Cityzenship: rightful presence and the urban commons

Abstract

How can we retain the political category of citizenship, a concept instituted firmly at the heart of European politics since the French revolution while shedding its anti-progressive baggage of exclusivity? Cityzenship, we argue, is one such possibility. It is the right to the city, the urban commons, extended to all residents, regardless of origin, identity or legality, based on the principle of ‘rightful presence,’ as expressed in slogans like ‘No One Is Illegal.’ But membership in an urban commons, we believe, is more than non-discriminatory access to public services guaranteed under sanctuary city mandates. The urban commons include public infrastructures as well as public spaces, places of culture and education, cafés, the street and the street corner along with the capacity to make and unmake these spaces. Access to the urban commons is organized not only via rights and laws, but also through what Sara Ahmed calls ‘atmospheric walls,’ which although difficult to grasp are techniques for ‘making spaces available to some more than to others.’ Whiteness, masculinity, and class privilege are good examples of immaterial walls with material effects. With the help of affect theory, we discuss one instance of a cityzenship act – an off-space sculpture biennale held in a public park in Berlin – that breaks through the atmospheric walls of Western urbanism to offer, if only for a moment, an unmarked space for hospitality and solidarity.

Keywords:

• Sanctuary city
• urban commons
• affect
• atmospheric walls
• politics of esthetics

Acknowledgements

We are thankful for the conversations we had in preparation for this paper with Nate Prier and Ayesha Basit from No One Is Illegal Toronto, Tiffy Allen from City of Sanctuary UK, and Caitlin Craven from Sanctuary Hamilton, as well as the comments we received from Christopher Sweetapple, Norman Saadi Nikro, Debarati Sanyal, and other participants at the MLA International Symposium, ‘Other Europes,’ in Düsseldorf, 23–25 June 2016.

Notes

1. Migrant rights activist Harsha Walia defines ‘border imperialism’ as ‘the entrenchment and reentrenchment of controls against migrants, who are displaced as a result of the violences of capitalism and empire, and subsequently forced into precarious labour as a result of state illegalization and systemic social hierarchies.’ (2013, 38)

2. Written in conversation with one of the co-organizers of the biennale, who would like to remain anonymous.

3. Hanni Kamaly, Rue Marcadet, 2014.