn. Istanbul was the third place to which his family had been forced to move. B. and M. chose the banks of the Golden Horn as a shooting location for their short film. They had an apartment in Fener, an old quarter formerly mainly inhabited by the Greek population of Istanbul. The Greek Istanbulites had mass-migrated from the city in the 1950s. Fener has been a relatively deserted neighborhood until recently. It is called “Rum mahallesi” (Greek quarter) by many Istanbulites. The flat was located in a historical wooden house with a very basic interior. The movie starts with B. as the main character picking photos from a wall inside his spartan room. He is shown climbing into a big suitcase afterward and then closing it. In the next scene, B. is carrying the big suitcase on his back through the streets of the quarter to the Golden Horn. The camera follows him and shows a lot of close ups of his face, contorted with pain. He is constantly struggling with the big load and at one point the suitcase is sliding to the ground. B. heaves it up again and finally reaches the banks of the Golden Horn. It starts raining. In the film, the shot of a lonely man and his suitcase serves to maintain the connection between the main character and the object. At the end, B. balances the piece of baggage over a hill and, in a last-ditch effort of strength, pushes it into a pit. We hear M. shouting something incomprehensible from the back while B. frees himself from the object and runs away for good. During the shooting the main actor was coached by a large group of supporters from the workshop plus the instructors. While he was supposed to express pain and exhaustion, B. was surrounded by many distractions including workshop-comrades laughing and curious spectators passing by the shoot. Because Fener is inhabited by many migrants and Istanbulites, many people asked about the purpose of the filming and were delighted to learn about the educational workshop and location choice and impressed by the seriousness of the performance. Fortunately, no one reacted negatively. It was the first production during the workshop and an important experience for everyone. In spite of the dramatic topic, the shooting was conducted with concentrations, in a fun atmosphere and in the safe environment of the group. The shooting was finalized in only a day and B. and M. did the editing themselves due to M.’s strong information technology (IT) skills. While different versions of the ending were discussed, the

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group provided encouragement to B. and M. to leave the ending as it had spontaneously developed. The first screening of the film during the workshop startled everyone due to the experimental style of the piece and the strong impression it left on everyone. B. and M. had added a soundtrack using an early performance of artist, Yoko Ono from the 1960s using Japanese haiku. The high and shrill tones successfully complimented the performance around memories, loss and pain. In spite of B.’s first time acting and M.’s pioneering experience with the camera, the video was amazingly strong both visually and in terms of content.6 B. and M. chose Beyond the Station as a title to express the fact that there are few normal ways of moving available for refugees like themselves. In this particular example, the act of collaborative filmmaking became a vehicle to mediate between the past and the present. Memories from the old home were intertwined with the new surroundings, creating reflections about past journeys, new memories and experiences of belonging. Through filmmaking, newcomers to Istanbul, like B. and M., were able to make a statement about their new city, not as outsiders but as insiders. This enabled them to situate themselves as inhabitants rather than as simply passive observers of the city. S napshot#4: Discussing Appropriation and the Image of the Syrian Girl with a Scarred Face When the workshop participants were practicing their film-shooting techniques, Syrian student M. ran into a little girl begging on Istiklal Street, one of the main pedestrian streets of central Istanbul. The child had been forced to flee with her family from Northern Syria and had been exposed to bombing. Her face was scarred from the splinters. She asked M. for money. When M. later presented the footage as an example for a single-­ shot-­film, all of the other Syrian participants reacted angrily to the footage. In the discussion, the Syrians explained that pictures singled out like this, especially of children, would be a “no go” for them due to the effect that images like this had of generalizing about the conflict and victimizing others. The film is still online in the video-magazine Streetwalking.7 It was striking to see that the image generated a great deal of interest in 2014/2015 but only among non-Syrian users on social media. The Searching Traces team received frustrated messages from others claiming that if we posted the image, we had an obligation to also tell the story of the girl with the scarred face. Some of them considered her to be the “strongest picture” of all the footage that had been produced. B., the

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actor and co-author of the film Beyond the Station, underlined the fact that she represents what the people in the West are expecting: a defenseless victim without choice and without a voice. The debate that this image initiated provided further reflection on how certain representations of refugees contribute to images of victimization and deny agency to newcomers. Narrowing the complexity that forced migrants experience down to single images and narratives like this one separates the audience from the realities of that person. It creates citizen/non-citizen binaries and with a clear, even if mostly unintended, touch of voyeurism. This is then echoed in the terms used to address migrants, which mainly reflect the host country’s perception of newcomers, often creating a distancing and segregating effect for newcomers. Victimization is a widespread phenomenon functioning on different levels of cultural production. Demand for the story of the girl with scars on her face notably also came from circles in Germany, including from those involved in the arts and solidarity campaigns. Searching Traces rejected the demands by those German and Turkish filmmakers, photographers and artists searching for refugee-stories, when it felt that these were forms of appropriation.8 Some requests for contacts with Syrian artists also occurred. In the beginning, the Searching Traces team welcomed these, hoping to expand the network. Actress Batool Mohammad, for example, was interviewed for a work of art in Berlin. Her portrait-­ photograph was projected on the façade of a house in the capital of Germany. People walking by the house could use a bar code to connect to a website, where an interview with her was posted. The artwork singularly benefitted the German artist who produced it, and who received funding and attention as a result, while Mohammad was reduced to a mere object. During this period, she had dreamed of the possibility to travel to Berlin at least for a visit. Her comment on this disappointing experience was sarcastic with a touch of sadness: “At least my picture was able to go.” Solidarity circles can develop exploitative forms of victimization by demanding certain pictures or activities, which mainly benefit their own work. Sometimes these mechanisms can be triggered by the larger funding structures at play as well. Through all of these experiences, Searching Traces took a direction different than the one intended at the beginning when it was framed as an educational program. Educational arts programs are designed to teach refugees skills but also to treat them in terms of their trauma. However, this is trauma that no one outside of the conflict can define. The reality of

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Searching Traces was that this had shaped up into a much more exciting initiative, that of providing opportunities to work in a collaborative way for the transformation of people’s realities through short films and other artistic tools.9 Building Belonging Through Creative Work The films produced in the Searching Traces workshop dealt with complex realities differing from one case to the other. The emerging filmmakers were encouraged and coached to choose different methods of narration styles in correspondence with their topics. Syrian N. for example was the only participant coming to the workshop with a background in films. She had just completed her degree in Malaysia when the Syrian uprising started. The young graduate had to leave the country due to Malaysian visa regulations. She first traveled to Beirut, a destination preferred by Syrians due to its proximity to Damascus, where her family lived. Lebanon decided to close its doors for Syrians in 2014 because every second resident was a Syrian already. In contrast to the myth that most forced migrants see western countries as desirable destinations, not a single person at the workshop who had been forcibly displaced intended to go to Europe, the United States or Canada as their first choice of destinations. They had instead all tried to stay in Arabic speaking countries due to the language and geographical closeness to Syria. N. ended up in Istanbul because she had few choices, but she definitely would have preferred to remain in Lebanon (Fig. 8.1). Her short film was produced within a diverse group of participants from the workshop. The result was a very personal, experimental film she called “Instable” [sic.].10 N. was herself acting and narrating in the film. In the film, she traces the route of her journey to Istanbul on a map with her finger. She then shows old photographs, while sitting on the floor of her apartment in Istanbul. The camera, lighting, coaching and editing were done collaboratively with the Syrian, Turkish and German workshop participants. In addition to producing the film, the group also participated in documenting parts of N.’s past through conversations with her. This collaboration was also important because it enabled participants to get to know Istanbul in new ways together as a group. The shooting session resulted in the discovery of other realities within the city. For example, N.’s apartment was located in Sulukule. This is a gentrified quarter, where Roma and Sinti used to live. Istanbulites had demonstrated for years

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Fig. 8.1  Photo of N. during the production of Instable

against the demolition of the old houses and the removal of the district’s original inhabitants but their resistance had failed, and the Roma and Sinti were forced to leave Sulukule, displaced to the outskirts of the city. As a result of this, the neighborhood had grown unpopular over the years. No one wanted to move into the area, in spite of its central location just next to the old Byzantine city walls. The apartments were rather new and, ultimately, Syrian migrants moved in there. N. had of course no clue about this aspect of the city’s past. She was startled to learn about this history of her neighborhood and began examining her surroundings with new eyes. One of the positive outcomes of this process was that N. also felt much less uprooted. With the production of Instable she regained her stability. The whole workshop group was able to also explore the new Syrian-inhabited neighborhood of Sulukule and this excursion triggered new film ideas involving the exploration of Istanbul. The short workshop films that were produced at the end of 2014 were later screened on several occasions. They were first shown during a public screening in the art-space, Studio X-Istanbul.11 The films were well received. More importantly, the mainly young and curious Istanbulites, who were used to seeing documentaries about Syrians refugees produced by local Turkish filmmakers, responded with excitement to the different styles of film narratives. They asked a lot of questions to the emerging

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Syrian filmmakers about themselves, the Syrian civil war, their plans and experiences in Istanbul. As a result, plans developed for future screenings, and new friendships and collaborations developed in the process. For the first time, a group of people formed, who were interested in seeing the “migration crisis” as a chance to connect personally and artistically. This group would lead to the creation of The Mahalla Festival. To summarize, the Searching Traces workshops and overall program demonstrated the effectiveness of film and other art forms in promoting an understanding between newcomers and others, facilitating networks and interactions between them, and finally, providing opportunities and spaces in which newcomers could develop and express their own agency and self-­ representation and reclaim their sense of dignity and even a newly found sense of belonging in the city through the process. Rather than being passive observers, whose story is told by others through artistic tools like video and film, Syrian refugees who participated in the program became active participants in their new city. A Culmination of Searching Traces Workshops: Putting It All Together in the Documentary Film, In The Dark Times The experiences arising from the Searching Traces workshops had provided inspiration. Diyalog Derneği association decided to expand its activities to produce a feature documentary film, which would discuss the workshops and the participants’ ideas from these as a response to the Syrian war and forced displacement of Syrians. The cooperation with Syrian actress Batool Mohammad was a key impetus in further exploring these ideas. The actress Mohammad graduated from the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus. In her training as an actress, one of her areas of focus was epic theater based on the work of German poet and playwright, and theater theoretician and practitioner, Bertolt Brecht. Many teachers and graduates of the Damascene Institution are currently working in exile because of their political involvements during the uprisings against the Assad regime. The title of the documentary, In the Dark Times, comes from a quotation from Brecht. The writer was forced to leave Germany in 1933 because of the persecution of Communists like Brecht by the Nazis. Brecht spent his life in exile, living under authoritarian rule, first in Germany, and later in the GDR. In a poem, he asks from his place in exile in Svendborg, Denmark, “In the dark times, will there be singing?”

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Speirs (2000). The answer he gives in the poem is that “In the dark times there will be singing. About the dark times.” Brecht’s words here were relevant to the documentary in two significant ways. First, it is common in the mainstream media to see the Syrian conflict and peoples as depicted through orientalist12 images of Syrian culture. Such stereotypical representations of Syrian culture further reinforce the mistaken ideas that cultures develop in isolation from one another and that there is an incompatibility between people of different cultural heritages. During the filmmaking it became clear that Brecht was enormously important for Syrian artists. In the 1970s and 1980s, the theater community in Syria and other parts of the Middle East were deeply influenced by Brecht’s plays and his concept of epic theater. Through Brecht, Syrian artists were able to relate to artists from Turkey and other countries and establish hybrid forms of culture and a common language with one another through theater. The sharing of a common experience of theater eliminated potential division between Syrian, Turkish and international artists and challenged stereotypical, orientalist images of Syrian art and culture. The documentary is narrated in non-linear form, using different elements such as collage. Some parts of the film included previously filmed footage from the workshops including excerpts from Beyond the Station and Instable. These sequences were combined with interview-narrations with the people involved in the productions. Throughout the documentary, Sabine Küper-Büsch acts as a narrator, reflecting on her experiences as a journalist and filmmaker in the Middle East. Complementing this is additional material filmed for the feature length film. This new material included scenes of Batool Mohammad developing new artistic tools as a musician and DJ as she reflects on her educational experiences and work producing the I Love Death video and discusses the influence of the ongoing war in Syria on her music. During the summer of 2015, forced migrants started to cross into Europe either walking by foot or traveling in small inflatable boats across the Mediterranean Sea, leading to the loss of many lives. The documentary shows demonstrators at the main bus station in a district in Istanbul, Bayrampaşa, with some of the Searching Traces team joining in, in support of refugees and their rights to protection in Turkey. Syrians began leaving Istanbul in greater numbers because they live in Turkey with temporary protection rather than refugee status and a pathway toward eventually becoming citizens of Turkey. This temporary protection means that many live in precarious conditions and, as a result, choose dangerous journeys, potentially risking their lives, to cross illegally

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into Europe in search of more long-term stability and rights (Baban et al. 2016). B., the actor in the film Beyond the Station was a case in point. B. decided to leave Istanbul together with his girlfriend to travel illegally to Europe. The Searching Traces film-group pictured their daily life in the district of Fener and documented B.’s preparation for their planned travels. The suitcase, which had served as an object in the short movie, was packed up once again. The departure of B. and R. from Fener, sitting on a little transporter, shows the suitcase beside them (Fig. 8.2). Everyone witnessing them leaving felt very sad. They had become close friends and the group felt absolutely powerless regarding their situation. The filmmakers found a symbolic image to express these emotions. As depicted in the film, Syrian actor M. found a crow with a broken wing, which he brought to one of the workshop meetings. The group named the crow “Edgar,” inspired by Edgar Alan Poe’s (1883) poem, The Raven. The speaker in Poe’s poem is losing his mind as he mourns the death of his lover, Lenore. The poem maintains a melancholic feeling through the refrain “nevermore.” In the documentary, the group tries unsuccessfully to get help for Edgar’s broken wing and their failed attempts are a metaphor for their irretrievable loss (Fig. 8.3). In addition to such scenes as those with Edgar, the documentary uses short scenes to depict the ongoing war in Syria. For example, M., the

Fig. 8.2  Photo of R. and B. leaving Fener. They settled down in Holland

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Fig. 8.3  Photo of M. with crow Edgar at a veterinary clinic in Kadıköy

Syrian actor, who found Edgar the crow, is shown acting in a short film called Shabia [Shabiha]. Shabiha is the name given to a paramilitary force in Syria responsible for abduction, torture and executions. In the documentary, the atrocities happening in Syria are contrasted with the panic around the world regarding the refugee crisis. The movie juxtaposes such images with quotations from Bertolt Brecht and as a metaphor for a strong appeal to call for solidarity globally (Fig. 8.4). The documentary premiered on 15 June 2016 in the Pera Museum in Istanbul.13 It was a collective activity of a diverse group of artists, filmmakers and affiliates facilitated by Searching Traces based on the ideals of pluralism and tolerance. The documentary was the final culmination of events organized under the Searching Traces program. It was a significant achievement as it enabled Syrian newcomers to participate in an artistic platform as equal contributors. For many Syrian artists it was almost impossible to make inroads into the Turkish art scene or to develop new contacts. Many felt isolated and were unable to practice their art. The Searching Traces program became a platform within which they could practice their art as well as develop new friendships and networks. More importantly, the documentary itself became a powerful tool to counter stereotypical images of Syrian refugees.

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Fig. 8.4  Photo of shooting the short movie Shabia

The Mahalla Festival Building on the activities and experiences of the Searching Traces program, Diyalog Derneği founded The Mahalla Festival (n.d.) as a “a travelling festival of contemporary art, film and literature, with several ancillary events running alongside it.” Diyalog Derneği chose countries for the location of its festivals that were so-called “crisis regions” and places that were seen as crossing-points for migrants. The first festival was held in Istanbul in the affiliated program of the 2017 Istanbul Art Biennale (Biennial Foundation n.d.), the second was held in 2018  in Malta and preparations are underway for a third festival to be held in 2021 in Cyprus (The Mahalla Festival n.d.). The festivals are designed to bring “together cultural actors and initiatives from different fields and different backgrounds in Europe and beyond to support an intercultural understanding in the field of migration, inclusion and local communities” (Ibid.). The remainder of this section details some of the activities from each of the festivals.

