Category: Baban

fostering book71W7GH YVRL 901x1200 - Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe: Everyday Encounters with Newcomers

Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe: Everyday Encounters with Newcomers

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Editors Feyzi Baban  and Kim Rygiel bring together academics, artists and members of civil society organizations in a collection titled Fostering Pluralism through Solidarity Activism in Europe: Everyday Encounters with Newcomers (Palgrave Macmillan. 2020) to engage in a discussion about the ideas of living with others, through concepts such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity, and conviviality, and the practices of doing so.  

In recent years, right wing and populist movements have emerged and strengthened across Europe and North America, rejecting the value of cultural, ethnic and religious plurality. Governments in Europe and North America are weakening their commitment to the international refugee regime, erecting new barriers to entry. Even as governments fail to accommodate growing pluralism, however, civil society initiatives have emerged with the aim of welcoming newcomers, such as migrants and refugees, and finding alternative ways of living together in diverse societies. Motivated by a desire to show solidarity, these initiatives demonstrate enormous creativity in fostering pluralism in an environment that has largely become hostile to the arrival of newcomers.

The contributions gathered here seek to explore such initiatives and the important work that they do in fostering ways of living together with others from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. In focusing conceptually and empirically on discussions and examples of civil society initiatives, this book interrogates why, how and under what circumstances are some communities more welcoming than others.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Living with Others: Opening Communities to Newcomers Feyzi Baban, Kim Rygiel Pages 3-29

The Politics and Art of Solidarity: The Case of Trampoline House in Copenhagen Birte Siim, Susi Meret Pages 31-58

The Unintended Effects of Conviviality: How Welcome Initiatives in Germany Push Back Hostility Toward Refugees Ulrike Hamann Pages 59-80

Building Solidarity Cities: From Protest to Policy Stefanie Kron, Henrik Lebuhn Pages 81-105

State, Civil Society, and Syrians in Turkey Hande Paker, E. Fuat Keyman Pages 107-132

Part II

Stitching IMMART: Overcoming the Challenge of Inclusion Without Exclusion Through the Arts Nicol Savinetti, Sez Kristiansen, Sacramento Roselló Martínez Pages 135-159

‘I Have Never Met a Refugee’: KUNSTASYL—Creating Face-to-Face Encounters Using Performative Art barbara caveng, Dachil Sado Pages 161-188

Facilitating Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through Film, Art and Culture: Searching Traces and the Mahalla Festival Sabine Küper-Büsch, Thomas Büsch Pages 189-216

Connecting Through Cooking: Kitchen Hubs as Spaces for Bringing Local Community and Newcomers Together Noor Edres Pages 217-241

Kırkayak Kültür: Facilitating Living Together Kemal Vural Tarlan Pages 243-263

Conclusion Feyzi Baban, Kim Rygiel Pages 265-272

ppoints14 - Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Integrating Newcomers

Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Integrating Newcomers

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by Feyzi Baban, Fuat Kyman, Hane Paker, and Kim Rygiel, 2018.

The question of how to live together with newcomers has become a policy issue of utmost concern.

Issue 14 of the International Migration Research Centre’s Policy Points Series: Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Integrating Newcomers

In a global context marked by growing international forced displacement and migration, societies are becoming increasingly more diverse. The question of how to live together with newcomers has become a policy issue of utmost concern. While populist governments in Europe and in the United States are failing to offer citizens and newcomers alternative models for living together that encourage greater ethnic, cultural and religious plurality, in this report we highlight the contributions and lessons drawn from local and civil-society initiatives that have been successful in bringing hosts and newcomers together. By analysing initiatives in Riace, Italy, Gaziantep, Turkey, and Berlin, Germany, we highlight the importance of a three-pronged approached to integration that combines governmental leadership, solid integration policies, and civil-society and locally-based initiatives that allow for personal interchanges between newcomers and hosts.

TRT World program: Living Together: Fostering cultural pluralism through the arts

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TRT World program, “Living Together: Fostering cultural pluralism through the arts,”  Showcase, Aug 3, 2018


One of the most important roles that the arts can play in this world is to inspire marginalized individuals and groups to express themselves in the public sphere. And it’s that idea that is at the heart of a new report just released by The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, titled ‘Living Together: Fostering Cultural Pluralism through the Arts’.

