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