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Mahalla Festival Istanbul The first Mahalla Festival in Istanbul took place from 13–27 September 2017 as part of a series of events running parallel to the 15th Istanbul Art Biennial. The festival included 37 cultural initiatives involving cultural workers from 16 countries, whose work dealt with migration. The first Mahalla Festival in Istanbul was dedicated to the themes of migration, exile and cultural identity and included several round tables, presentations and discussions in the areas of migration, xenophobia and international solidarity. This first festival was more conceptual in orientation and prepared the ground for the second festival, which incorporated more experimental artwork into the festival. The festival took place under the influence of emergency law imposed as a result of the failed coup d’état attempt in Turkey in July 2016. Artists from Turkey shared their stories of working in difficult situations, stories with which participants from European countries were often unfamiliar. Many had little knowledge of the political polarization and its negative effects on the cultural scene in Turkey. Problems included censorship and the absence of funding for groups who were not supportive of the government. The challenging situation facing refugees in Turkey within this fragile context was also reflected. For example, research shared by Ulaş Sunata, a professor at Bahçeşehir University, revealed that prejudice against refugees was more predominant among the modern, educated urban population of Turkey than in neighborhoods inhabited by more conservative followers of the government (Sunata and Yildiz 2018).14 Artists and curators underlined the widespread problem of victimization and appropriation in times of crisis in the fields of art. Even in Istanbul, a city with numerous artists with forced migration backgrounds from neighboring countries, artwork is continually presented by artists, who are completely unrelated and unaffected by the ongoing migration and refugee catastrophe. Whether through billboards showing images of drowning refugees, panels about refugees that fail to include a single forced migrant, or installations featuring life-jackets, such examples continue to be pathetically presented as the representative artworks on migration. Awareness of this issue and the challenge of making sure to not cross the thin red line of making use of a crisis was one of the central topics of The Mahalla Festival in Istanbul. While many works received notable recognition because of their multifaceted nature and compatibility with the visions of the festival, the work

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of artist Theo Eshetu, Atlas fractured, stands out as particularly relevant for this chapter. His work, shown as a video projection, was discussed by the artist as part of the festival plenum “Borders, mobility and cultural identity.” The artwork was first shown as part of the 2017 art festival, documenta 14, in Kassel, Germany and later in Athens, Greece. Atlas fractured reflects the history of cultural identities through the representation of faces. Images of busts, masks and works of art are projected onto the faces of real people in order to create the vision of alternative narratives and stories. Eshetu explained the different motives behind his work and the impressive research he did in order to be able to visualize his findings that cultural identities are the product of political imaginations and have never been fixed and defined. They were and are built and destroyed through historical events, power structures and processes of continual migration. The artwork represents, through a beautiful flow of overlapping images, the impossibility of fixing identities in time, since their nature is to be in constant flux. Born in London (1958) to a Dutch mother and an Ethiopian father, Eshetu’s youth was marked by divergent multicultural contexts. According to Eshetu, only the now can be defined, but the now is always grotesque, uncertain and burdened by the ghost of the past. There is, however, as he notes, “also beauty in the present, a vitality for new justices, a search for new harmonies and—contrary to facile political tendencies—an acceptance and desire for hybrid states hitherto unknown.”15 Mahalla Malta The second Mahalla Festival took place in Malta from 17–25 November 2018 in Valetta (which was designated as the European capital of culture that year), with more than 60 artists, writers, filmmakers and cultural workers participating in initiatives from 20 countries. The festival included film, literature, contemporary art, debates and several activities, combining events that invited local and international participants to explore communities in new ways. Mahalla Malta was defined as a space of diversity and inclusion in the field of arts and culture in keeping, appropriately, with the choice of location. The different layers of history and culture manifested in the Maltese language and in archeological sites on the Maltese archipelago are related to battles, conquests and power struggles that have accompanied migration throughout the centuries and up until today.

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The invited artists were asked to generate new artistic practices and narratives on topics such as: communities and diversity, language and migration, new city cultures in Europe and mobile citizenship. The thematic range and forms of expression were purposely defined in a broad way in the conceptual framing of the festival as follows: We invite cultural initiatives and artists to revise the concept of classifications and border settings in historical, political, aesthetically and discursive dimensions. Patterns of identity classified in races or ethnics, gender roles, language conventions, melody-forms, story lines, choreographs and visualization conventions can be quoted, transformed, ridiculed or overtaken. The main topics’, identity, exile and migration, are alignments.16

Malta is located at a strategic point between Europe, Africa and the Middle East in the Central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian island of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya. With 246 square kilometers (95 sq. mi) the Maltese archipelago of three islands is one of the world’s smallest and most densely populated countries, ranking number one in terms of having the most refugees per capita, with 14 refugees (mostly from the African continent) per 1000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (n.d.). Geographically, culturally and politically, Malta has been a fortress and a battle-field for different cultures fighting for superiority and influence in the Mediterranean as crossroads into Europe. The Phoenicians, Romans and Arabs, the French and the British, have all left their stamp on the customs and traditions of the Maltese and Malta’s history. Like in other spots along the border of the EU, the population is scared about its territorial future and cultural identity. Maltese official politics accepts its role as the fortress of Europe by regularly rejecting rescue-­ missions from entering the ports of Malta. The Mahalla Festival chose Malta as its second destination due to an ongoing film workshop project (Searching Traces Malta discussed later in the chapter) in cooperation with several Maltese non-governmental organizations, and the interesting different voices regarding migration on the island, which the festival was inspired by and wished to support. The festival included many artistic works addressing issues of migration using different artistic forms including literature, films and performance.

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Literature One of the most notable works at the festival was by Antoine Cassar, an artist representative of a younger generation of Maltese poets interested in investigating linguistic borders and issues of trans-nationalism, international solidarity and hospitality. Cassar was born to Maltese parents in London and grew up between England, Malta and Spain. Cassar is a poet, translator, editor, cultural organizer and a creative activist for migrants’ rights and the universal freedom of movement. He writes multilingual sonnets or mosaics and contributed some central inspirations to the concept of Mahalla Malta. Maltese is a unique language with Semitic grammar and written with Latin letters. It descends from Siculo-Arabic, the extinct variety of Arabic that developed in Sicily and was later introduced to Malta, between the end of the ninth century and the end of the twelfth century AD. Maltese is also unique among Semitic languages since its morphology has been deeply influenced by Romance languages, namely Italian and Sicilian. Antoine Cassar’s muěajki or mosaic poems combine a minimum of five languages, mainly English, French, Italian, Maltese and Spanish, often in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet. The poem’s ability to deconstruct linguistic and grammatical borders provides a radical questioning of the idea that people need to be united through homogenizing ideologies and narratives whether these be imposed through religion, nationalism or other ideologies. Films Even before meeting institutions, artist and curators about the festival, the Searching Traces team had formed a film-group in Malta. The Searching Traces workshop started in March 2018  in the space of the Sudanese migrant association in Hamrun, which later participated in the activities of The Mahalla Festival. The migrants in Malta are organized in different communities, formed around the members; regional migration backgrounds. It is difficult to get legal status on the island, which is available only by integrating and principally by becoming a worker in the poorly paid workforce. Language-courses and other forms of training provided by Maltese nationals are also used ways of integrating newcomers. The African migrants have built alternative spaces as meeting places in the harbour district, Marsa, such as bars, coffee shops and hairdressers. These places are highly segregated and seen as no-go areas for people outside of this scene.

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The president of the Sudanese migrant association, Mohamed Ibrahim, supported and participated in the Searching Traces program in Malta. During the six months before The Mahalla Festival in Malta was held, a group of Sudanese, Eritrean and Venezuelan migrants and Maltese nationals worked together on films. Many of the African migrants had fled from civil war in their respective countries to arrive in Malta by boat. They had faced extreme hardships and one Eritrean young participant shared with the instructors that he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was receiving psychological treatment and was doing modern dance to relieve his stress. The Maltese and Venezuelan participants were university graduates with stable incomes, while the African participants were living in precarious circumstances. Nevertheless, the workshop was able to create a space and platform of equality among all participants using films as a tool since all of the participants were equally beginners in video and filmmaking. Mohammed Ibrahim, P. and M., two Eritrean participants, had a natural talent using the camera. The group first produced films around the migration history of the Africans, which obviously challenged them due to many disillusions they went through in the not too distant past. Some of their projects are still ongoing. The best results were reached with films that focused on their lives in Malta. An important example to emerge from the workshops was the collaborative co-creative production of the film, Map of the Mediterranean. In the film, Maltese teacher Heidi di Carlo is seen walking on Golden Beach, one of the most frequented seaside spots on the island. Sudanese Mohamed Ibrahim is creating sensitive and subjective camera work by showing the woman reciting a poem about the sea while walking. The camera shows her face as she walks, following her from the front and the side. Ibrahim, then, pans the camera to the sea and returns with the lens focused once again on the woman. The shooting was done on the crowded beach with the whole workshop group of ten people involved. Similar to the film Beyond the Station in Istanbul, everyone connected with this film. In the film, Heidi di Carlo recites a poem by Antoine Cassar about the shape of the Mediterranean Sea and in relation to the history of its people, including ancient and contemporary migrations. As discussed with Istanbul, the Searching Traces workshops in Malta leading up to the festival were an important means of connecting to the community and to the local art scene, first, before the festival. This film, like other short films from the Searching Traces Malta workshops, was screened at The Mahalla Festival.

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Performance The Mahalla Festival was held in the museum MUZA. It was the first central communal event there and pulled people, who had never entered a museum before, to MUZA.17 After the screening, Bosnian-Swiss artist, Milenko Laziç performed in front of the museum. In his performance he used 20 kg of clothing, which he had carried with him from Zürich. People passing by and the guests of a reception being held in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located across the museum MUZA, watched the performance with curiosity and interest. Laziç formed a body from the clothing. Dressing in several layers of clothing, he played with ideas about home and homelessness, dress codes and behavior roles in public space. The performance lasted 20 minutes. Except for a short interruption by the security guards of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, no one was provoked or annoyed by the unannounced event. The migrants, who attended the film-­ screening, were startled by this art performance, the first ever in their lives that they felt connected to and which provided them with a different sense of affiliation than they had ever experienced in the middle of Valletta, a part of Malta which they normally avoided. The Mahalla Festival was organized using the spaces of two public museums in Malta. The idea behind this was to transform the national museums from being more narrowly defined places where national or autochthonous culture is displayed to more active and progressive spaces that would invite a questioning of national or autochthonous culture and narratives. At the same time, The Mahalla Festival also worked with local galleries representing the Valletta art scene and hosted two exhibitions in a local working-class community located on the periphery of the city. Spaces included the use of an abandoned Palazzo, in the district Zabbar, which served as a historical monument of the colonial past as well as a bar of the local Football-club, St. Patrick, in Zabbar. The bar hosted an international video-art exhibit, generating much discussion among the locals.

Conclusion After a more theoretically oriented festival in Istanbul in 2017, The Mahalla Festival in Malta 2018 was able to experiment with different types of exhibitions and formats for events including literature, film-screenings and performance.

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The mixture of different artistic forms and performances by local and international artists, along with greater use of community spaces for exhibits, produced more co-creative and inclusive cultural work. Equally important was the ability to communicate the relevance of the work in the festival to the community and having broad connections within the host community. The cooperation with the local art scene and a close and intensive involvement with the history, landscape and stories of the place, became a focal point for The Mahalla Festival in Malta. Our experiences from these festivals in Istanbul and Malta drive the themes for the next upcoming festival, in which we are already working with former partners as well as with new ones. Cooperative projects between artists, creatives and other professionals from different cultural backgrounds, generate synergies. They are able to form new narratives by questioning power structures and their reproduction in various mediums including in the cultural fields. Dissidents from crisis regions are a central source for understanding global conflicts. The festival wants to develop structures to facilitate collaborative and co-creative activities that will benefit everyone—newcomers and host communities alike. The current moment provides opportunities to generate new narratives about the importance and ways of living with others while the field of arts and culture provide important tools and intersections for doing so. Topics like racism, diversity and multiculturalism, the dysfunctions of globalization, the transformation of urban spaces and the possibilities and borders of the digital cyberspace are providing fascinating new areas for all kinds of artistic disciplines and future festivals.

Notes 1. News and information about past and upcoming projects can be found on The Mahalla Festival Website. http://mahalla.inenart.eu (The Mahalla Festival n.d.). 2. For more about the film, visit the website: https://dafilms.com/ film/9410-our-terrible-country. 3. Mohammad’s video is available online: https://saltonline.org/en/997/ video-workshop-searching-traces 4. http://streetwalking.inenart.eu/archives/2340. 5. The term pioneers refers to a Baathist state-controlled youth organization responsible for educating and inculcating children with the values of the Syrian Baath regime. The organization was founded in 1974 by the

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Ministry of Education and is organized in schools, camps, activity centers, cinema clubs and festivals. 6. http://streetwalking.inenart.eu/archives/2979. 7. The title of the film is “dirty money” and is available online: http://streetwalking.inenart.eu/archives/3052. 8. The appropriation debate is a broad field. The Mahalla Festival identifies acts of appropriation as those seeking attention for their own artworks or productions by using the stories of others instead of facilitating artistic expression for them or in a co-creative way. http://mahalla.inenart.eu/ wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Concept_Mahalla_nov_2018.pdf. 9. The searching traces program also included theatre and modern dance. 10. The video is available here: http://streetwalking.inenart.eu/ archives/3027. 11. The films were screened in many venues including: at the documentary film festival 2015, held at the SALT museum in Istanbul; d a conference by the Goethe-Institut in Amman (Jordan) and in Sofia (Bulgaria) about cultural relief to assist the migration crisis in 2015; and at the Rima and The Mahalla Festival in Istanbul in 2018. 12. The term orientalist comes from the work of Edward Said (1978) and his book Orientalism. As Said explains in his work, orientalism is a way of representing, knowing and governing non-western cultures by western academics and other writers. Orientalism is way of approaching these nonwestern cultures by establishing a separation between the peoples and cultures called the “Orient” with those of the “Occident” or the west, where the Occident represents progress and civilization while the Orient is assumed to be uncivilized and inferior. Critical Theorist Homi K. Bhabha (2004) argues in The Location of Culture that cultural production is most productive where it is most ambivalent and able to form cultural hybridity. 13. The documentary is available online with English subtitles: https://www. doc-film.de/archive/5980 14. http://mahalla.inenart.eu/2017/08/21/perspectives-and-duties/. 15. Theo Eshetu, Panel borders, mobility and cultural identity 19.09.2017. http://mahalla.inenart.eu/2017/08/21/ borders-mobility-and-cultural-identity/. 16. http://mahalla.inenart.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Concept_ Mahalla_nov_2018.pdf. 17. http://mahalla.inenart.eu/2018/06/24/community-video-workshop/.

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References Baban, F., Ilcan, S., & Rygiel, K. (2016). Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Pathways to Precarity, Differential Inclusion, and Negotiated Citizenship Rights. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies., 43(1), 41–57. Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge Classics. Biennial Foundation. (n.d.). Istanbul Biennial. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/istanbul-biennial/. Diyalog-Der. (2016). Searching Traces 24 December. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.diyalog-der.eu/2016/12/24/bread-butter-dads-dobrunch-too-on-their-day-3/. Diyalog-Der. (2017, June 29). Overcoming Borders. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.diyalog-der.eu/2017/06/29/finance-news-you-need-toknow-today-2-2/. Diyalog-Der. (2020, February 17). Searching Traces. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www.diyalog-der.eu/2020/02/17/community-workshopistanbul/ Poe, E. A. (1883). The Raven. London: S. Low. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Schmidt, M. (2014, December 11). Searching Traces: Gathering at Cezayir on December 11th Organized by the InEnArt Team. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from http://www.inenart.eu/?p=16776. Speirs, R. (2000). Brecht’s Poetry of Political Exile. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Sunata, U., & Yildiz, E. (2018). Representations of Syrian Refugees in the Turkish Media. Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies, 7(1), 129–151. The Mahalla Festival. (n.d.). About The Mahalla Festival. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from http://mahalla.inenart.eu. UNHCR. (n.d.). Figures at a Glance. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://www. unhcr.org/mt/figures-at-a-glance.

CHAPTER 9

Connecting Through Cooking: Kitchen Hubs as Spaces for Bringing Local Community and Newcomers Together Noor Edres

Introduction Über den Tellerrand (ÜDT) is a grassroots organization, which began in 2013 with the aim of using cooking and eating together as a means of connecting newcomers and locals in Berlin. This mission quickly expanded to include a wide range of projects, with the aim of creating spaces in which people of different cultures, especially people with and without a migration background, could meet and, based on their common interests, get to know one another. By participating in a variety of diverse activities, such as mentoring projects, community events, sports activities and intimate cookbooks, prejudices are reduced on both sides and the formation of lasting friendships is made possible. Über den Tellerrand also encourages and empowers locals and newcomers to actively shape their own community by enabling them to implement their own ideas and run their

N. Edres (*) Building Bridges Initiative, Über den Tellerrand, Berlin, Germany © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_9

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projects. The motto of the organization is “We believe in the power of encounters.” Aside from Berlin, the ÜDT network carries its mission worldwide, with more than 2000 active members and intercultural communities in over 35 cities, which are referred to as “satellites.”

