Living for the neighbourhood: marginalization and belonging for the second-generation in Berlin and Paris

Barwick and Beaman Comparative Migration Studies https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-018-0105-3 (2019) 7:1 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access Living for the neighbourhood: marginalization and belonging for the second-generation in Berlin and Paris Christine Barwick1 and Jean Beaman2* * Correspondence: 2 Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Abstract In this paper, based on qualitative research on the North African second-generation in Paris and the Turkish second-generation in Berlin, we discuss ethnic minorities’ attachment to place and how living in highly diverse cities shape their perceptions and experiences of marginalization and belonging. Even though France and Germany have different state-level approaches to citizenship and belonging, the experiences of marginalization and exclusion of the second generation in the city are rather similar. In both societies, ethnic and religious minorities such as the North African or Turkish second-generation are excluded from mainstream society. This exclusion is experienced on the local level. Thereby the geography of Berlin and Paris impacts ethnic secondgeneration populations’ feeling of belonging to the communities in which they live, as well as how they understand their experiences of racism and exclusion. This research has implications for understanding the multivariate experiences of middle-class secondgeneration ethnic populations across Europe. Keywords: Second generation, Middle-class, Cities, Super-diversity, Exclusion, Belonging, Discrimination, Urban geography, Marginalization, Race and ethnicity, European cities Introduction Sense of belonging & attachment to place in super-diverse cities Cities all over the world are increasingly super-diverse (Crul, 2016; Vertovec, 2007). Due to various waves of migration, urban populations are heterogeneous along various dimensions, such as nationality, ethnic background, religion, citizenship status, lifestyle, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Wessendorf (2013, p. 407) refers to “commonplace diversity,” illustrating how “ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity [is] experienced as a normal part of social life and not as something particularly special”. In such neighborhoods, diversity is generally viewed positively. Despite positive accounts of lived diversity, there are still many examples of exclusionary boundary drawing based on various social categories. People develop feelings of belonging to their place of residence, which shape their self-identification (Benson & Jackson, 2013; Blokland, 2003; Savage, Bagnall, & Longhurst, 2005; Watt, 2009). By attachment to place, we are referring to the multivaried ways that individuals form relationships with and assign meaning to place (Low & Altman, 1992). Previous research on place attachment shows that it stems from “accumulated biographical experiences” (Gieryn, © The Author(s). 2019, corrected publication 2019. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Barwick and Beaman Comparative Migration Studies (2019) 7:1 2000, p. 481). To assert a strong attachment to place is to assert the critical role that place plays in how one constructs one’s identity. Attachment to place can also involve challenging existing place meanings and conferring social status. Particularly in socially and ethnically mixed neighborhoods, however, place attachment is enabled through drawing boundaries against groups that are perceived as different from oneself. In Boston (Tissot, 2007) or major European cities such as Paris, Lyon, Madrid and Milan (Andreotti, Le Galès, & Fuentes, 2015), middle-class populations feel belonging to their neighborhood because they know how to manage diversity or exit from it when needed. Such studies usually focus on processes of boundary drawing of white middle classes. Here, in contrast, we focus on visible minorities. Boundaries sufficient to develop attachment to place are often drawn based on ethnic and/or religious factors. Throughout Europe, there is evidence that ethnic and religious minorities continue to be stigmatized and marginalized (Beaman, 2017; Bleich, 2009; El-Tayeb, 2011; Hajjat & Mohammed, 2013; Joppke, 2015; Voas & Fleischmann, 2012). Thereby, who belongs and who does not belong to the city is mediated by state-level structures of and discourses on the nation, citizenship, and belonging (Crul & Schneider, 2010). Even in super-diverse cities and neighborhoods, ethnic and religious minorities often experience stigmatization and discrimination.1 Ehrkamp (2006) illustrates how integration discourses at the national level are reflected on the local level. In Marxloh, a multiethnic neighborhood in the German city of Duisburg, “assimilation discourses are integral to the ways that native Germans construct Turkish immigrants and their cultural practices as oriental and ‘other’” (p. 1688). To illustrate, she recounts how a second-generation Turk conceptualizes the oftentimes aggressive debate about dual citizenship – a hotly debated topic at the time of her fieldwork – led to tensions between the migrant and non-migrant population in Marxloh. Thus far, the processes of place attachment and belonging have primarily focused on white middle class populations. Less is known about the dynamics of place attachment and belonging for ethnic minorities – thus those who are usually excluded by boundaries drawn by whites. Questions about belonging for ethnic minorities primarily focus on the national level, as in, for example, the relationship between different citizen and integration regimes and their impact on different facets of integration (Ersanilli & Koopmans, 2011; Koopmans, 2010). Instead, in this paper, we focus on two super diverse cities, Paris, France and Berlin, Germany, to show how second generation immigrants who are ethnic minorities negotiate a sense of belonging to the city and the neighborhood in which they live, despite persistent exclusion from mainstream society. Focusing on the local level also allows us to analyze migrants and their descendants’ agency in shaping the city and neighborhoods, something still lacking in much urban scholarship (Glick Schiller & Schmidt, 2016; Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009). Specifically, we ask how do middle-class ethnic second-generation populations, children of North African immigrants in France and children of Turkish immigrants in Germany, negotiate their relationships to the urban environments in which they live amid racism and exclusion from the state? We thus address the relationship between national discourses ar (...truncated)