To speak about the transformative power culture and the arts can have on society, Showcase joined by Feyzi Baban, the co-author of the Living Together report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DIGiBcgp44

Secular Spaces and Religious Representations: reading the Headscarf Debate in Turkey as Citizenship Politics

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Baban, F. “Secular Spaces and Religious Representations: reading the Headscarf Debate in Turkey as Citizenship Politics”, Citizenship Studies.
January 10, 2015

We need to identify the wearing of the headscarf as a specific ‘act of citizenship’ that challenges dominant citizenship practices.


Although in recent years there has been a relaxing attitude in Turkey towards wearing headscarf in the public sphere, the controversy surrounding the visibility and use of the headscarf has often been read through modernity/tradition dichotomy which sees the use of headscarf by women as a threat to modernity by religious subjectivities. The principal reason for this reading is that the citizenship regime in Turkey has not been simply about defining a framework of membership to a political community but rather has been used to construct modern subjectivity.

This article attempts to dislocate the headscarf controversy from this dichotomous reading by moving it into the larger framework of citizenship politics. It argues that instead of interpreting the growing visibility of the headscarf within the public sphere that pits modernity against tradition, we need instead to identify the wearing of the headscarf as a specific ‘act of citizenship’ that challenges dominant citizenship practices.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13621025.2013.865900?scroll=top&needAccess=true  

Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Pathways to Precarity, Differential Inclusion and Negotiated Citizenship Rights

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Baban F., Ilcan, S. and Rygiel, K. “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: Pathways to Precarity, Differential Inclusion and Negotiated Citizenship Rights”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, with Kim Rygiel and Suzan Ilcan, published online 8.06.2016. 

Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways.

This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian refugees who live in government-run refugee camps and urban centres. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration studies literature, the paper emphasizes the Turkish government’s central legal and policy frameworks that provide Syrians with some citizenship rights while simultaneously regulating their status and situating them in a position of limbo.

Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways. The analysis stresses that Syrian refugees in Turkey continue to be part of the multiple pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2016.1192996;

Snapshots from the margins: Transgressive cosmopolitanisms in Europe

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Feyzi Baban, Kim Rygiel

First Published February 17, 2014 , European Journal of Social Theory  Volume  17, issue 4,  2014

Abstract

Right-wing parties and governments in Europe have recently expressed greater hostility towards cultural pluralism, at times officially denunciating multiculturalism, and calling for the closure of borders and denial of rights to non-European nationals. Within this context, this article argues for rethinking Europe through radically transgressive and transnational understandings of cosmopolitanism as articulated by growing transnational populations within Europe such as immigrants, refugees, and irregular migrants. Transgressive forms of cosmopolitanism disrupt European notions of borders and identities in ways that challenge both liberal multiculturalism and assimilationist positions.

This article explores the limits of traditional cosmopolitan thinking while offering a vision of cosmopolitanism based on everyday negotiations with cultural differences, explained using two illustrative examples or snapshots.

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A Year after “The Cologne Attacks”: How Small Community Initiatives in Europe Are Countering Right-wing Populism

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By Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel

The question we need to ask is this: Why do some people and communities express discomfort and hostility towards others of different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds while others show openness and solidarity with newcomers such as refugees?

The one-year anniversary of the “Cologne attacks” on some 1,200 women on New Year’s Eve is a difficult one for many Germans. Prior to the attacks, since the summer of 2015, Germany demonstrated remarkable leadership – unlike many other European countries – by providing refuge to a million people fleeing war in places like Syria, where nearly half the population fled their homes. Last year’s attacks, most of which took place in the Cologne train station and included sexual assault, rape and robbery, were a tipping and turning point for many Germans.

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showCoverImage 1 - Living with others: fostering radical cosmopolitanism through citizenship politics in Berlin

Living with others: fostering radical cosmopolitanism through citizenship politics in Berlin

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by Feyzi Baban and Kim Rygiel, 2017


This is a form of cosmopolitanism that rejects the citizen/non-citizen binary, establishing relationships that instead transcend hierarchical boundaries between insider and outside.

A growing refugee and migration crisis has imploded on European shores, immobilizing E.U. countries and fueling a rise in far-right parties. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the question of how to foster pluralism and a cosmopolitan desire for living with others who are newcomers. By looking at Berlin, Germany, the paper investigates community-based, citizen-led initiatives that open communities to newcomers, such as refugees and migrants, and foster cultural pluralism in ways that transform understandings of who is a citizen and belongs to the community.

This paper brings insights from critical citizenship studies, exploring how citizenship is constituted through everyday practices, into dialogue with radical cosmopolitanism, particularly through Derrida’s works on ‘unconditional hospitality’.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/16544951.2017.1391650