The Beginning The impetus for the organization began when a group of four students decided to acquire a few pots and pans and head to Oranienplatz1 to cook and speak with the protestors who were squatting on the square in late 2013. The protestors, mostly of African descent, had taken over the square and a nearby school to raise awareness about their poor treatment and the tough conditions they were subjugated to as asylum seekers in Berlin. The students, on the other hand, were commissioned by a university competition called “Funpreneur” to create a product using an initial budget of five Euros that would eventually make a profit of 1000 Euros. The students saw that, despite many media outlets and people reporting or speaking about the protestors, no one was actually speaking to them; they saw an opportunity. The students hence decided to take some cookware and head to the square in order to cook and speak with the people. The encounters were positive, with the students reporting that they were moved and felt welcomed by the protestors, many with whom they later became friends. Based on these encounters, the students put together a small cookbook that mainly consisted of individual stories coupled with a recipe for a meal that they cooked together. They decided to name the book Über den Tellerrand Kochen. Über den Tellerrand is a German saying that roughly translates as “looking beyond your own plate,” while kochen means to cook. The students were referring to using cooking as a means of offering support and looking beyond one’s own interests. The students went on to win the competition with the book and then re-published it for a second time due to high demand right before Christmas. Since all of the students had different backgrounds that had little to do with the book or its mission, the idea was to stop the cookbook after the competition. However, after witnessing firsthand how easy it was to bring people together through cooking and eating, they decided to carry on and organize “pop-up” dinners anywhere they could find, in co-­ working spaces, at their homes, in camps, and so on. They also enabled

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some of the newcomer cooks to be paid for their recipes, which marked the beginning of the cooking courses that continue until this day.

The Cookbooks A few months after the initial book was published, the students launched a Germany-wide initiative, asking locals to invite their new neighbors to cook and eat together and to send them the recipes, pictures and a summary about the encounters. With the help of crowdfunding, the received data was bundled up and made into ÜDT’s second book Recipes for a Better Us. The book was a success, especially since it coincided with the large arrival of newcomers from the Middle East, which generated a great deal of curiosity about the newly arrived residents. The organization decided that it would be possible to expand its activities in order to introduce the different cultural worlds to each other, using a means that is universal to all, that of cooking and eating. Soon after, the team decided to publish their final cookbook, called A Pinch of Home. This book was informed by their understanding of the word “integration,” which they understood to mean the idea of two or more different cultures coming together to create something better than what each could create on their own. Hence, the book’s idea was to bring German star chefs, together with newcomers and to entrust them with the idea of creating novel recipes that bring both cultures and experiences to the table to create entirely new recipes that prove that integration is a two-­ way process that is beneficial to each party when the right ingredients come together. Both cookbooks served as a means to bring together people through a language that everyone understands, that of food. As shall be discussed in more detail throughout this chapter, food is the easiest medium to connect people immediately, the only prerequisite being an interest in other cultures. With the publishing of the cookbooks, which are still being sold to this day, ÜDT continues to reach a much wider audience than the organization could otherwise with its limited geography and target audience. The cookbooks serve as the perfect complementary product to the organization’s mission.

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The Hub and Its Projects In mid-2015 in collaboration with CoCoon summer school, based at the School of Architecture of the Technical University of Berlin, the Kitchen Hub was conceptualized and furnished from scratch with the help of the University’s students and a few ÜDT community members who formed a team and worked throughout the summer on this project. The Kitchen Hub is big wooden kitchen filled with plants, ornaments, spices and a sense of home, an important factor supporting the mission of the organization. It was designed to function as a multifunctional room, where most of the events, cooking classes, workshops and community meetings take place, while also serving as an office space and functional kitchen for the employees of the organization. It is also built in a way that allows it to be transformed depending on the event. Cooking courses, for example, enjoy higher tables and chairs to allow for greater ease while chopping, while community events and workshops benefit from lowered tables and chairs that create a greater sense of comfort and coziness. Additionally, the legs of the tables and chairs can be detached in order to allow visitors to comfortably sit on the floor for storytelling events, while all furniture can also be stylishly pushed to the side to allow for greater room for dancing events and physical workshops (Fig. 9.1). On an almost daily basis, the Hub witnesses an influx of people coming in through its door and connecting with one another through a myriad of projects and activities, all intended to open a space for dialogue and connection, a space where any prejudices are laid to rest and where stable and sustainable bridges can be built. The amount and versatility of projects carried out on a daily basis vouch for ÜDT’s mission, catering to every interest and personality out there, as opposed to adopting a one-size fits all approach. Cooking Courses As mentioned above, cooking courses started very early on in the organization and continue until this day. Coupled with the cooking books and occasional catering, they make up the main income-generating activities for the organization. Newcomers exclusively run the courses and are employed as cooks on a part-time job basis. Depending on the number of visitors, one or two cooks are usually present along with one or two assistants. The cooks create a three-course menu, selected by the visitors

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Fig. 9.1  Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s kitchen hub

according to their needs and wishes. They then cook the meals with the attendees and explain the step-by-step process of creating the dishes. Additionally, the chefs hold a small presentation about their respective country and open the floor for questions and answers. The courses usually last between three and four hours, with a flow of drinks and everyone sitting around the table and enjoying their meal at the end of the class. Classes are usually either booked by individuals looking for an authentic experience, or through gift coupons given as gifts by relatives or friends to their loved ones, or by companies for team-building activities. As with the case of the cookbooks, cooking classes ensure that a wide-­ ranging variety of people are reached, including people that would perhaps not otherwise visit the organization. This is especially true of visitors, who receive the coupons as gifts from their relatives or friends and who, in some cases, are worried that the person’s lack of exposure to newcomers may lead to irrational fears and prejudices, while company visits ensure that people with little time for engagement also benefit from the power of encounters. For example, one visitor described the cooking course, by writing the following review:

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I was with eight women and two men at your cooking class. My skepticism that it could possibly not go well, since women are naturally almost daily committed to cooking for their family and must now come with me to only cook was unfounded, as I very quickly found out. … Everything tasted amazing, can be imitated thanks to your recipes and the detailed conversation with [the cook] about Syria and the whole subject of life there and here was very informative.2

As this testimony suggests, the opportunity for this woman and her guests to interact with the cook and to ask questions helped them better understand their new neighbors in a way that many news reports cannot convey, especially due to the personal nature of such encounters. Sharing a meal and learning how to prepare it also helps to further strengthen this understanding of one another. It is by “breaking bread” together that we experience more intimate encounters with others. Community Events Almost all the organization’s community events are created and run by its “Champions,” who are volunteers. Once a month and under the supervision of the community manager, a group of volunteers from all backgrounds meets to decide about the events for the upcoming month. Some of the events are recurring. These include the language exchange course (where visitors spend an evening together talking about themes that interest them with the languages they are interested in practising); the music workshop (where people from different countries come together and learn how to sing in different languages while playing their instruments); and the football meet-up, all of which take place on a weekly basis. Other events are seasonal, such as movie nights that take place in the winter, or hikes or cycling events in the summer. Additionally, there are events that happen on a monthly basis such as “50 plates of an ingredient.” The idea behind “50 plates” is to pick a seasonal ingredient, such as potato for example, and to ask who would be interested in cooking something cultural using this ingredient. Once four to five people are found, the ingredients are bought and the volunteers are divided to head different cooking stations, with each cook cooking a different recipe (so five cooks can cook five different potato dishes, each making enough for ten plates for ten visitors). At the end of the event, a long table is set up on the side of the room with all the meals and everyone

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helps themselves while chatting and getting to know one another. As one visitor wrote about the project: Tellerrand has made me feel human. Every time I go I always leave with a smile. It is this intricate mix of being able to bring my culture to Berlin and have it be well received but also learning German and being around other people who are interested in crossing cultures. Every time I get to help to make a dish it makes me feel important and helps me improve my working skills with others, because a lot of this time in Berlin and in my personal life I’ve been alone and am responsible for doing everything.3

Another activity is “It’s Time,” which could refer to breakfast, chocolate, tea, coffee, and so forth. Whereas the former activity simply introduces meals from different countries and teaches people how to make them, the latter focuses on introducing the whole culture and rituals behind the term. As in the case of breakfast or coffee, for example, the participants not only prepare the ingredients, but also explain their origins, methods of preparation and use and the traditions that accompany eating or drinking the food or drink. In addition to indoor events, it also runs its very own garden project and creates its own brand of honey. The garden is located about five minutes away from the Hub and was also built by the Technical University students who built the Hub for their summer project. From April to September, people from the neighborhood, residents as well as newcomers, come together weekly to plant, reap and learn about the properties and how to use the different plants and herbs available. In addition, the garden hides in its midst a medium sized box, that upon closer inspection, is found to house thousands of bees, whose honey is carefully extracted and purified by an experienced beekeeper, working alongside the participants. The honey is then processed and filled in small jars wrapped with the organization’s logo, which is then sold in different outlets. Mentoring Projects Two distinct factors differentiate mentoring projects from other ÜDT projects, namely duration and participation. While anyone can visit at any time these other projects, mentoring projects require that a specific number of participants join for a required amount of time, usually specified by the project in advance. Mentoring projects also usually have a specific

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purpose attached to them, a purpose that needs to be fulfilled at the end of the specified duration. Currently, two mentoring projects are taking place at Über den Tellerrand. Job Buddy The idea behind Job Buddy is to support newcomers in finding a job in Berlin. In the project, an employed local, becomes a Mentor, and teams up with an unemployed newcomer from a similar field for a period of six  months. The pair meets on a regular basis, during which time the Mentor shares his or her respective expertise in the field of interest along with experiences in job hunting, including any hidden nuances that the Mentee might be unaware of due to cultural differences. Additionally, the project organizer regularly runs workshops to help the participants better understand the job market and be more prepared for it. The organizer arranges such activities and training as having professional photos to be taken and workshops on intercultural communication, the ins and outs of the German job market, how to discover one’s talents and use them accordingly and the designing and writing of a curriculum vitae (CV). The project also reaches out to different companies from whom it can recruit employees to become Mentors as well as to introduce the participants to the respective company in case of a successful fit. As one Mentor described about his experience with a Mentee and the power of such encounters, the projects facilitated mutual understanding and respect: I did not know anything about Syria, not really, except from the media, of course. I was surprised how many Syrians in the program have a university degree, I must admit, I did not expect that before. I also had a lot of discussions with my parents during the course. You know, both have been living in Germany for a long time now. They did not like the arrival of the refugees, and they were critical of the many programs and the support designed for them. They were, like many migrants, disappointed and hurt. They have been living in this country for a very long time and felt that the support the recent refugees were given was unfair. However, my experience with the Syrians in the program was very productive. I thought it was a great experience and told my parents that they work very hard and deserve all the support they were given.4

Building Bridges In addition to Job Buddies, which focuses on the professional integration of newcomers, Building Bridges focuses on the interpersonal side. The

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project’s aim is to create deeper connections between people with different cultural backgrounds and affiliations, who would not normally encounter one another otherwise. Over the span of three months, about 15 participants meet on a weekly basis to connect, grow, experience and learn about and from one another. During the project, the participants have a chance to connect through various activities and events that center around themes such as understanding empathy and its implications, racism and its causes, personal storytelling, expressing opposing opinions, self-awareness, identity and its multifaceted components, and taking responsibility in society, among others. These events can take a variety of forms, including group debates, experimenting with making eye contact, cooking face-offs, giving notes to strangers on the street and planning excursions together. Additionally, the participants are encouraged to bring their own ideas to the table and even run their own workshop on a topic of interest to them and the participants. Aside from such topics, the project also organizes excursions outside of the Hub to help the participants bond further with local residents, and every evening usually ends with cooking and eating together. Commenting on Building Bridges, as one participant explained, “While we cooked together, laughed together, discovered new recipes at dinner, or exchanged stories during a picnic, a large group of different people turned out to be a great community, supporting each other. My circle of friends now has many new faces.” Despite that fact that the whole group does not usually stay intact after the project, many participants end up forming subgroups and continue to meet with one another long past the end of their formal participation in the program.

Beyond the Hub Aside from the physical Hub, where all of the above-mentioned activities take place, Über den Tellerrand’s mission is carried out in many different locations across and beyond Germany, referred to as “satellites.” These satellites include mobile kitchens (including the Kitchen on the Run, the Trailer and the Bölle), and also, with outside cooperation such as its latest partnership with the social gastronomy movement.5

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Satellites Über den Tellerrand currently has more than 34 satellites around the world, including one in the United States (Colombus, Ohio), Colombia (Medellin), Czech Republic (Brno) and Austria (Linz). All of these locations have been almost exclusively created by either people, rather than the headquarters, who have visited one of the events or have somehow heard about Über den Tellerrand and who are ultimately interested in starting a version of the organization in their respective cities or countries. In this case, ÜDT supports them by providing then with a “Toolbox.” This box contains the organizations’ expertise in the form of information material, such as event formats, corporate identity, design templates, tips and guides free of charge, all combined in a branded Social Entrepreneurship Hub (SE-HUB), along with the organization’s special apron and two cookbooks. In addition to the Toolbox, the new satellites are assigned a contact person, who supports them throughout their existence with whatever questions or needs that may arise. The satellites also become part of the existing network and therefore benefit from the exchange of knowledge that happens on their respective platforms. Moreover, once a year, ÜDT organizes a congress, which brings together representatives from all the satellites for a weekend getaway in the outskirts of Berlin, where they meet other people from the network but also take part in various workshops and activities, designed to deepen their knowledge and help strengthen their respective networks. In the beginning of 2019, ÜDT received funding for a project called “Netzwerk Plus” (Network Plus). This funding enables one volunteer from each of the highly active satellites to convert this position into a paid full-time job in order to better structure the respective satellite. It is worth keeping in mind that the volunteers in Munich, for example, were able to open up ÜDT’s very first café without a paid position, a café that has proven very successful thus far and which strives to employ as many asylum seekers as possible. Hamburg, on the other hand, has run not one but two very successful satellites since the beginning of ÜDT, while Frankfurt has managed to create three paid positions for its satellite.

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Mobile Kitchens Kitchen on the Run Kitchen on the Run is the mobile version of Über den Tellerrand. With a kitchen built into a shipping container, since 2016 the team has travelled throughout Germany and Europe in order to promote the personal exchange between people with and without a migration background. While the 2016 journey around Europe (which is well documented in a YouTube documentary called “The Taste of Home”) took the team to countries, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Italy and back to Germany, their 2017 journey took them to established cities in Germany and their 2018 and 2019 journeys respectively explored smaller and less liberal towns across the country. The team decided to focus on smaller towns as integration projects are almost non-existent in these towns, with far few opportunities for encounters between locals and newcomers. The team also decided to visit four instead of five towns in 2018 and three instead of four towns in 2019 in order to be able to stay longer in each location. This enables them to spend more time in choosing and training interested participants, who wish to further carry out the meetings once the team leaves, ensuring that a sustainable network is left behind. So far, almost every location has managed to create a satellite and they continue to meet until this day (Fig. 9.2).

