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The Solidarity City movement that has emerged in Europe over the past few years shows the growing significance of urban policy coalitions for the struggle against the rightward drift and the ever more restrictive border and migration policies at the national and European level. In this context, the notion of urban citizenship has become an important point of reference when it comes to the question of how cities can counter repressive European border regimes and foster access to rights for non-citizens and cultural pluralism on a local level. Drawing from the authors’ empirical research on various European cities, as well as from the literature on global social inequalities, urban citizenship and radical cosmopolitanism, this chapter investigates the Solidarity City networks and the ways they envision new forms of citizenship.

In recent years, the concept of ‘urban citizenship’ has become an important reference for cities and municipalities positioning themselves in the context of the European border and migration regime. However, the reference often falls short. Especially in the case of urban policies focusing on ‘diversity’, the affinity to neoliberal ideas of citizenship is noticeable. The article analyses the European ‘Intercultural Cities Programme’ (ICC), in which more than 100 cities participate, as an example for this trend. Here, the meaning of citizenship is being shifted

This chapter offers an introduction into the debates that provide the framework for my analysis. It presents a short overview of recent struggles over public space in Berlin and the shift towards new forms of activism at the intersection between protest and participation. The chapter explains in more detail the two examples of recent participatory processes in order to identify some of the dynamics through which movement building and the advancement of claims can be either furthered or blocked. It summarizes the arguments and outlines some of the implications for further research as well as for urban activism. The case of Berlin reveals that struggles over public space and public goods are shifting under the conditions of neoliberal urban governance. It is important to note that urban activism, participatory planning, and deliberative democracy should not be simply equated with each other.

The election of Barack Obama was possible because he was supported by a broad movement including many parts of the US-Left. The article analyzes the heterogeneous composition of this movement Obamas development during the election campaign and the expectations of the US-Left.

Over the past 25 years, Berlin has undergone a rapid process of neoliberalization. This article argues that the city’s transformation has been heavily crisis-driven and fueled by a strong political agenda. Two watershed events are crucial for an in-depth understanding of the dynamics at work: The collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989, followed by a neo-conservative and nationalist, entrepreneurial strategy for the reunified German Capital; and the financial crisis of 2001, which brought a coalition between Social-Democrats and Socialists into power that strongly emphasized Berlin’s (sub-)cultural and cosmopolitan identity, but effectively put the city on a fierce austerity track.

The article reviews the book "Remaking Urban Citizenship. Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City," edited by Michael Peter Smith and Michael McQuarrie.

All along the European border, the year 2006 set new records: Spanish authorities reported 6,000 refugees dead, drowned in the Atlantic Ocean while trying to reach the Canary Islands, off West Africa.1 Hundreds more suffocated in containers, trucks, and cargo boats in the ports of London, Dublin, and Rotterdam, or froze to death in Eastern Europe. Others, locked up in one of the innumerable internment camps spread all over the heart of Europe and North Africa, desperately decided to end their own lives.2 At the same time, Europe reported the lowest rate in years of refugees officially seeking asylum. This list obviously doesn't point to a more peaceful world. What it indicates instead is that in Europe the criteria and procedures for securing legal refugee status have become so restrictive that most migrants no longer bother to apply for it. In 2006, Germany for example counted only 20,000 petitions for political asylum, the lowest number since 1977. If we include the member states of the European Union (EU), that number rises to 200,000.3 However, the real story of the border regime, and its constriction of the category for legal entrance and residence, is in the rising body countThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.