Do I Belong?

Description

*Shortlisted for the JQ Wingate Literary Prize, 2017*



'Belonging' is both a fundamental human emotion and a political project that affects millions. Since its foundation in 1957, the European Union has encouraged people across its member states to feel a sense of belonging to one united community, with mixed results. Today, faced with the fracturing impacts of the migration crisis, the threat of terrorism and rising tensions within countries, governments within and outside the EU seek to impose a different kind of belonging on their populations through policies of exclusion and bordering.



In this collection of original essays, a diverse group of novelists, journalists and academics reflect on their own individual senses of European belonging. In creative and disarming ways, they confront the challenges of nationalism, populism, racism and fundamentalism.



Do I Belong? offers fascinating insights into such questions as: Why fear growing diversity? Is there a European identity? Who determines who belongs? Is a single sense of 'good' belonging in Europe dangerous? This collection provides a unique commentary on an insufficiently understood but defining phenomenon of our age.



Authors include: Zia Haider Rahman, Goran Rosenberg, Isolde Charim, Hanno Loewy, Diana Pinto, Nira Yuval-Davis and Doron Rabinovici among others.

Foreword by Gertraud Borea d'Olmo

Introduction by Antony Lerman

1. Europe’s Problem with Otherness - Zia Haider Rahman

2. When Do You Eat Lunch? - Isolde Charim

3. The Missing Link? Building Solidarity Among Black Europeans - Rob Berkeley

4. From the European Puzzle to a Puzzled Europe - Marion Demossier

5. The Bird’s Religion - eyda Emek

6. The Constructed European - Catherine Fieschi

7. Guilty Pleasure - Lars Ebert

8. A World of Difference - Brian Klug

9. A Never-Ending Story: My Belonging Journey - Viola Raheb

10. The Paris 2015 Attacks and the Eclipse of Senses of Belonging in Europe - Umut Bozkurt

11. Home and Homelessness in Europe - Göran Rosenberg

12. The Undiscovered Continent - Doron Rabinovici

13. Growing Up Under Different Skies - Diana Pinto

14. The Profound and Ambivalent Nature of European Belonging - Montserrat Guibernau

15. Questioning Belonging in the Post-Diasporic Museum - Hanno Loewy

16. The Accidental European - Nira Yuval-Davis

17. Belonging to the Contact Zone - Nora Sternfeld

18. The Unfinished Business of Our Own Belongings - Antony Lerman

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Index

Sujets

• Minority Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Political Ideologies
• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Jews
• 21st century
• Sociology
• Social theory
• Personality
• General officer
• Nationalism
• Muslim
• European Union
• General
• Union européenne
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786801005
• Langue: English

Extrait

Do I Belong?
Do I Belong?
Reflections from Europe
Edited by Antony Lerman
First published 2017 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Antony Lerman 2017
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 9995 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 9994 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0099 2 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0101 2 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0100 5 EPUB eBook