Fig. 9.2  Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s mobile kitchen, Kitchen on the Run

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The main idea of Kitchen on the Run is to carry ÜDT’s mission of connecting people through cooking, eating and cleaning together, but in a more flexible manner. Almost every evening of the week, an event with almost 25 guests takes place, comprised mostly of locals and newcomers, with the container witnessing an influx of visitors from more than 70 countries since the start of its journey. When registering to participate, guests choose whether they wish to be hosts or guests. The hosts get the chance to share the meal they wish to cook with the team, who in turn buys and prepares the ingredients beforehand. Any given evening usually has at least two hosts. When the hosts arrive, they set up their cooking stations and with the help of everyone present, begin to teach the guests how to prepare their traditional meals. At the end of the evening, all the guests enjoy “breaking bread” together and at the end of the evening clean up together with the music of their choice. Describing her participation in the Kitchen on the Run, one visitor from Suechteln described her experience in the following way: In my personal environment, there is a scary level of racism and xenophobia. My father in law wants to hunt all refugees back to the sea, my neighbor hates Mrs. Merkel because she let the refugees in, my other neighbor sees all the young men on the streets as potential rapists and the craftsman around the corner says that he has to slave away while 'they' get everything handed to them by the state, and many more statements in this direction. Everyone in Suechteln that visits you in the container is taking a clear stand. When I attend and take part in the activities, I position myself publicly as someone who is not racist and who is against xenophobia. It feels so good to meet the people that I know in a way or another at the container. It feels so good to meet so many people from different backgrounds who take your message with such joy and conviction, especially in a climate characterized by so much hate and exclusion. An acquaintance told me that she didn’t know we were so many. That is right. I also did not know that and since I know, I feel much better in Suechteln, more relaxed, hopeful and have less fear of the right populists and their sympathizers. There are euphoric moments in your container where I am close to tears because I think that it could still be possible to live peacefully with each other, with respect and care. And this hopeful joy is something I experienced with many people who have had something to do with you. Please continue to believe in your work, it is so important and helpful. With all the misery in the world, it is so nice to laugh with each other. (ÜDT 2018)

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Apart from the cooking events, the team carries out many different activities to bring people together including film evenings, children’s cooking, picnics, exhibitions and the “human library” experiment. The latter is an activity for which a person volunteers to be “like an open book” for an evening, sharing their life story with the guests and answering any questions that arise in the process. The “books” are not solely represented by newcomers, but also included people with disabilities, addictions and unique lifestyles. The Trailer The Trailer is a smaller version of the Kitchen on The Run. Despite its mobile nature, the container is, in fact, quite heavy and needs to be shipped from town to town in advance, making it less suitable for pop-up events. To address this, ÜDT decided in collaboration with university students from Halle to create a smaller and lighter version of its mobile kitchen, called “Die Anhänger” (The Trailer). The Trailer is indeed a trailer but one that has been transformed into a mobile kitchen. Inside, one can find everything that one would need in order to prepare a beautiful lunch or dinner including a stove, sink, cutlery and dishware. Once opened, the Trailer unfolds to reveal a long table that fits up to 15 people, with small chairs to ensure the visitors’ comfort. ÜDT mainly uses it for creating encounters with a smaller number of people around Berlin and across Germany. It could also be used as an addition to any kind of event or street festivity, ensuring that the organization’s mission of cooking together as a means of connecting people is extended beyond their own walls (Fig. 9.3). Bölle The Bölle is the latest addition to ÜDT’s fleet of mobile kitchens. It was built by a university student for her graduation project and has since become a sensation at the organization, even landing it its very own trip to Dubai to be showcased at the global graduation show of the Dubai Design Week. The Bölle is built to resemble a tiny kitchen shaped as an octagon and able to fit up to eight people around its table, carrying within it everything needed to successfully prepare the delicious meals that connect and bring people together around the table. Aside from its sheer mobility and compact size, what differentiates the Bölle from the other two mobile kitchens is its do-it-yourself (DIY) approach. The creator of the Bölle equipped it

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Fig. 9.3  Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s Trailer

with a stylish catalogue that includes step-by-step instructions to build it from scratch. This is a very important step for the organization and supports its open source and sustainability approach, helping it further spread its mission beyond its own walls and physical resources. At the time of writing, at least three satellites expressed their interest in rebuilding Bölles for their locations (Fig. 9.4). Lessons Learned: A Ten-Ingredient Recipe for Success As a result of these direct experiences with extending ÜDT’s activities beyond the Hub, the ÜDT (2018) team has developed a ten-ingredient recipe for their success. As explained below, each of these so-called ingredient describes one of the organization’s fundamental core beliefs, a belief that it sees as being necessary to foster the successful living together with others, particularly between newcomers and locals. 1. The container as a neutral and open space

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Fig. 9.4  Photo of Über den Tellerrand’s Bölle

The container stands in public space, is visible to all and invites everyone to participate through the cozy atmosphere that is created. There is no front door and the transition from the spectator to participant is fluid. In addition, it is a place that is free from stereotypes or attributing certain characteristics to a specific group; everyone is welcome. 2. The creation of encounters Every evening a new group of strangers meet. No one has met before and everyone is new. When chopping vegetables, one’s origin or native language has no role to play. The chopping and cooking together bridges moments of silence and makes it easier to come together. At the end of the evening, everyone experiences the common success of a delicious meal. 3. Cooking and eating as a positive access to people Cooking and eating together is an inherent part of every culture. Everyone feels that he or she is recognized, that he or she can join in and

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every evening finds its climax in a universal ritual, which is the experience of belonging in a community and sharing delicious food across a long table. 4. Creating the framework for a “us” feeling To kick off each event, a sense of community is created. In order to feel like a part of the group, each person is assigned a nametag and a cooking apron. The initial introduction is moderated in order to overcome any fears group participants may have, while a joint farewell ritual completes each event. 5. Participation of everyone While everyone is expected to take part, the specific role is left up to the participants. Whether as a guest or as a host, everyone is motivated to get involved and to be an active part of the community. 6. Everyone is invited As many people as possible are approached through social media, fliers and posters or with a personal invitation to the container. Attention is also paid to the diversity of age and origin in order to create as much impact as possible. 7. The support of existing networks and diverse expertise The team is not alone. The input of local organizations constantly provides new impulses for the further development of the project while partnerships, and exchange with partners, initiatives and local organizations, shape the container’s work by providing access to local networks and visibility at different levels. The resulting community is anchored from the beginning in existing structures in order to ensure the sustainability of the project. 8. Spreading the stories to the world Sharing stories, pictures and movies on social media and blog posts on the website ensure that the project creates an impact. Press and public relations are also integrated in daily work in order to bring the stories from

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the container into the world. This enables people to follow the journey remotely, while encouraging them to imitate the concept and take steps to create personal encounters themselves. 9. Becoming a part of a bigger story Every day new groups of people are welcomed into the container, each becoming part of a larger history, seeing the traces of those who were already there and leaving their own traces behind. Whether in the Kitchen Hub, the satellites or the container, people are united and an “us” feeling is created that goes beyond the present moment. The container shows how easy it is to bring people together and ensures the continuity of the project long after people leave. 10. Believing in the power of encounters Every team that takes on the container believes in the mission of the organization and are convinced of what they are doing. They go on about their tasks with great openness and passion and accompany every event with appreciation, commitment and curiosity.

Impact The main mission of Über den Tellerrand is to create safe spaces where people with and without a migration background can meet and get to know one another, with the hope of creating lasting friendships that extend beyond the organization. Through its myriad of projects and offerings, ÜDT attempts to satisfy every taste and reach the largest number of people possible, ensuring a higher probability of successful encounters and the spread of its mission not only in Germany but also worldwide. When people first arrive or have not been in the country for very long, cooking affords them the easiest and least stressful way of meeting others. This is because one does not need much language know-how in order to be able to participate in a cooking event. All that is initially needed are basic motor skills and a friendly vibe. As one stands next to the cook and other people chopping vegetables or stirring a pot, basic conversation can take place but is not an obligation. This is coupled with the fact that anyone can join the events without any previous knowledge of language or cooking and this makes it a more likely first step for newcomers.

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In addition, cooking ensures that everyone present is viewed equally. Once you receive your apron and your tasks, you are as valuable as anyone else in the room, with as much to offer. This fact is closely related to the pride and joy that newcomers feel when they get to cook a meal of their choice, subsequently sharing their culture, heritage and past with the participants. This is especially important at the beginning, a time where newcomers feel less capable of offering much to their host society and where the potential exists for then to fall into the trap of feeling inferior and depressed. Apart from using cooking as a “door opener,” ÜDT also works to provide opportunities to participants to have a voice. Although finding a new life can be exciting for people, who have the opportunity to locate to a new place of their own choice, it can just as easily be a “living hell” for those forced, independent of their own will, to embark on this journey. Aside from all of the difficulties associated with moving to a new place, one of the most devastating aspects of starting a new life somewhere else is the feeling of losing your voice. In one’s own country, one might be a respected and well-regarded individual, someone who has a say in what happens around him or herself, and who understands the system in which he or she is born. In a host country, one is not only lost in a new system, but may experience losing all opportunities of having one’s voice heard (with language being a large factor in this regard). At Über den Tellerrand, the vast network of empathetic and cooperative people, many of whom even speak the newcomer’s language, ensure that a person’s voice is heard and strengthened. Whether through representing their opinions on social media, acting as a mediator between two people by being able to use a language that they both understand, or providing legal support to someone, the newcomer feels heard and understood. One such case was when a community member from Afghanistan had an appointment at the authorities to be returned to their country. Upon receiving the news, a group of German community members came together to accompany the Afghani community member, providing this member with a much stronger voice than he could have ever had alone and ultimately resulting in the suspension of the member’s deportation. Furthermore, locals also benefit from the collective voice they have as part of the ÜDT. Due to the current turbulent nature of European and world politics and the rise of right-wing sentiment, many young people find themselves feeling helpless and in a frustrating situation. Engaging in the community and supporting newcomers is a way to combat these feelings and to stand up in the face of parties such as the far-right party, AFD

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(Alternative fuer Deutschland). The organization also strives to support newcomers by giving them access to its wide network, as many opportunities are materialized through connections. These connections are referred to as “vitamin B” or “Bekanntschaft,” which literally translates as acquaintances. To apply for a job, for example, a person can send his or her CV to a company only to find that it is but one of the thousands of CVs that that company has received. Alternatively, that same person could simply have a word with one of their friends, who works with that company or organization and who, in turn, is able to speak with the Human Resources department to ensure the credibility of the person, directly landing them a job interview. This is also true of apartment searches. In Berlin, the moment a person puts up an ad on a platform to advertise their empty room, he or she is immediately bombarded with thousands of messages. This proves very stressful not only for the applicants, but also for the person advertising the room. On the other hand, when this person advertises their empty room on social media, or simply through word of mouth, he or she undergoes much less stress and is more likely to find a suitable person as a result of their friends’ recommendation. Despite many people recently arriving in Berlin, the vast network of Über den Tellerrand ensures that they reap the benefits of a mature and long extending network, something invaluable in a big city. Aside from the benefits of connection, the organization also strives to fight isolation and prevent parallel societies from emerging. Newcomers face two possible scenarios after they flee their homes and arrive in a new country: a feeling of isolation and lack of belonging or finding comfort in their own cultural group in their adopted country. Both of these scenarios have problems. In the case of isolation, one can feel alone and disconnected, which adds to his or her existing difficulties and which makes it more difficult to function in society. Furthermore, it is easy to sway and brainwash young people, who have undergone trauma and either experienced negative or no contact with locals, to view themselves as victims and their hosts as aliens, a view that creates distancing from the larger society which can lead to future problems. Parallel societies, on the other hand, often provide protection and a sense of home, but they also result in segregating individuals, making it harder to integrate into the local society in which most opportunities exist. ÜDT works on fighting both phenomena by providing a safe space in which everyone can meet and get to know one another.

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As mentioned above, arriving in a new land without any established contacts usually proves to be a daunting experience. For newcomers without any other choice, it is even harder. Granted, there are institutions that offer a variety of forms of aid but they are, however, rarely centralized and difficult to navigate. For example, the camps where newcomers initially find shelter also frequently have information centers and offer aid but this assistance is usually very basic with newcomers often requiring much more support in comparison with the number of social workers available. This is where ÜDT’s network once again plays an important role. The established network of locals and newcomers, who have already experienced similar journeys, ensure that the newcomers are not thrown into the unknown once they arrive in Berlin (or other cities where the organization is active) but are welcomed instead with open arms. Aside from the moral and social support that such a network offers, newcomers also benefit from other people’s knowledge in all matters ranging from finding a suitable German school, going out at night, or finding a suitable part-time job. Additionally, by offering a safe space where everyone is welcome, the organization strives to advocate for and work toward openness and tolerance among all its participants. Everyone is welcome independent of his or her race, religion, sexual orientation or socioeconomic standard. This safe space ensures that people who usually would not come together under other circumstances have a space to meet and ultimately get exposed to many alternative ways of life, planting seeds in their minds that will accompany them throughout their lives and shape their future behavior and interactions. The fact that the organization has managed to organically spread its mission all around Germany and other parts of the world vouches for its success and ensures that its impact is felt on a much wider scale and beyond its physical borders. Whether through the exchange of expertise and knowledge within the network of satellites, or by giving newcomers and locals alike the chance to be a part of the community whenever they visit or move to those cities, Über den Tellerrand is working to eliminate borders and ensure that wherever one goes their ÜDT family will be by their side.

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Limitations and Risks With its successes, it is inevitable that the ÜDT also faces its share of limitations or risks that may prevent it from fully achieving its goals. Some of these limitations exist on a macro level, while others are more micro and local in their nature. On a macro level, unfavorable political developments and media coverage pose a challenge to the organization. As a grassroots project that thrives on the support of civil society actors, the current political situation and public opinion have an impact on ÜDT’s development. Since governmental institutions finance a large percentage of what projects are possible, a negative change in public opinion can decrease the amount of funds available to the organization. The same applies to cookbook sales and bookings for cooking courses. Additionally, the ability to attract volunteers can also be jeopardized as a result of inadequate or negative media coverage. Negative coverage scares people by focusing on one bad case and projecting it onto all others, thereby creating fears that can hinder successful encounters and create a sense of distrust between newcomers and locals. Conversely, the total lack of media coverage leads to the assumption that there is no more work to be done and that integration has been fully successful. Such false assumptions and the sudden lack of interest led to a sharp decrease in the number of volunteers who were interested in joining the organization more recently as compared with the numbers of volunteers in 2015. Despite the success of the first step, namely equipping newcomers to have their basic needs met, much is yet to be done to truly integrate people and have them feel as if they belong within German society. When this step is not carried out properly, there is potential for much to be lost for both communities. Another struggle that faces ÜDT is the lack of funding. A great deal of effort has been invested in making the organization as independent as possible and in diversifying the sources of income available to it. Aside from the income generated by cooking courses and the sale of cookbooks, ÜDT thrives on institutional funding from governmental institutions and private foundations. Additionally, the organization often receives prize money and small donations from companies or individuals who support its mission. However, despite this support, funding remains an obstacle. Since it relies on project-specific funding to finance the bigger bulk of its operations, ÜDT usually receives money solely for a designated project,

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while many of its day-to-day operations, which are necessary to run the organization, remain unfunded. This proves to be a challenge that depletes the organization of the reserves that it acquires from other sources. Additionally, projects usually run for a specific amount of time. This means that once the project is over, its respective funding disappears with it, leaving the team in a constant state of financial stress. This type of funding also hinders the organization from employing someone, who is solely responsible for fundraising, as this type of job is simply not included in project proposals, while other sources of capital that the organization acquires do not suffice for this purpose. This whole process naturally strains the organization and prevents it from implementing a safe, long-­ term vision for its future. On a more interpersonal level, challenges such as “leadership culture” also pose a potential threat to the organization. Regardless of newcomers’ backgrounds or affiliations, they are expected to know less about the host country than their fellow locals. This is quite normal as the newcomer did not grow up in the country and is, therefore, less likely to possess the relevant knowledge necessary to successfully navigate the system. Locals are in this case encouraged to offer their relevant expertise in order to ease the process for their newcomer neighbors. However, this fact can also pose a challenge to ÜDT’s commitment toward supporting interactions between people that are non-hierarchical in nature. With the best of intentions, some locals may join ÜDT hoping to enlighten the newcomers on such matters as behavior, religious affiliations and their respective role in society. This implies that one community knows more than the other about such matters and would like to therefore “lead” the other into a more elevated place. Such behavior is not tolerated in the organization, as ÜDT strongly believes in the sovereignty of each person and the right to one’s own opinion. Constant feedback and the careful choice of “Champions” ensures that this kind of interaction seldom takes place and that it is addressed the moment it happens. Another invisible but equally strong risk is the exclusion of some people through labeling. In order to clarify its mission, attract the right audience and acquire funding from relevant institutions, ÜDT is required to mention that it is a place that first and foremost “aims to bring locals and newcomers (in the form of people who were forced to flee their countries) together.” While this mission appeals to many people and ensures that the target audience is reached, it paradoxically hinders the organization from reaching another part of its target audience. This mainly applies to

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newcomers who do not wish to be labeled as such. Many newcomers in Berlin and beyond are frustrated with the “refugee” label and wish to transcend it. People have often experienced a whole life before becoming “refugees,” and they believe that referring to their identity in relation to only one horrible experience, which they have encountered, belittles them and robs them of their unique identity. People do not wish to be simplified, quantified and put into one box for years at a time. This fact, coupled with the negative connotation of the word in the media, prevents a percentage of the newcomers from attending events and participating in the community. Finally, from the organization’s side, much effort is placed on catering to every taste and creating the most welcoming atmosphere possible. Every day, ÜDT works to attract newcomers to volunteer in the organization in order to consult them on the creation of events, as well as to break down the helper-helpee dynamic evident in many integration projects where only locals volunteer. However, ÜDT can only go so far. If willingness or interest does not exist from the other side, its employees cannot go to the different camps and knock on people’s dorms to bring them to the events. It simply is not in their capacity. This implies that newcomers themselves should be in a position where they want to connect, seek support or perhaps come out of their comfort zone. While many people do make that move and approach the organization, some are in more difficult situations that necessitate initial treatment or increased care. This could be for many reasons including Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, deep isolation or simply a lack of trust toward the country due to previous bad experiences or very limited exposure. This unfortunate fact implies that the organization only has the capacity to offer its services to people who want to receive it, necessitating mutual effort.

