Category: Rygiel

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.

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;

Politicizing camps: forging transgressive citizenships in and through transit

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Rygiel, K. Politicizing Camps: Forging Transgressive Citizenships in and through Transit, in: Citizenship Studies 16 (5-6), 2012, pp. 807-825.

Can we think about camps as spaces of politics and citizenship-making?

The proliferation of migrant and refugee camps for governing populations challenges the contemporary politics of citizenship. This article explores the camp as a question of citizenship. How do camp spaces enable the reproduction of certain spaces as the proper sites of politics and the constitution of some subjects and not others as the proper political subjects of citizenship? Can we think about camps as spaces of politics and citizenship-making? Situating the camp within the context of the historical emergence of extraterritoriality in relation to citizenship, I argue that camps reproduce orientalist mappings of the world that deem some people incapable or unworthy of citizenship. Rather than a space of exceptionality, outside of and separate from the space of the citizen, the article investigates the camp as both a political and politicized space, in which artists, activists and migrants use the camp as a site of building de-orientalizing cartographies to politicize migrant rights and political subjectivities.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2012.698511

Governing Through Citizenship and Citizenship from Below

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Rygiel, K with Ilker Ataç, Anna Köster-Eiserfunke and Helge Schwiertz, Governing through Citizenship and Citizenship from Below. An Interview with Kim Rygiel, in: Movements. Journal für kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung 2015 1 (2).


Investigating migrant struggles as acts of citizenship serves not only to reframe non-citizen migrants as political subjects but also to unsettle the privileged identity of citizens.


This interview reviews some reflections from Kim Rygiel’s work on theorizing the struggles of migrants at the borders of Europe from a politics of citizenship perspective as forms of citizenship from below. The study of border controls reveals how restrictions on migrants’ mobility generates new forms of inequality and exclusion, but also social responses, and in particular, an emerging and growing activism of politicized groups of non-citizen migrants and citizens working alongside them in solidarity for migrants’ rights.

Investigating border controls thus requires investigating multiple practices and sites of bordering, but it also raises questions about the nature of the border and how to study it. The concept of bordering solidarities highlights for her that as much as border controls are restrictive and divisive, borders also paradoxically act as bridges or moments around which people on either sides of the borders, non-citizen migrants along with citizens, come together in solidarity and support for migrants’ rights.

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Introduction: The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins

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This special issue inquires into their transformative possibilities and offers a collection of articles that explore political mobilizations in several countries and (border) regions, including Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey and ‘the Mediterranean.’

Ataç, I., Rygiel, K. and M. Stierl.  2016. “Introduction: the contentious politics of refugee and migrant protest and solidarity movements: remaking citizenship from the margins”, Citizenship Studies 20 (10): 1-18.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1182681

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Rygiel, K. 2016. “Dying to Live: Migrant Deaths and Citizenship Politics along the European Border.” Citizenship Studies 20 (10): 1-16.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1182682

Throughout the world, political mobilizations by refugees, irregularized migrants, and solidarity activists have emerged, demanding and enacting the right to move and to stay, struggling for citizenship and human rights, and protesting the violence and deadliness of contemporary border regimes. These struggles regularly traverse the local and constitute trans-border, trans-categorical, and in fact, social movements.

This issue brings into dialog social movement literature, and especially the ‘contentious politics’ perspective, with migration struggles. It connects these to current debates underway within Critical Citizenship Studies and the Autonomy of Migration literatures around rights making, the constitution of political subjectivities, and re-defining notions of the political and political community.

Migrants and refugees continue to die as they attempt to cross into Europe. This article explores the issue of ‘dying to live’ to draw attention to the disturbing fact of these deaths in relation to the state, biopolitics, and citizenship, but also to the growing mobilization around refugee and migrant deaths along European borders. The article examines transnational activism in solidarity with migrants, refugees and their families in response to deaths at Europe’s borders as one example of the many political struggles for greater rights undertaken by refugees, migrants, and solidarity activists emerging across Europe and elsewhere. An examination of struggles around rights of the dead and in response to migrant and refugee deaths suggests that they can be transgressive of the logic of modern citizenship.

rygiel book 1 - Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement

Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement

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Edited By Peter Nyers, Kim Rygiel

The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies.

Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship. It investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. In this context the book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements.

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history.

Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Citizenship, Migrant Activism, and the Politics of Movement Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel 

1. Securitized migrants and postcolonial (in)difference: The politics of activisms among North African migrants in France Alina Sajed 

2: Claiming Rights, Asserting Belonging: Contesting Citizenship in the UK Ruth Grove-White 

3. Ungrateful Subjects? Refugee protests and the logic of gratitude Carolina Moulin 

4. “We are All Foreigners”: No Borders as a practical political project Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright  

5. Ethnography and Human Rights: The Experience of APDHA with Nigerian Sex Workers in Andalucía Estefanía Acién González  

6. Moments of Solidarity, Migrant Activism and (Non)Citizens at Global Borders: Political Agency at Tanzanian refugee camps, Australian detention centres and European borders Heather Johnson  

7. Building a Sanctuary City: Municipal Migrant Rights in the City of Toronto Jean McDonald 

8. Taking not waiting: Space, temporality and politics in the City of Sanctuary movement Vicki Squire and Jennifer Bagelman 

9: Undocumented Citizens? Shifting grounds of citizenship in Los Angeles Anne McNevin

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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