This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Foreword Gertraud Borea d Olmo
Introduction Antony Lerman
1. Europe s Problem with Otherness Zia Haider Rahman
2. When Do You Eat Lunch? Isolde Charim
3. The Missing Link? Building Solidarity among Black Europeans Rob Berkeley
4. From the European Puzzle to a Puzzled Europe Marion Demossier
5. The Bird s Religion eyda Emek
6. The Constructed European Catherine Fieschi
7. Guilty Pleasure Lars Ebert
8. A World of Difference Brian Klug
9. A Never-Ending Story: My Belonging Journey Viola Raheb
10. The Paris 2015 Attacks and the Eclipse of Senses of Belonging in Europe Umut Bozkurt
11. Home and Homelessness in Europe G ran Rosenberg
12. The Undiscovered Continent Doron Rabinovici
13. Growing Up under Different Skies Diana Pinto
14. The Profound and Ambivalent Nature of Belonging in the EU Montserrat Guibernau
15. Questioning Belonging in the Post-Diasporic Museum Hanno Loewy
16. The Accidental European Nira Yuval-Davis
17. Belonging to the Contact Zone Nora Sternfeld
18. The Unfinished Business of Our Own Belongings Antony Lerman
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Index
Foreword
In June 2012 the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna hosted the first of a series of seminars on the missing sense of togetherness and belonging in Europe, which we named the Vienna Conversations. As a think tank specializing in bringing together intellectuals, politicians, academics and civil society activists for confidential discussions on difficult social and political problems, focusing particularly on the European arena, this seemed like an obvious matter for the Kreisky Forum to take up.
The proposal for these open-ended conversations, which had no predetermined agenda, emerged from discussions I had with fellow partners. The problematic was set out in a paper, In search of the missing other , written by Dr Diana Pinto, and sent to a diverse range of people, from across the continent, who we thought would have something vital to contribute.
Over three years, meeting in the former home of the late Austrian chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, in Vienna, we covered the issue from many angles in lively, informed, challenging, collegiate, as well as sometimes contentious debates. There was much we agreed upon, but significant differences also surfaced. In the letter of invitation to participate in the discussions we wrote that we thought of this all-Europe debate as a book , but in a metaphorical sense. There was no pre-planned scheme to produce one. However, the phrase has proved prescient: when the discussions seemed to reach some kind of natural end in early 2015, thoughts turned to producing something that would be a permanent reflection of what turned out to be the key theme. And so a proposal was made to produce a book of original, personal essays on belonging in Europe, which found favour with everyone. We asked one of our participants, an experienced editor, Antony Lerman, to commission the essays and edit the volume. Eighteen months later, with Pluto Press as our publishers, the project came to fruition.
Without the personal involvement and support of Patricia Kahane neither the Vienna Conversations nor this book of essays would have seen the light of day. Thanks are also due to our institutional sponsors.
The Forum is also indebted to all those who participated in the Conversations. Most came from across Europe and brought their diverse range of professional expertise and personal experience to bear on the subjects discussed. A few came from beyond Europe, and their external perspective proved valuable in ensuring that the discussions took into account the relevance of the continent s internal wrestling with issues of belonging and difference for the wider world.
While the publication of this rich, diverse and absorbing collection of essays marks the formal end to the Vienna Conversations, it is also the opening of a new conversation with a wider public about how people can live together in difference in Europe. At the time of writing, the challenges to the future viability of the European project seem to become more severe by the day. It is the Kreisky Forum s hope that a more realistic and sensitive understanding of the multifaceted nature of belonging, which these essays provide, will contribute to discussions across the continent as to how to meet these challenges.
Gertraud Borea d Olmo Secretary General Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue
Introduction
Antony Lerman
No single reason can explain why, in June 2016, British voters decided in favour of leaving the European Union, just as there was no sole motive driving Americans to elect Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States in November. But one factor looms very large in both cases: the appeal of promises (or rather threats) made to exclude millions of undesirables from belonging to the national community.
First in line would be those characterized as intruders : immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, refugees - call them what you will - who allegedly take the jobs that should be preserved for native workers and dilute national identity and culture. Feared, hated, demonized and dehumanized, these seekers after home can no longer be allowed entry in such destabilizing numbers; some insist that there simply should be no more foreign additions to the population. Next come Muslims and possibly other suspect religious, ethnic or cultural groups who must be placed under radically increased surveillance, and therefore ever more decisively alienated from society, out of fears that they support terrorism and are disloyal to the state. Then diverse groups would be turned into internal enemies or outsiders by severe limitations placed on some fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression, a woman s right to choose, speaking truth to power and choice of personal sexual orientation. Even if such measures were not always fully articulated by the principal figures in the Trump and Brexit campaigns, the subtext was always clear: You are not welcome. You do not belong here.
The impulse to reject inclusivity may well begin with the natural propensity of human beings to see society/human relations in terms of us and them . But while the exclusivist urge was once held in check in liberal democratic societies embracing multiculturalism, times have changed, radically. Trump s victory and the Brexit vote were decisively influenced by the politics of exclusion, even if it was not necessarily the formal leaderships who spelled out the full implications of the exclusionary rhetoric. But in Europe, there is no shortage of other leaders of today s far right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and extreme nationalist parties who are on the same page as Trump and his agitators and the hardline Brexiters, and are not shy about spelling out what exclusion means, what rigidly defined belonging, or the denial of belonging altogether, actually entails. It s frightening to have to admit it, but we are surely now living in an age when the demand to satiate the appetite of nation-first politicians and electorates for excluding them is not only something practically no major political leader can ignore, but is also enthusiastically espoused by some of the most powerful of their ilk.
Those who have become used to multiple, complex belongings, to successfully melding cultural difference with a strong sense of national citizenship, must be feeling pressure to conform to the narrower, one-dimensional sense of belonging being increasingly favoured by the authoritarian nationalists of the populist right and more centrist politicians who feel the need to appease such forces. And for those for whom a cosmopolitan Europeanness has become central to their sense of belonging, the Eurosceptic climate increasingly places them under suspicion. As the then newly appointed British prime minister, Theresa May, charged with overseeing Britain s exit from the EU, so chillingly put it on 5 October 2016: If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.
* * *
Europe s mainstream leaders are undoubtedly struggling to cope with formidable financial, economic, environmental and geopolitical challenges. And the difficulty of their task is aggravated by increasing support for right-wing populist demagogues and parties whose nativist and racist discourse has led to a spike in racist crimes almost everywhere. But at the same time as they condemn such trends, they too seek to dictate belonging and do very little to counter the trend of so many governments which are not pursuing ways of encouraging Europe s diverse populations and groups to live together in harmony. As Pope Francis warned, in his thank you speech on the occasion of receiving the European Charlemagne prize in May 2016, the opposite is happening: new walls are rising in Europe .
Belonging is certainly not a new conce