Conclusion Social needs are an integral part of human beings and their nature. As an organization, Über den Tellerrand acknowledges this fact and does everything in its power to ensure that newcomers have a place to call home as soon as they arrive in the country. Through a myriad of projects, ÜDT ensures that every taste is satisfied, and that locals and newcomers have opportunities to bond, learn and grow together, all in a non-hierarchical manner. Experiences of being part of a community or simply attending an

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event usually leave people with positive feelings, laying fertile ground from which friendships and strong bonds can grow. Whether in the case of locals, who develop a deeper understanding of their new neighbors, or in the case of newcomers, who find their host country more welcoming and less alienating, the results are undoubtedly positive. The importance of such work by ÜDT or other organizations around inclusion and solidarity with newcomers cannot be understated. It is the kind of work that is needed, now more than ever, to fight fear and hate and foster belonging and pluralism. It is the kind of work that opens horizons, expands minds and prevents parallel societies, with all their limitations, from developing. It is what determines the kind of future that people want to have. With this in mind, this work cannot and should not be done by one person or organization. In order to function on a larger scale, a scale proportional to the current need, all actors in society need to be involved in the process. Aside from civil society activism, as in the case of ÜDT, much needs to be done from the governmental and corporate side in order to ensure a holistic approach to the problem. In other words, only by using a pluralistic approach will pluralism truly be fostered.

Notes 1. Oranienplatz is a square in Kreuzberg, Berlin. From October 2012–April 2014, Oranienplatz was a site of pro-refugee and migrant protests and occupations based on three key demands: abolition of camps, abolition of movement restrictions on refugees based on place of residency and an end to deportations (Langa 2015). 2. Testimony shared with Über den Tellerrand (internal document). 3. Testimony shared with Über den Tellerrand (internal document). 4. Testimony shared with Über den Tellerrand (internal document). 5. ÜDT recently joined the social gastronomy movement to become one of ten hubs around the world to work on creating opportunities for people living on the margins of society, while simultaneously working on reducing food waste and eliminating world hunger. Social Gastronomy Movement (SGM) was officially launched in 2018 and aims to connect chefs, projects and stakeholders through social gastronomy hubs and an online platform to achieve many goals including connecting the different players in the field, inspiring households to change their habits, empowering companies to be more sustainable, changing consumer behavior and sharing best practices. Each Hub is independent and aims to cater to the needs of their local com-

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munity, while the online p ­ latform ensures that expertise could always be shared to accelerate innovation and foster inspiration.

References Langa, N. (2015). About the Refugee Movement in Kreuzberg/Berlin. Movements. Journal für kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung, 1 (2), 1–10. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https://movements-journal.org/ issues/02.kaempfe/08.langa%2D%2Drefugee-movement-kreuzbergberlin.pdf. ÜDT, Über den Tellerrand. (2018). Kitchen on the Run—Next Stop Heimat. Retrieved October 2, 2019, from https://ueberdentellerrand.org/media/ com_form2content/documents/c32/a110/f325/Konzept%20und%20 Voraussetzungen%20KotR%202019.pdf.

CHAPTER 10

Kırkayak Kültür: Facilitating Living Together Kemal Vural Tarlan

Introduction Antep, the city I live in, has been at the crossroads of ancient civilizations and cultures, where people have, throughout history, always met, lived and created together. The city sits on the crossroads of the historic Silk Road and many other trade routes and, hence, is a center of global trade that boasts a rich culture created by many civilizations. The borders established at the end of World War I (WWI) separated Antep from Aleppo. As Antep had previously been part of the hinterland of Aleppo, this separation from Aleppo helped Antep to grow faster, becoming a new center. The city never lost contact with the Middle East, maintaining ties through commerce and both legal and not-so-legal activities. After the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the borders were drawn, and hundreds of kilometers of minefields were created. The ancient roads were interrupted by border gates, which reduced all communication between the two sides of the border to permits, papers and also to smugglers.

K. V. Tarlan (*) Kırkayak Kültür, Gaziantep, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_10

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Since the borders and customs were first established, smuggling has been the main means of livelihood for communities on both sides of the border. For those who live close to the borders, smuggling is the first profession to which people resort. Those of “us,” who live on this side of the border, have received everything about the “other side” of the border via the smugglers, whether it be tea, tobacco, sugar, electronics or other goods. Up until recently, all we really knew was that everything was cheaper on the other side. We didn’t know “their” language, we had never visited their cities and had never heard their songs. We had only heard news about the “other side” from the smugglers. We learned about Aleppo, Careblus, Kobane, Idlib, Afrin and Manbij from the smugglers. They were the ones who passed through the borders and the minefields to get their goods from the other side. They often said, “Neither their cities, nor their villages are like ours.” We were told that their houses were worn out, they were dirtier than us and most of them were illiterate. Besides this, they only spoke Arabic. We were also told that they were fools of a people who had never heard of rights, laws, rules or democracy, and that they were extremely poor. Listening to these tales, “we,” those of us who lived on this side of the border, kept looking at the other side as dusty and poorer lands, as we boasted to one another: “We should be very happy to live in this Western, European country.” Then came the day when the turmoil took over the other side of the border. The TV channels were buzzing with news from the other side, which was very strange because we had never heard anything about the other side on TV. On 17 December 2010, when a young Tunisian man—a qualified engineer but unemployed and reduced to selling fruits and vegetables on the streets—set himself on fire to protest his humiliation by a government officer, everybody took to the streets in protest (Sawahel 2011). The people protesting on the streets wanted simple things: employment, the elimination of poverty and an end to corruption. They wanted the basic right to elect their administrators, someone whom they could trust. They wanted to have their votes protected and for the administrators to be chosen through democratic elections. Governing should not be transferred from father to son; no single party, sect or tribe should have all the power in the country. The youth and undergraduate students wanted jobs; they wanted a life, similar to that of their peers living in other countries whom they observed online through social media. We watched all these events on our TVs and heard about the news through the media while we kept up with our simple, daily lives on this

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side of the border. We wanted to have a film festival in the city in which we lived, and we wanted to have exhibitions, theater and concerts in this city. At that time, in Antep, a group of us, including academicians and students from the university, doctors and nurses from the hospitals, teachers from the schools, and engineers, architects, lawyers and others came together to create a culture-arts institute in the city. We owned a historic, stone house. We slowly restored it and turned it into an arts center. Everybody gave their best: we helped the professionals with carrying items, painting and sanding the stone walls. On the other hand, some of us were interested in the political situation in the Middle East; some were interested in their cultures and we kept reading … some among us developed a taste for Middle Eastern cinema. The soft but powerful voice of Fairouz began to fill our house.1 In 2011 we organized the very first film festival. We wrote a public declaration explaining our main goals as follows: “The International Zeugma Film Festival’s main goal is to bring together films for our audiences from across the entire world but especially from across the Middle East, Europe and Turkey.” The year 2011 was spent establishing a culture-­ art center in our city. Once we had finalized the legal processes creating Kırkayak Kültür, we unceasingly began organizing many art and culture activities.

Spring Is Upon Us 2011 was a busy year in which we continued our endeavors to create a space which could serve as a venue for our work and which would also reflect the culture of our region. During the same year we also increasingly felt the spring atmosphere in the streets of countries across the Middle East. The uprising that began in Northern Africa in Tunis, as well as the ongoing protests of the angry masses in Tahrir Square in Egypt, became every day scenes in the global media. The fury radiating from Arab streets spread through Libya, Bahrain and Yemen and engulfed the entire region until it reached nearer to our country, to Syria. We started paying closer attention to what was happening across the border as we began hearing more news, our curiosity rising. We questioned what it was that we knew about this region that we lived in and were surprised to learn that we knew almost nothing. We had become strangers in our own region, having focused so much of our attention on the West. We began checking our book stores and libraries and consulting with publishers’ lists to see what

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books were available in Turkish on the Middle East. We found that the books about our region were scarce. We read what we could lay our hands on. We read literature, poetry and novels from the Middle East and we read sociological work in particular. We watched excerpts from their cinema. We kept our eyes wide open, trying not to miss any new developments. By the end of April, people began crossing the border, taking refuge in our country. At first, they stayed in the camps along the border. Later, in order to save their lives, people began crossing the border in large groups, ending up in the city in which we lived. As time passed, these people started to appear in our streets, parks, school yards and mosques. For the first year, we did not have much contact with them. They mostly stayed in the camps along the border, without having much contact with those of us living in the cities. The camps were well protected. But as the time passed, the Syrian uprising and violence spread across all of Syria. People continued to cross the border. In the second year of the conflict, in 2012, Syrians began to appear in our cities’ streets, starting in Kilis. Buses from Kilis to Antep began carrying hundreds upon hundreds of people. The historical bus terminal of Gaziantep was filled with buses, carrying hundreds of people, just like an ant nest in the middle of the city. When people arrive in Antep from other cities, such as Maraş and Kilis, they usually first find themselves at the historic bus terminal and, from there, then spread out across the rest of the city. This is why there are many hotels near the bus terminal. The guests of these old and cheap hotels are mostly people from nearby countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Iran, who are mainly small entrepreneurs engaged in shuttle trade, a profession invented in the early 1990s involving buying goods abroad and importing them for resale in small shops and street markets. A large avenue connects the bus terminal to the hotels in the area and to the large bazaar located in behind. The bazaar, recently called the “Syrian market,” has had many names throughout history. Once it was called the “Iranian market” because of the fact that Iranian Shiite pilgrims had once used this route to reach Zeynep’s Tomb near Damascus in Syria during the Iran–Iraq war. Iranian pilgrims and shuttle traders had stayed during this time in these hotels. During these long years of war, they brought with them goods from their countries to Turkey and, in return, bought goods from Turkey to sell in Iran. The market area is composed of dozens of small streets with hundreds of small shops. The popular name of the area is also known as “smugglers’ market.” Hundreds of items, especially electronics, tobacco, tea and coffee are exchanged in this market. Since 2011, this bus terminal has also been

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the very first stop of arrival for Syrian refugees. Syrians first stayed in these same hotels around the terminal and, once the hotels were full, they began renting apartments in the older surrounding neighborhoods. Spreading out from the Kilis bus terminal, and then from these surrounding neighborhoods, Syrian refugees eventually arrived in our neighborhoods and on our streets.

Guest or Refugee? The media tagged these foreigners, whom we started to see more and more in our neighborhoods and streets, as “Syrian guests.” These new guests (male, female and children), who had fled the war in Syria with nothing but a couple of bags and a piece of luggage, were found wandering the streets in search of accommodation. One day, the doorbell of Kırkayak Kültür rang. A woman and two children were at the door. They spoke in Arabic and said something like “bayt, icar.” When we asked what the woman wanted, she replied with a short Turkish sentence that she had obviously learnt especially for today: “rented apartment?” Well, we did not have any apartments for rent! But before we could explain this, the woman was already inside, looking around. The door of the empty cellar of the old stone house was open and she saw that the cellar was empty. She started to talk in her own language but seeing that we did not understand a single word, she started to beg us with her gestures and expressions. It was a humid, dark, underground cellar and she wanted it. She desperately needed a home and she was ready to take whatever was available. That day, we discussed the issue with the members and volunteers of Kırkayak Kültür and decided that we had to do something about the situation. We had to support such newly arriving people. First, we decided to help our neighbors and started to take an inventory of the household items that we no longer needed in our own homes. And everyone had plenty: linens, quilts, blankets, dresses, especially dresses for children, kitchenware, televisions, beds and much more. We delivered these goods to the families we found. At first, everything was difficult. We were giving away our own goods and assets whether we needed them or not. And we also worried that we might offend them. Was it ok to consider them as poor, helpless human beings? On the other hand, when we visited Syrian families, they literally had nothing, not a single household item in their homes. Most of the time, all they had was a

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makeshift bed, a small cooking appliance, a couple of glasses and a single coffee pot. The children did not have shoes and their dresses barely covered them. At first, we asked our friends to donate any items they no longer needed and to wash them if they needed cleaning. We also checked all the items that we received before giving them to those in need. We were doing what we could. But we also kept telling each other that this was not sustainable; we needed to do more so as to ensure that these people could live more dignified lives. We needed to find a way to achieve this goal. Yes, in times of emergencies people should support each other with basic needs but, on the other hand, other methods also needed to be found. Hundreds of thousands of people took refuge in the camps at the border and these soon reached full capacity. Even the border cities quickly reached their full capacities and our city was one of them. It was not possible for our “guests” to continue living under these circumstances. All the money they had brought was rapidly diminishing. It was impossible to keep these people dependent on aid and humanitarian support. And it was still uncertain how long this situation would continue. The children needed to go to school and the adults needed employment. This was well beyond the limits of having guests and hospitability. These people were not guests but refugees in our country. They had rights under national and international laws, and they should be granted these rights. With so many refugees arriving, ramshackle houses, vacant for many years, were the first houses to be rented to the refugees. These vacant houses were occupied by refugees, who were without money or a place to live. Meanwhile, rents started to increase. The landlords doubled and even tripled the rents. Poorer Turkish people started complaining, saying “These Syrians have come and are causing our rents to increase.” After a while, the refugees started to look for jobs in industrial zones, factories, and workshops. For the bosses, the newcomers were a source of cheap labor, perfect for various types of informal employment. They fired their Turkish employees and hired refugees for wages next to nothing. At this time, those who were fired by their bosses started complaining, but there was nothing they could do. Overnight, tens of thousands of cheap workers were introduced into the city’s labor market. Past fears surfaced once again. Whispers first began in the houses and then spread into the streets and cafes. For many years, the locals had boasted: “We live in this country, we are Westerners, we are European, we should be happy.” Overnight, the Arabs from the other side of the border arrived in our streets and in our buildings and became our neighbors.

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Urban legends about the newcomers started to spread. Different groups in society held different ideas about the refugees. While some people looked at them as a source of income, others merely detested them. Meanwhile, we had even more guests knocking at the door of Kırkayak Kültür. First the visits were rather short. They heard about Kırkayak Kültür and they came looking for advice. Most of them needed help mainly with renting a home. The landlords refused to accept them, not trusting them to be good tenants. In such cases, one of us would go with the family and talk with the landlord, even acting as a guarantor for their lease. If the landlord remained unconvinced, the contract would be signed between the landlord and us, so that the landlord would have a Turkish citizen as the tenant, from whom he could collect the rent, despite the fact that it was the Syrians who lived in the building. These new neighbors do not come exclusively to ask for help of course. Most of the time they come to attend our culture-art events as well. In time, they become our new culture-art attendees. During this period of time, we visited with them, and they visited us in our homes. We cooked together, shared food and they told us of their hopes for the future; we had the opportunity to listen firsthand about what was actually happening in Syria. We listened to the stories of their friends killed in Aleppo, Damascus, and in other cities, and to the songs of Fairuz, barely holding back our tears. When Syrian artists and activists told us that they needed a place for meetings, we replied that they are always welcome in our building. They began organizing meetings in our center. We also attended those meetings and invited Turkish non-governmental organizations and academicians to the meetings as well. We organized meetings to create new support networks. Kırkayak Kültür tried to be a place open to Syrian refugees for the first three years but this endeavor was mostly an ad hoc humanitarian effort. Later, we organized our efforts around the theme of “living together” but for the first couple of years, this meant only the sharing of our space. At the end of the day, Kırkayak Kültür was initially created for cultural and artistic purposes with members focused on sociology, anthropology and art and with a specific focus on the Middle East.

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And They Came! In the year 2013, Kırkayak Kültür turned Zeugma Film Festival into an international festival and became the arts and culture center of the city. We became one of the most popular places for our new neighbors to congregate. In time, representatives from the United Nations (UN) and other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) started showing up to our activities and meetings (Fig. 10.1). These international civil society organizations, humanitarian aid agencies and the UN began by mainly assisting asylum seekers in the border provinces. Their work was focused mostly on providing humanitarian aid. Members of the international community prioritized bringing relief to people suffering from the crisis rather than trying to solve the crisis itself. Humanitarian organizations working in the world’s crisis regions also began arriving. They brought with them the experiences they had gained working over decades in conflicts and crises in different geographies. International community funding also started to flow into these organizations in Gaziantep. Dozens of humanitarian organizations filled the city with thousands of employees. New offices opened and preparations were made for community centers to open while advertisements recruiting employees began appearing in our email boxes and social media accounts. With the arrival of the refugees, rents for houses, followed by offices, began increasing. Foreign NGO workers arrived in the city to work and to hang—out at popular places in the city. The menu prices in these places increased overnight. A new sector was born in the city. Dollar or Euro-­ based salaries provided to humanitarian workers in the civil society sector became the new dream, especially for young university graduates with a knowledge of English. Foreigners and well-educated youth from renowned universities in Istanbul and Ankara rushed to our city. In Turkey, the people most prepared for such a crisis were the Islamists who had been in power over the past decade. They had developed a very broad Islamic civil society network. From their perspective, the Syrian refugees were no different from the followers of Muhammad, who had emigrated from Mecca to Medina, approximately 1400  years ago. The Ansar opened their arms to Muhajirin believing that their “good deeds” would weigh well on the good scale at the last judgment.2 For the first three years, the international community, Turkish institutions and Islamist organizations mainly approached the refugee crisis from the viewpoint of “humanitarian aid.” Today, nearly eight years later, their

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Fig. 10.1  Photo of poster for Kırkayak Kültür’s 7th Annual International Zeugma Film Festival by Kemal Vural Tarlan

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approaches and logics remain the same, with both sides (secular or Islamist) approaching Syrian refugees in a similar manner: they are a homogenous group of poor, victims in need of help and they are seen as conservative, Islamic, Arabic, guests/emigrants/refugees/people. “Aid” programs are designed and supported by millions of Euros for funding projects to assist this group. Tens of thousands of people also work in this “sector.” The programs evolve in parallel with the changing needs of the refugees. But, for the most part, these organizations’ perceptions about the refugees do not change. Social cohesion and integration are reduced to program objectives in project files. Programs, in fact, focus simply on the “number of beneficiaries.” There are still too few organizations conducting “rights— based” work. At the same time, the “ultra-right populist” movement has gained momentum in global politics, fueling anti-migrant/refugee sentiments in our societies. Economic crisis has generated feelings of insecurity and worry for the future for many poorer and middle-class people also fueling hostility of and hate-speech toward refugees.

Is It Possible to Live Together? Volunteers and members of Kırkayak Kültür have opened their arms and homes for Syrian refugees since day one. But I think that we did not fully understand the phenomenon of migration until the middle of 2014. We became familiar with debates on immigration and started to use certain terminology, rejecting the use of concepts such as “guests.” We did not want to be an organization designed to provide only humanitarian assistance. We were a non-governmental organization founded by citizens. We also did not see migration as a sector in which we could provide services to refugees. Rather, we saw the situation of people coming to our city as one based on human rights and saw ourselves as a rights-based organization. We accepted refugees as our newly found neighbors and advocated in solidarity with them. We advocated for children’s rights to education, for accommodation and for adults’ rights to access employment. We also opened our building to Syrian artists. We were learning how to live together—us with them and them with us. One day, a Syrian young man invited us to visit the painting exhibition of a young Syrian artist in the city. When we went to view the paintings exhibited in the rooms of a building at the city center, we had the opportunity to meet young artists. They were very surprised when we asked them if we could host their exhibition at Kırkayak Kültür. It was the very

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first time that Turkish people had visited their exhibition and made such a generous offer. They were excited. Two weeks later, the exhibit was moved to Kırkayak Kültür—Stone House. Turkish and Syrian guests attended the opening ceremony. The exhibit was announced in the national and local media. It was the very first time that these two communities came together in Antep for an artistic activity in front of the brilliant works by these Syrian artists. The title of the exhibit was “Waiting.” Young artists depicted the waiting that millions of people in this country had experienced for the past four, long years—a waiting in this foreign country without any status, rights or future. This idea of waiting was reflected differently by various young artists. For instance, one young female artist depicted this process of waiting in the form of a pregnant woman, representing her country as a woman experiencing birth pains. Another young male painter imagined the past, and perhaps his childhood, by painting a street lamp as seen from the window, and a silhouette of a chair and other small details from the home, which he had left behind. That day, many Turkish and Syrian visitors expressed the importance of such events for each of the two communities. The event was a first for Kırkayak Kültür. Refugees had attended many events and activities before, but this was the very first time that Syrian artists exhibited their works before a Turkish audience. It was a huge game changer. After this event, photographers, musicians, actors and even craftsmen asked if they could use our space to exhibit their works. These events changed Kırkayak Kültür’s approach and started a process whereby new ideas surfaced. We started to ask: “How can we live together?” Because we knew that in Turkey our society was also divided into countless different groups among the population. We, too, did not know how to live with others within our society. Within the borders of this country, many different groups (such as Kurdish, Turkish, secular, religious, conservative, liberal, democrat, Sunni, Alevi, Muslim and Christian) live within their communities without contact with others. Syrian refugees constituted just another such group and were only the last-comers. Well, then, how could we live together? Were countries with more experience with migration achieving cohesion? If so, how were they managing to achieve it? And those who failed, why did they fail? What was being discussed in the academia and in universities about these issues within the field of migration? What were the main approaches? Thinking about such questions opened a new chapter for us.

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The Syria in Transit Project was a cultural exchange project that we launched shortly afterward. Over the next two years, as part of this and other projects, we visited 12 countries, in order to learn about the migration-­related experiences in them and crossed borders in order to reach Syrians and other refugees living in these countries. The aim of the Syria in Transit Project was to discover the voices and stories of those who fled from Syria and to understand what “being in transit” truly meant. The project brought together various forms of art including videos, photographs and objects. As the exhibit text explained: Syrians were living in the streets, parks and nylon tents, called the “wild-life,” and told us about their long and hard journey which usually started from Turkey, the “portal” to Europe for them. They had visited so many European cities that they could not even remember the names of all of them. Their stories had a peculiar similarity: they all faced exploitation and racism and they all complained how rude this world was (see Syria in Transit n.d.)

Migration Studies But How? Kırkayak Kültür is a civil society initiative that aims to propagate arts and culture with a social development-focused, participatory and polyphonic approach by organizing cultural studies and culture and arts activities. When Kırkayak Kültür began its activities producing and sharing culture and the arts, there were artists among its founders. But during the period of institutionalization as a non-governmental organization, our discussions came to the following conclusion: only by re-evaluating our heritage, perhaps by completely rejecting our entire praxis, could we truly become an independent, civil society organization that would be open to all individuals within our community and which could bring different groups of people together. Our firm belief was that by sharing art and culture, mutual understandings and cultural sensitivities would improve and, in the process, we could overcome regional differences and biases, as stated in our founding declaration. We wished to carry out cultural and artistic programs so as to revitalize the cultural life and improve civic culture, emphasizing the citizenship rights of all inhabitants in Anatolian cities such as Gaziantep, which already have a rich cultural heritage. We believed that cultural activities geared toward increasing interactions with newcomers would facilitate social cohesion.

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Our newly arrived neighbors have provided valuable new experiences as to how we could implement these thoughts in the life of our organization since 2011. Through thinking about issues of migration, we learned that although we mainly live among our own groups in society, often without really knowing people from other groups, there are still areas in which we can interact and come together. Arts and culture constitute one such area. Culture and art venues are places where people can come together, despite speaking different languages. For this reason, in Kırkayak Kültür, we accelerated our efforts in the field of culture and arts, aiming at improving and extending collaborations between Turkish, Middle Eastern and European artists, culture and art activists and within civil society. In this respect, we started to create projects and establish partnerships to carry out cultural and artistic works with women, youth, children, migrants, refugees and other disadvantaged groups. We started to carry out cultural exchange projects and organize artistic and social activities between cities across Turkey, the Middle East and Europe. From day one, all our printed materials also feature an Arabic version of the material. Our partnerships in Europe, in particular, helped us to learn from their migration-related experiences, and to adopt and adapt these to our context. We started to read more about migration, the reasons behind it and its processes and outcomes, as well as the social, economic and cultural aspect of the international migration movement. During all of our efforts, we have seen that both locals and newcomers have a significant interest in each other’s cultures because it is not only the flesh that passes the border. Newcomers bring with them thousands of years of cultural heritage. Newcomers also bring their songs, tales, lullabies, music, food, language and history. As the arriving culture meets with local ones, in time, they become entangled with one another. Kırkayak Kültür aims to expand the areas of entanglement. And we had some luck because we were experienced in the fields of culture and art which became the main venue for such entanglements. What Were the Other Areas of Contact and Where Were People Meeting? On 8 March 2015, returning from an event honoring International Women’s Day, as we were passing along the avenue where Kırkayak Kültür is located, we saw an old man yelling as he left the mosque. It was a Sunday and the streets were empty. He walked along the avenue

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screaming for help. When he came closer, we heard him yelling “Hodja! Imam!” and understood that the man was Syrian. We first thought that a family member had died. With the little Arabic that we knew, we tried to understand what he was saying. But the old man wouldn’t talk and just kept walking. He guided us into a narrow street and we entered into the front yard of an old, stone house where there were more men, crouching in the yard, sitting with their backs against the wall. They were all silent. We heard prayers coming from inside the house. Upon entering the house, we understood that the voice we had heard was coming from a cassette player. We passed by a group of women sitting on the floor and entered into another room, where we saw a person lying on the sofa, covered in sheets. The person was breathing deeply. One of us was a doctor. We asked the other women in the room to leave, turned off the cassette player playing the prayers and then removed the sheets that covered the person. We saw a young woman, barely conscious. Under her pillow, there was a holy book with a green cover. The doctor said we should call an ambulance for her, which we did and it took the woman to the hospital. Meanwhile we learned that the woman had just given birth a week ago in a village close to Aleppo, a village that had been bombed only the day before. The woman had just arrived from the border the night before with her husband and newborn child. Her shoes and luggage, covered in dirt, were still lying in the corridor. The doctor guessed that having just given birth, this woman was suffering from a post-traumatic nervous breakdown. After this, we started to think about programs for Syrian women. We spoke to academics, organizations and activists working on women’s rights from both Turkish and Syrian communities. From this we learned that women and children are those most adversely affected by war and conflict. However, when presented like this there can be a problem. Studies on this subject, as well as decisions made by UN organizations, often categorize women alongside children, treating women’s protection needs as if they are similar to those of children. This approach ignores the fact that women have different needs which may require different programs and this approach also reinforces the perception that women are unable to solve their own problems and to live independently on their own. Kırkayak Kültür called in institutions working on women’s rights in both Turkish and Syrian communities to conduct gender-based studies. In 2016, we decided to invite Haneen Women’s Choir to perform during our opening ceremony for the International Zeugma Film Festival. The choir

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was founded by Syrian women, many of whom we had met through our other programs. We believed that this opening event would enable the city’s film festival to bring together both communities to build bridges between them. Hundreds of people from both communities attended the festival’s opening gala event. That year, the festival started to screen films from Turkey, Europe and the Middle East that had won awards at other national and international festivals and which had Arabic subtitles. Moreover, for the last three years, the materials of the festival have also been developed by a Syrian designer. The International Zeugma Film Festival sees the cultural heritage of Syrian newcomers as a source of richness and as an addition to the cultural and artistic life of the city. The festival also emphasizes the importance of arts and culture in terms of facilitating. Turkish and Syrian cultures to learn how to live together. Every aspect of the Zeugma Film Festival is designed with the aim of including Syrian refugees as newcomers and the new neighbors of Gaziantep. In this respect, the festival seeks the support of Syrian refugee artists, along with NGOs founded by Syrians working in the fields of arts and culture and NGOs working on migration/refugees and other public institutions and agencies. Kırkayak Kültür continues to organize multilingual cinema events. Because we firmly believe that cinema, just like other branches of culture and art, is a common ground in which different groups in society can interact with one another. During the Festival, Arabic language films from Middle Eastern cinema are screened with Turkish subtitles and Turkish movies are screened with Arabic subtitles under the theme of “It is possible to live together!”  omen’s Kitchen/Matbakh Workshop W The Women’s Kitchen Workshop has been operational for over the past four years under the institutional body of Kırkayak Kültür, where refugee women (such as Syrian and Iraqi women) and Turkish women can come together to create food, cultural and art activities. The kitchen is defined in this workshop as the “working and production area / space.” The Women’s Kitchen Workshop is a common space where people, especially women, come together to jointly create food, and participate in other artistic and cultural projects and, in the process, to learn about social cohesion and ways of living together (Fig. 10.2). Established in 2016, the Women’s Kitchen Workshop highlights the theme of learning to live together in all of its workshops and activities. The

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Fig. 10.2  Photo of Kırkayak Kültür’s Women’s Kitchen Workshop by Kemal Vural Tarlan

Women’s Kitchen Workshop organizes programs where Turkish and refugee women can come together and share experiences with one another. Representatives from cooperatives, workshops, initiatives, associations and foundations, which support immigrant and local women, have come together on many occasions to participate in programs around food, culture and other forms of production, and from across different cities in Turkey. For example, we have held events in which women academics in the field of women’s studies have led workshops on local development, women’s labor, living together and social cohesion. They have discussed opportunities for future studies. We continue to organize on a regular basis workshops on food, culture-art, and organic products as well as workshops about producing handcrafts, jewelry, clothing and, regarding the production and packaging of locally made, preservatives. As well, we host research groups and events focused on cultural and artistic production such as on documentary and film-making and photography, all of which focus on women and supporting local and rural development.

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The Women’s Kitchen Workshop is based on a “social initiative” model. It aims to create a “Kitchen Workshop” where women from Antep can design and produce food and local textile products from across the Middle East. This program enables women to come together to produce and sell products in a collective model to make a living.  o Border for Food Project N The No Border for Food project was designed to create a venue for cultural exchange specifically around food and cooking. The project was coordinated by a Syrian volunteer from Kırkayak Kültür. The project’s main objective was to research new food cultures created by migrants in Gaziantep and Toulouse, France through cooking. In this project, food researchers from different countries exhibited their research on the effects of migration on food culture through a theatre performance about “humus,” staged in Turkey and France. Kırkayak Kültür continues its efforts to link art, culture and migration in two different places in Antep, namely through its “Kırkayak Kültür’s Stone House” and “Migration and Cultural Studies Center.” In Kırkayak Kültür’s Stone House, we consider every single item of local and international cultural and artistic creation to be a part of humanity’s common treasures and we strive to contribute toward protecting, developing and sharing these products. The work and research hosted at the Stone House are designed with the aim of developing and expanding the collaboration between artists, culture and art activists, and civil society organizations across Turkey, the Middle East and Europe. The Stone House is an open venue for artists and research on culture. It offers a space where immigrant artists, in particular, can produce artistic work and access audiences interested in culture and the arts. In this respect, it conducts cultural-artistic and social work with women, youth, children, migrants, refugees and other disadvantaged groups and provides them with support. In addition, it carries out cultural exchange projects between Turkish, Middle Eastern and European cities, cultures, art institutions and artists and organizes cultural-artistic and social activities among these groups (Fig. 10.3).  ırkayak Kültür’s Migration and Cultural Studies Center K With its Migration and Cultural Studies Center, Kırkayak Kültür also carries out projects focusing on the social, economic and cultural aspects of international migration movements through scientific research, training and migration programs. It carries out theoretical and field studies on

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Fig. 10.3  Photo of Kırkayak Kültür’s Women’s Art Project by Kemal Vural Tarlan

migration and organizes national and international conferences, symposiums, seminars and workshops. It publishes the results of this research in books, reports, journals and brochures to share with the broader public. Finally, it carries out advocacy and rights-based research as well.  igration and Cultural Studies Center Dom Research Workshop M One such project which the Migration and Cultural Studies Center has undertaken is a cultural research project on Dom Gypsies and their sub-­ groups specifically found across countries in the Middle East.3 The Dom Research Workshop aims at improving Dom societies’ socio-economic status, as well as their access to social services, such as education, accommodation, health care and employment. We have also developed strategies and action plans at the center based on this research in order to achieve these goals. The center aims to help facilitate the involvement of Dom groups as active members of the society of the country in which they live. At the center, we conduct research on Dom communities, disseminating

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the results and providing training on related issues. The center advocates for Dom groups on rights-based issues including human rights, gender equality, discrimination and exclusion. Within the framework of living together, dialogue and solidarity, we engage in integration efforts so as to enable socio-cultural development of under-risk and disadvantaged groups and to fight discrimination and biases toward the Dom peoples. Kırkayak Kültür’s main objective is to make living together possible and this is the idea informing all of our work. All our efforts are for this purpose.

Conclusion: On the Idea of Living Together4 I would like to conclude with a passage from our webpage to explain our philosophy behind all of the activities of Kirkayak Center (Kırkayak n.d.). The idea of “living together” is our main reference point. As a result of the fact that the number of refugees worldwide from different parts of the globe is increasing every passing day; societies become multicultural, multi-­ religious and multilingual. In a migration-receiving city with 2 million inhabitants, like Gaziantep, encounters between different cultural, ethnic or religious groups are inevitable daily practices which take place in various forms, most importantly as facing “the Other” every day within public space. The case of Syrian refugees in large quantities who have settled down in the region after Syrian civil war makes this situation more visible in the last decade. Thus; emphasizing the idea that the space is not belong to any particular group of people, but it belongs to all, and we share city and life all together is a significant necessity in this atmosphere. Rather than grounding this idea of living together on morality, individual conscience or local values; Kırkayak Kültür is a right-based organization prioritizing democratic values and the universal idea of human rights. In the West and especially in Europe, which are becoming more and more culturally diverse societies, longstanding discussions regarding the possibleness and ways of living together brought about various approaches offering different strategies in managing plurality. As Baban and Rygiel (2014) argue, two contrasting approaches, assimilationism and multiculturalism differ from each other by focusing on homogeneity or heterogeneity as a necessity for cohesion in society. While assimilationism asserts that social cohesion is only possible with the integration of minorities into the hegemonic majority, multiculturalist approach values cultural differences and tries to strengthen these differences. On the other hand, both approaches which ignoring or strengthening diversities could not be effective enough to guarantee a cohesive social and political life within current nation-state

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structure. As it is obvious that assimilationism do not open a room for diversities in the society and try to dissolve them, the result is the loss of diversity or making these different ethnic, linguistic or religious groups incarcerated within their own dynamics. Similarly, multiculturalism is also not enough to develop an understanding of living together since it strengthens each community within their own dynamics. As a result, in both cases there occurs a society composed of different sub-communities which are not interacting with each other, rather than a coherent one. Kırkayak Kültür does not share a communitarian understanding of society, rather it works for empowering the dialogue between different cultural, ethno-linguistic groups; for instance, the dialogue between Syrian refugee community and host community in Turkey. In this sense, the discussions around the idea of “cosmopolitanism” emerging in the last decades contribute the idea of “living together” which is central in the works of Kırkayak Kültür. Originating from the themes of continental philosophy, especially starting with Kantian ideal of cosmopolitan law and hospitality as the elements of “perpetual peace”; cosmopolitanism as a recent approach for managing diversity aims to prevent the hierarchical separations between self/ other and citizen/non-citizen. Without forgetting there is always a reference to the power positions in being a host or newcomer; cosmopolitanism insists that otherness is a fundamental condition of human sociality. With this awareness Kırkayak Kültür aims reinforcing the contact points among different groups of society, such as art, cultural activities and cuisine. In that sense, Kırkayak Kültür intends to decrease the effect of unequal power positions over social relations originating from being in the position of a “host” or “guest”. Kırkayak Kültür accepts the idea of “unconditional hospitality” as a normative ideal, where anybody is in the position of “host” as it is conceptualized by French deconstructivist philosopher Jacques Derrida. Rather than adapting the position of power-holders, Kırkayak Kültür aims to adapt the ethical position in relation to “the Other”, as it is emphasized by another French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. As a result, the idea of integration appears as a process working in two directions, not the integration of the “others” to the identity of the self. While valuing universal cosmopolitan ideals, Kırkayak Kültür considers the problematic consequences of ethnocentric applications of the human rights ideals, as imposing Western values and lifestyle all over the world. Kırkayak Kültür bolsters the members of different communities sharing the same city to meet, socialize and interact with each other as the first step of the way going through the radical cosmopolitan ideals. In that sense, Kırkayak Kültür is an “open space” for all to join, share and enrich. Living together is possible.

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Notes 1. Nihad Haddad, who is better known as Fairouz, is a Lebanese singer and is one of the most celebrated Arab singers of the twentieth century. 2. The “Ansar” metaphor refers to the residents of Medina who helped and protected Prophet Muhammad and his entourage in escaping from prosecution in Mecca. Among Islamist groups this is a commonly used metaphor. It expresses the idea that Turkey has a moral and religious obligation to open its doors to Syrian refugees and to provide them with protection just as the residents of Medina protected Prophet Muhammad from prosecution. The Turkish Government used the Ansar metaphor in its initial response to Syrian refugee crisis (Kurbanoglu 2014). 3. The Dom, which in the Domari language means “man,” later referred to as Rom, is the name for a large ethno-linguistic group believed to have originated in India. Colloquially and more pejoratively referred to in English as “Gypsies,” the Dom in Europe prefer the term Romany (or plural Romanies), while in the Middle East and North Africa, the preferred term is still Dom (Williams 2000). Dom have been present in the Middle East for at least a thousand years and in Syria since before the Ottoman Empire, and more Dom live today in Syria than anywhere else in the Middle East (Hilleary 2013). 4. This conclusion, representing Kırkayak’s overall philosophy around living together, is taken from Kırkayak’s website (Kırkayak n.d.).

References Baban, F., & Rygiel, K. (2014). Snapshots from the Margins: Transgressive Cosmopolitanisms in Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 17(4), 461–478. Hilleary, C. (2013, March 22). The Dom: Syria’s Invisible Refugees. Voice of America News. Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://www.voanews.com/ world-news/middle-east-dont-use/dom-syrias-invisible-refugees. Kırkayak. (n.d.). Who We Are. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from https:// www.kirkayak.org/who-we-are/. Kurbanoglu, B. (2014, August 14). Suriyeli Multecilere Ensar Olmaliyiz. Haksoz Haber. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://www.haksozhaber.net/ suriyeli-muhacirlere-ensar-olmaliyiz-51033h.htm. Sawahel, W. (2011, January 9). TUNISIA: Graduate Joblessness Sparks Violent Protests. University World News. Retrieved September 30, 2019, from https:// www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20110107102250114. Syria in Transit. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2019, from http://www.syriaintransit.com/home.html. Williams, G.  A. (2000). Dom of the Middle East: An Overview. Dom Research Center Journal, 1(1). Retrieved April 2, 2020, from http://www.domresearchcenter.com/journal/11/dom.html.

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel

In the Introduction we noted that the impetus for this book came from two contradictory developments that are currently visible in every society: increasing polarization around culture and identity and growing pluralization along ethnic, religious and cultural belongings. As cultural, ethnic and religious differences become more visible in the public sphere, right-­ wing populist and other types of right-wing movements view this pluralization as a threat to the integrity and purity of their nations. They argue that such differences are an impediment to achieving a harmonious and peaceful society. Their modus operandi is to exclude those who are not part of the “us.” Of course, who constitutes this “us” is never clear-cut and these right-wing groups usually define the nation by appealing to

F. Baban (*) Departments of International Development and Politics, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] K. Rygiel Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8_11

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some romanticized, once-upon-a-time notion of the nation. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán voices this vision: “If Europe is not going to be populated by Europeans in the future and we take this as given, then we are speaking about an exchange of populations, to replace the population of Europeans with others … There are political forces in Europe who want a replacement of population for ideological or other reasons” (Guardian 2019). Right-wing populist movements have not invented a notion of a fixed European identity, emerging from shared cultural foundations of individual European nations. In fact, while debating Turkey’s membership to the EU, voices from the center, as well as from the left, made similar arguments emphasizing that the major impediment to Turkey’s membership in the EU was its so-called “civilizational” difference (Baban and Keyman 2008: 116–117). French President Valery Giscard D’Estaing, the Dutch Commissioner of the EU, Frits Bolkenstein and French historian, Alain Besancon, among many others, argued against Turkey’s membership to the EU, not on the grounds of political or economic criteria but on civilizational grounds, suggesting that a predominantly Muslim Turkey was incompatible with an imagined Christian Europe (Baban 2013: 225). Others argued that the EU’s attempt to forge a common European identity would lead to another barrier to the inclusion of migrants, Muslims, Roma and other marginalized minorities (Shore 2000). For those who make such arguments, their idea of Europe rests on an unchanging image of Europe—and even, for some, harkening back to the time of Ancient Greece. It therefore makes little difference to this constructed image of Europe that Europe has never had clearly defined borders and that the meaning of Europe has shifted continually across time and in ways that expand the border to include some and becoming more restrictive at times to exclude others (Brague 2002; Hobson 2004). These arguments about the essential cultural character of Europe have been in circulation for quite some time, and currently right-wing populist movements are deploying similar arguments to reject cultural pluralism and to call for national purity. Ever since the French writer, Renaud Camus, popularized the term “great replacement” in his infamous book, Le Grand Remplacement, which problematically argued that native white Europeans are now being reverse colonized by black and brown immigrants, various politicians and groups, such as Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, and white identitarian movements in Europe and North America, have latched onto this argument about authentic Europeans

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being replaced by undesirable Others. Camus describes his vision as follows: “the great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of generation you have a different people … Peoples, civilizations, religions-and especially when these religions are themselves civilizations, types of society, almost States-cannot and cannot even want to … blend into other peoples, other civilizations” (New Yorker 2017). Camus’ vision is no longer a marginal one but expressed by leaders such as Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump and embraced by many right-wing populist parties in Europe and elsewhere. At the center of this vision is the belief that cultural, national and civilizational identities are frozen at the time of their inception and are always in a struggle to defend themselves from Others trying to “pollute” them. This is an ahistorical vision, which ignores the fact that civilizations and nations have never been closed identities but rather are always changing, evolving and appropriating through exchange and interaction with one another. Historians have demonstrated in great detail that European culture has never been isolated from other cultures and the transnational cultural linkages connecting Europe from the Orient to Africa were always at the heart and integral to constituting what defined European culture (Hobson 2004; Gallant 2006; Goody 2006). While right-wing populist arguments about seeing newcomers as a threat to authentic national cultures dominate most media representations, there are, however, other voices refusing to accept this closed vision. For example, Lisbeth Zorning Anderson, who used to be the head of the National Council for Children in Denmark and was prosecuted by the Danish Government for helping refugees during 2015 Refugee Crisis, explains her motivation for helping refugees as follows: “When a Danish court punishes people for helping refugees, it contradicts our core human values. This is especially poignant in a country known for its universal welfare system, designed to help everyone in need. I never knew that decency, generosity, charity—whatever you choose to call it—was reserved for people with valid travel documents” (Guardian 2016). From fishermen living in Lampedusa, Italy to ordinary citizens living in the Greek Islands, there are many Europeans voicing sentiments similar to Anderson around the need for solidarity with fellow human beings and grounding this in a sense of a shared responsibility for each other which they see as preceding national belonging (Guardian 2015b and Guardian 2015a). The articles in this book have presented this alternative vision voiced by countless individuals and civil society organizations across Europe. Thus,

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the right-wing populist call for national purity or homogeneity is not a foregone conclusion. On the contrary, the chapters in this book suggest a different reality, with many across Europe showing solidarity with those who are newcomers and coming from different backgrounds and creating new experiences of living together, experiences which can lead to new understandings and shared moments with newcomers in their communities. When we started the research project, which eventually led to the two workshops from which this book has emerged, we witnessed many civil society groups welcoming newcomers, setting initiatives to bring locals and newcomers together and demonstrating in several ways that cultural, ethnic or religious differences were not an impediment to living together. In places as different as Gaziantep, Turkey and Copenhagen, Denmark the impetus behind such initiatives was always the same: we have an ethical responsibility toward each other as human beings. The initiatives we have observed over the past five years, such as those discussed in this book, are neither charities nor driven by humanitarian assistance. Instead, they are motivated by the desire to engage and live with newcomers as equals. In the midst of loud populist voices declaring that migrants, refugees and all newcomers are aliens and threat to the well-being of “their” nation, people who set up these initiatives embrace the idea that newcomers are not a threat but new members of their community. While right-wing populists may argue that national identities will be corrupted and contaminated by outsiders and must be stopped at the borders, a different message emerges from movements discussed in this book: pluralism is not a threat but the only possible real future. The articles in this volume do not talk about large struggles or transformations. They look at the everyday interactions of individuals and groups who are opening their communities to newcomers, building alliances together and establishing organizations to counter the louder noises of xenophobia, which deny the possibility of living with others who are somehow identified as being different from “us.” While the initiatives explored here in this book emerge in vastly different locations from Copenhagen, Denmark to Gaziantep, Turkey, what they share in common is the desire to dare and be creative about finding new forms of living together that challenge citizen/non-citizen binaries and reimagining their communities through interaction and exchange. Many of these organizations are local and small in size. As a result, they do not receive the same attention that right-wing movements and groups receive on a daily basis. Yet, their presence in countless small communities across every country in

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Europe, and the combined impact of their actions, is a powerful testimony to the fact that the desire to open up communities to newcomers and to find ways of living together that are non-hierarchical, transformative and participatory is strong. Furthermore, the vision emerging from the activities of these organizations is not only a powerful rebuke to the right-wing populist movements but also is an alternative vision of living together. Right-wing populist groups and parties see newcomers as a threat while civil society groups discussed in this volume and many others all throughout Europe welcome newcomers as natural evolution of their communities. Rather than seeing them as a threat to their identities, they see them as their neighbors, friends and compatriots. Contrary to the representations in the media that right-­ wing populist vision of refusing to live with Others now dominate many societies in Europe and elsewhere, more nuanced explanation is that there are now two competing visions of how to live with Others in increasingly plural societies. One calls for closure of borders and removal of Others; and the other one, which is presented in this volume, calls for increased plurality and solidarity with others as the basis of living together. There is usually a tendency to underestimate the importance and impact of local grassroots movements and civil society organizations in fostering pluralism and countering xenophobic forces. Peaceful living together in diverse societies, however, is realized one community at a time, through countless everyday interactions. Isolation, segregation and the exclusion of newcomers usually happen with limited opportunities for them to meet, interact and establish contacts with existing residents. In the absence of meaningful contact, misunderstandings develop, prejudices grow, and hostilities turn into violence. The types of grassroots movements and civil society organizations discussed in this book play a crucial role in facilitating moments of contact, which enable individuals and groups to understand and get to know one another. This is the starting point for countering right-wing arguments that pluralism is a destructive force. We should, however, make an important point that the grassroots movements and civil society organizations discussed in this work are more than simply charities, social clubs or arts organizations that organize events between residents and newcomers. They are, in fact, deeply political and radical in their vision as they are guided by certain principles. These include: the refusal to accept citizen/non-citizen binaries; a desire to initiate interactions between newcomers and existing residents as equals; and a willingness to accept that through their interactions, participants will

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evolve, their identities change and new communities will emerge. These organizations are small, and they are local, but their activities are transformative. Their voices are the loudest in countering the populist vision of refusing diversity and pluralistic societies. As we write these concluding remarks, we are experiencing unprecedented troubled times. The crisis brought upon by the Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is forcing all of us to reflect deeply on the assumptions we have held about our societies, the values that define them and our responsibilities for one another. The pandemic brings to the fore many of the questions that this book also raises about how best to live together, peacefully, in societies that are interconnected, in part, through migration. The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that there is no single society, culture or community immune to its impact, and that the solution to this crisis requires us to think about ourselves as sharing a common destiny. Some argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is indifferent to race, ethnicity, nation, culture and class. However, this is not entirely true. We know that the most vulnerable populations—poor, racially marginalized, refugees and others—in each society are the ones feeling the impact of this pandemic disproportionately. While some of us can stay at home until this crisis is over, others have to keep working because they do not have the financial means to cushion themselves. Still, others may not even have the luxury of a home to seek shelter. As the pandemic moves from one nation to the other there are reports that unstoppable outbreaks are happening in refugee camps and many are left untreated (Globe and Mail 2020). But reports of these outbreaks in vulnerable areas are quickly buried in newspaper pages and online reports, garnering very little attention. Yet, in the middle of this unprecedented crisis, the acts of solidarity continue. The Alan Kurdi migrant rescue boat is back in the Mediterranean helping migrants trapped at sea. The mission manager, Jan Ribbeck explains: “It wasn’t easy to put together a crew in this current crisis due to the spread of Covid-19. But we are taking extra security precautions and have established an outbreak management plan … You see, this pandemic will be over at some point. But migration will not, and asylum seekers will continue to risk their lives. We cannot turn away, especially at this time, when media attention is focused almost exclusively on other problems” (Guardian 2020). The sentiment expressed here by the rescue mission’s manager is another testament to the convictions shown by civil society organizations throughout Europe and as discussed in this book. They remind us that even in such challenging times as

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this—times when we are being asked individually to self isolate and social distance and when governments are choosing to close borders of cities and countries—these are precisely the times when human solidarity is needed and when our desire to live with others, as expressed in this book, is the only pathway forward.

References Baban, F. (2013). Cosmopolitan Europe: Border Crossings and Transnationalism in Europe. Global Society, 27(2), 217–235. Baban, F., & Keyman, F. (2008). Turkey and Postnational Europe: Challenges for the Cosmopolitan Political Community. European Journal of Political Theory, 11(1), 107–124. Brague, R. (2002). Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press. Gallant, T. (2006). Europe and the Mediterranean: A Reassessment. In G. Delanty (Ed.), Europe and Asia beyond East and West. New York: Routledge. Globe and Mail. (2020). Fears Rise an Unstoppable Coronavirus Outbreak in Refugee Camps in Greece. Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-fears-rise-about-an-unstoppable-coronavirusoutbreak-in-refugee-camps. Goody, J. (2006). Europe and Islam. In G. Delanty (Ed.), Europe and Asia Beyond East and West. New York: Routledge. Guardian. (2015a, April 12). Lampedusa Review: Brave Excursion into the Dark Waters of Migration. Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.theguardian. com/stage/2015/apr/12/lampedusa-soho-theatre-london-review. Guardian. (2015b, July 9). Greek Island Refugee Crisis: Local People and Tourists Rally Around Migrants. Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/08/greek-island-refugee-crisis-local-peopleand-tourists-rally-round-migrants. Guardian. (2016, December 20). I Was Prosecuted for Helping Syrian Refugees. Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ dec/20/prosecuted-helping-syrian-refugees-denmark-people-smuggling. Guardian. (2019, September 6). Viktor Orbán trumpets Hungary’s ‘procreation not immigration’ policy. Retrieved March 11, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/viktor-orban-trumpets-far-rightprocreation-anti-immigration-policy. Guardian. (2020, April 4). ‘Migrants Never Disappeared’: The Lone Rescue Ship Braving a Pandemic. Retrieved April 4, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/ global-development/2020/apr/04/migrants-never-disappeared-thelone-rescue-ship-braving-a-pandemic-coronavirus.

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Hobson, J. (2004). The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. New Yorker. (2017, November 27). French Origins of ‘You Will Not Replace Us.’ Retrieved April 3, 2020, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ 2017/12/04/the-french-origins-of-you-will-not-replace-us/amp. Shore, C. (2000). Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. New York: Routledge.

Index1

A Activism, 15, 20, 33, 36, 37, 39, 45, 49, 50, 90, 113, 142, 150, 240 Activist, 5, 7, 11, 14, 19, 31–33, 39, 40, 50, 51, 62, 82, 90, 91, 93, 99, 100, 116, 123, 133, 134, 141, 211, 249, 255, 256, 259 Agency, 33, 36, 39, 126, 200, 203, 250, 257 Appropriation, 196, 199–201, 208, 215n8 Art/arts artist, 5, 7, 11, 14, 19, 22–24, 31, 33, 39–41, 44, 48, 50, 133–135, 137, 138, 140–150, 153, 156, 161, 165, 166, 170, 188n10, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199, 200, 204, 206, 208–211, 213, 214, 249, 252–255, 257, 259 artistic, 7, 11, 16–20, 22, 31, 44, 47, 48, 114, 133, 134, 143, 149,

150, 161–163, 165, 168, 170, 171, 177, 191, 192, 196, 201, 203, 204, 210, 214, 215n8, 249, 253–255, 257–259 artistic platform, 51, 133, 196, 206 artwork, 22, 200, 208, 209, 215n8 Asylum asylum seeker, 4, 9, 20, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39–43, 45, 48, 50, 51, 51n1, 54n21, 98, 156, 162, 164, 166, 185, 218, 226, 250, 270 asylum shelter, 22 B Belonging, 7, 13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 36, 52n2, 86, 87, 89, 109, 144, 147–149, 153, 156, 172, 199, 201–203, 235, 240, 265, 267 Binaries, 10, 18, 21, 24, 85, 86, 97, 200, 268, 269

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 F. Baban, K. Rygiel (eds.), Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe, Palgrave Studies in Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56894-8

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INDEX

Border, 9, 15, 25, 36, 38, 59, 61, 70, 76n2, 83, 84, 86, 100, 101n3, 108, 109, 111, 122, 162, 164, 166, 183, 192, 209–211, 214, 236, 243–246, 248, 250, 253–256, 259, 266, 268, 269, 271 border regimes, 83, 87 C Citizenship acts of citizenship, 20, 32, 33, 87 citizen, 10, 13–15, 18, 21, 24, 32, 36, 37, 40, 42, 48, 50, 51, 52n3, 52n4, 53n8, 54n21, 61, 62, 68, 71, 73, 76n4, 83, 85, 86, 91, 92, 95, 97, 113, 118, 119, 139, 141, 156, 200, 204, 249, 252, 262, 267–269 everyday citizenship, 20 non-citizen, 10, 21, 24, 32, 36, 85, 86, 91, 92, 95, 97, 99, 200, 262, 268, 269 urban citizenship (see urban, urban citizenship) Civil society, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 21, 22, 32, 33, 35–37, 39, 49–51, 61, 62, 82, 91, 99, 100, 107–127, 133, 143, 237, 240, 250, 254, 255, 259, 267–270 Co-existence, 21, 45, 108–111, 113, 114, 116–119, 122, 123, 125, 126, 134 Contrapuntal contrapuntality, 6, 7 contrapuntal reading, 6, 16, 17 Conviviality, 7, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, 59–75, 134 Cooking, 16, 18, 22–24, 42, 114, 115, 152, 154, 155, 165, 217–240, 248, 259

cookbooks, 11, 23, 217–219, 221, 226, 237 Cosmopolitanism radical cosmopolitanism, 21, 24, 74, 83, 85–87, 99, 110, 124, 125 transgressive cosmopolitanism, 15, 18, 133, 134 Creativity, 7, 10, 16–19, 22, 134, 144, 146, 196 Cross-cultural, 23, 189–214 Culture, 6, 7, 12–14, 16–19, 23, 33, 34, 39, 43, 47, 49, 50, 52n3, 59, 60, 63, 64, 69, 74–75, 85, 93, 94, 115, 118, 133–135, 138, 140–142, 144, 145, 147–150, 152, 168, 176, 182, 189–214, 215n12, 217, 219, 223, 231, 234, 238, 243, 245, 250, 254, 255, 257–259, 265, 267, 270 D Democracy democracy “from below,” 33, 39 Social Democracy, 52n2 Denmark, 10, 12, 18, 20, 22, 24, 34, 35, 39–41, 43, 52n3, 53n9, 53n17, 62, 135–149, 152, 154–156, 157n1, 157n5, 203, 267, 268 Deportation, 13, 21, 48, 82, 88, 90, 97, 98, 176, 181, 234, 240n1 Documentary, 151, 190, 192–194, 197, 202–206, 227, 258 E Equality, 14, 34, 36, 37, 67–68, 75, 76n4, 142, 212, 261 Europe, 4, 8, 9, 17, 20, 23, 24, 36, 38, 52n3, 75, 82–85, 89, 97, 98, 117, 137, 157n4, 162, 166, 173,

 INDEX 

183, 190, 201, 204, 205, 207, 210, 227, 245, 254, 255, 257, 259, 261, 263n3, 266–270 European, 6, 9, 18, 21, 38, 39, 52n1, 53n9, 59, 62, 73, 74, 82, 83, 88–90, 94, 95, 100, 157n4, 166, 168, 181, 183, 191, 208, 209, 234, 244, 254, 255, 259, 266, 267 Exclusion, 10, 13, 73, 87, 98, 108, 109, 135–157, 183, 193, 228, 238, 261, 269 Exhibition, 47, 49, 93, 114, 144, 145, 155, 156, 168, 171, 178, 182, 213, 229, 245, 252, 253 F Festival, 23, 24, 115, 144, 145, 189, 190, 207–214, 215n5, 215n11, 245, 250, 257 Film, 16, 23, 24, 133, 189–214, 215n11, 229, 245, 257 Filmmaking, 23, 192–201, 204, 212, 258 G Gender, 20, 32–36, 38, 39, 49, 52n2, 52n4, 67, 95, 152, 167, 170, 183, 210, 261 Germany, 4, 8, 10, 18, 20, 21, 23, 59–75, 76n3, 76n5, 82, 90, 95, 98, 168, 173, 176, 178, 181, 187n3, 187n6, 188n9, 195, 200, 203, 209, 224, 225, 227, 229, 233, 236 Grassroots, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 21–23, 25, 31, 64, 82, 83, 90–92, 94, 98, 99, 109–116, 119, 121–127, 133, 134, 217, 237, 269

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H Heim, 22, 164, 181, 187n3 Home, 23, 43, 49, 111, 144, 145, 148, 149, 154, 162, 166–168, 185, 193, 199, 213, 219, 220, 235, 239, 247, 249, 252, 253, 270 homeless/homelessness, 213 Hospitality, 21, 38, 54n22, 63, 108, 117–119, 127, 211, 262 I Immigrant/immigration immigrant rights, 88, 92, 94 immigration policies, 51, 54n23, 60, 100 Inclusion, 10, 19, 36, 87, 88, 96, 98, 124, 135–157, 163, 164, 189, 190, 207, 209, 240, 266 Integration, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 33, 34, 37, 41, 43, 45, 51, 54n22, 54n23, 64–68, 72, 76n4, 86, 89, 100n2, 108, 113–115, 117, 127, 135, 137, 143, 144, 149–151, 153, 155, 176, 219, 224, 227, 237, 239, 252, 261, 262 Intercultural, 17, 95, 190, 192, 194, 207, 218, 224 Intersectionality, 17, 38–40, 49 inclusive/exclusionary intersectionality, 38 Isolation, 14, 20, 41, 43, 93, 114, 123, 149, 172, 204, 235, 239, 269 Italy, 8, 12, 18, 82, 99, 146–147, 187n5, 188n9, 227, 267 K Kitchen, 8, 10, 11, 20, 21, 23, 42, 98, 152, 153, 217–240, 257–259

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L Language, 7, 16, 19, 41, 43, 65, 66, 72, 96, 112, 114, 115, 120, 134, 136, 143, 144, 149, 151–155, 164, 175, 176, 183, 190, 201, 204, 209–211, 219, 222, 231, 233, 234, 244, 247, 255, 257, 263n3 Literature, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 32, 35, 36, 38, 64, 83, 140, 150, 151, 189, 207, 209–211, 213, 246 M Mahalla, 189, 190 Malta, 189, 190, 207, 209–214 Migrants, 8, 9, 12, 15, 20, 21, 25n1, 31, 33, 36–39, 47, 48, 50, 51, 51–52n1, 62, 65, 73, 75, 76n1, 76n4, 82, 83, 85, 87–94, 96–99, 113, 137–140, 145, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157n4, 162, 178, 189, 191, 193, 196–198, 200–202, 204, 207, 208, 211–213, 224, 240n1, 255, 259, 266, 268, 270 Migration, 10, 15, 19, 20, 33–38, 41, 45, 47, 50, 51, 54n22, 59–65, 70, 73–75, 76n1, 76n2, 81, 83, 84, 89, 91, 94, 95, 97–100, 109, 116, 134, 135, 137, 139–141, 143, 150, 151, 156, 170, 190, 191, 197, 203, 207–212, 215n11, 217, 227, 233, 252–261, 270 Movement/mobility, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 20, 21, 31–38, 49, 51–52n1, 54n21, 59–69, 74, 76n1, 76n2, 82–86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 96–100, 108, 109, 117, 134, 153, 171, 182, 195, 209, 211, 225, 229, 240n1, 240n5, 252, 255, 259, 265, 266, 268, 269 global freedom of movement, 83–85, 100

Movie, 170, 192, 198, 205–207, 222, 232, 257 Museum, 16, 17, 168, 182, 183, 197, 213, 215n11 N Nationalism, 13, 19, 37, 59, 146, 211 Newcomers, 3–25, 38, 44, 50, 60, 61, 65–67, 74, 75, 76n4, 83, 85, 97, 98, 108, 110–115, 119, 123, 125–127, 133, 134, 137, 152, 162, 190, 191, 197, 199, 200, 203, 206, 211, 214, 217–240, 248, 249, 254, 255, 257, 262, 267–269 O Orientalist/orientalism, 204, 215n12 P Performance, 11, 23, 93, 152, 164, 165, 168, 171, 172, 184, 187n2, 194, 195, 198, 199, 210, 213, 214, 259 Photography, 24, 134, 150, 153, 258 Platform, 9, 16–19, 22, 23, 43, 47, 116, 133, 134, 141–146, 148, 150, 155, 161, 165, 171, 192, 206, 212, 226, 235, 240–241n5 Pluralism, 5, 8, 10, 13, 17, 19, 21, 88, 133, 134, 137, 138, 150–156, 206, 240, 268, 269 cultural pluralism, 19, 21, 22, 83, 85, 99, 100, 152, 266 Poetry, 7, 22, 134, 163, 164, 246 Production, 6, 11, 18, 21, 114, 115, 134, 187n7, 192, 198, 200, 202, 204, 212, 215n8, 215n12, 257, 258

 INDEX 

Public, 8, 18, 33, 38, 39, 41, 43, 45, 48, 49, 51, 54n21, 61, 65, 70, 71, 73–75, 88, 90, 92, 93, 98, 109, 111, 112, 114, 119, 121, 122, 125, 127, 141–143, 145, 147, 148, 152, 162, 164, 168, 175, 195, 202, 213, 232, 237, 245, 257, 260, 265 public spaces, 35, 74, 92, 197, 213, 231, 261 R Racism, 3, 8, 9, 20, 35, 38, 41, 44, 45, 47, 50, 59, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69–74, 108, 134, 142, 186, 214, 225, 228, 254 Refugee, 4, 31, 59–75, 82, 107, 142, 161–187, 193, 224, 247, 267 refugee crisis, 35, 40, 62, 76n2, 82, 108, 190, 206, 250, 263n2, 267 Resistance, 5, 6, 20, 32, 33, 43, 64, 202 Rights global social rights, 84, 95, 97–100 rights-based approach, 21, 84, 108, 117, 119 Right-wing right-wing attitudes, 70, 72, 75 right-wing populism, 34, 74 S Screening, 199, 202, 203, 213 Segregation, 93, 98, 269 Social inequalities, 83 Solidarity solidarity art project, 40–51 solidarity city, 20, 21, 81–100 solidarity politics and practice, 50

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Space, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16–24, 33, 39, 41–45, 47–49, 60, 64, 69, 74, 76n1, 84, 85, 87, 90, 92–95, 97–99, 108–111, 113, 114, 119, 124, 127, 128n4, 133, 138, 141, 143, 144, 146, 156, 161, 162, 166, 170, 171, 181–185, 188n10, 189, 192, 195, 196, 203, 209, 211–214, 217–240, 245, 249, 253, 257, 259, 261, 262, 267 State-civil society relations, 119 Syria/Syrians, 4, 52n1, 60, 107–127, 166, 190, 222, 245 T Trampoline House, 20, 31–51, 54n21 Turkey, 4, 18, 21, 23, 24, 107–127, 128n8, 189–191, 193, 197, 204, 208, 245, 246, 250, 253–255, 257–259, 262, 263n2, 266, 268 U Urban, 21, 35, 63, 64, 82, 83, 86, 87, 92, 94–96, 98, 100, 100n2, 124, 170, 191, 208, 214, 249 urban citizenship, 21, 83, 86–88, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 100 V Victimization, 23, 191–201, 208 Video, 41, 190, 192–201, 212, 254 video-filmmaking, 192 Visual arts, 165, 166 Volunteer, 60, 62, 63, 65–75, 90, 91, 126, 148, 176, 222, 226, 229, 237, 239, 247, 252, 259

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W War, 4, 12, 23, 85, 108, 114, 122, 162, 164, 166, 173, 177, 187n3, 195, 196, 203–205, 212, 246, 247, 256, 261 Welcome culture, 20, 21, 59–63, 65–67, 70, 76n5, 176, 177, 184

Welfare nationalism, 32, 34, 52n2 Workshops, 19, 23, 24, 40, 41, 93, 112, 114–116, 120, 150–155, 162, 170, 190–206, 210–212, 220, 222, 224–226, 248, 257–261, 268