De-Shalit, Avner

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Thinking Like a City, Thinking Like aStateAvner de Shalit 2020-01-20T12:00:00In 2014 I began the first steps of what would become my research on cities andmigration (de Shalit 2018). I conducted one of my first interviews in Berlin. It was apleasant morning. I strolled the streets in search of interviewees and approacheda school yard, where a local Berliner, who had just said goodbye to his eight-year-old child, was prepared to answer my questions about locals' attitudes towardsimmigrants. "Immigrants?" he repeated my word with disgust. "They are responsiblefor the rise in crime rates here. They rape, they steal, and they cheat. You justcannot trust them. They exploit the good will of the German welfare system. Andon top of this, they are not really Christian. You know, I don’t care if one goes tochurch or not, but they are different; they have their own religious beliefs, which areso different. They should not be here."I was a little bit surprised, not so much by the content as by the forceful mannerin which he spoke. I asked, "Well, could you please describe your most recentencounter with immigrants?" "Sure," he replied, "only yesterday I escorted my childto school, like I did today, and I saw another child standing in the school playground,crying. So I asked my child what happened to him, and my child said, ‘Oh, he is froma family from Kosovo; they came here a week ago and he doesn’t know anybody orspeak the language properly, so he cries all day.’ I looked at my child and said, ‘Well,then, go and invite him over; tell him he can come and play with you this afternoon.We don’t want him to stand crying here all day.’"What happened to this interviewee? The interviewee changed, very rapidly, fromexpressing xenophobic and intolerant attitudes towards the immigrants to expressingcare and concern, in a very warm manner. One could think that this was due to himseeing a crying child. But in my interviews I found that those who express intolerancetowards immigrants rarely if ever distinguish between men, women, children, and theelderly. Rather, what happened to this Berliner was that he changed from 'thinkinglike a state' to 'thinking like a city.'Indeed, in the interviews following this one people spoke about immigrants verydifferently when they were asked about them in the context of the city, rather than inthe context of the state. This actually should not surprise us. Most of our encounterswith immigrants are as city-dwellers and as city-zens (citizens of cities) rather thanas citizens of the state. It is when we stand in the queue, when we shop in the localgrocery shop or at the local market, when we notice who cleans the city’s streets,who drives the city’s taxis, and, often, who works as a nurse and as maintenancepeople in hospitals. In that context city dwellers, whatever their national politicalopinions are, have no reason to hate or feel intolerance towards the immigrants.Quite the opposite, city dwellers are likely to like them, see the human in them, feelthat they share the city’s public space with them.- 1 -This is so because the city is not only a "densely populated area of continuoussettlement, which is organized as a single jurisdiction" (an often used formaldefinition of a city); the city is also a state of mind, a certain political and socialconsciousness.It is easy to see how the city is a political consciousness distinguishable from thestate by comparing how inhabitants of cities perceive their cities with how theyperceive their states. Consider how New Yorkers perceive the USA today: probablyas a state torn between liberals and conservatives, suffering from / benefittingfrom a controversial administration under the leadership of President Trump. Nowconsider how they perceive New York City: a hectic, ambitious, and busy city whichis the center of the world, not only the USA, regardless of, and independently from,any administration in Washington DC (Bell and de Shalit 2011; Acocella 2008).Or consider another example: many think of my own state, Israel, as a right-wingcountry that is engaged in occupation and the denial of human rights. But thisis not how residents of Tel-Aviv see their city. Instead they perceive it as a veryhedonistic, liberal, 24/7 city, which is thought to be the 'gay capital of Europe.' Wecould continue by comparing how Londoners, as well as people outside the city,think of London, a multicultural, cosmopolitan city, with half its residents born outsidethe UK, and how they think of the UK, which is currently engaged in the Brexitprocess, regressing from its status as a world leader, isolating itself from Europe.These examples, as well as the example of the Berliner interviewee, indicate that acity, especially a metropolitan city, is indeed (among other things) a certain state ofmind, a political consciousness.  And, as such, it seems that for many people in the developed world, and mostly inmetropolitan cities, the answer to the question that Rainer Bauböck raises is alreadygiven. Of course urban citizenship should be distinguished, indeed emancipated,from nationality. Urban citizenship is so different from nationality – the city iscosmopolitan, impartial, flexible, and open towards whoever enters it, whereas thestate and the nation tend to be particularistic, partial, closed, and inflexible becausethey are trapped in their institutions, which are not easy to change. Moreover, thecity is sheer fun – it is hectic, hedonistic, it is a Mecca for foodies, it is a centerof culture, and it is full of opportunities. This is true even for the newcomers, theimmigrants, who reach their destination city and there can rise from their despairand recover from their long journey, inspired by the hope that they derive from andassociate with the city of destination. Many would describe their city and living in itas 'fun' (consider how people describe Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai,and how often we see stickers I love Amsterdam/ Berlin, etc.); but rarely if ever willwe hear somebody saying that 'Denmark is fun, Holland is fun, Germany is fun, orChina is fun.' Never do we see stickers announcing I love Holland or I love Germany,etc. The state is so serious, stable, demanding, and often unpleasant. So part of myanswer is that the question comes, in a way, too late. The train has already left thestation. The rise of urban city-zenship in the form it has taken is irreversible.And yet, Bauböck is spot on in his cautious approach to this divorce betweencity-zenship and the nation. He argues that many of the current challenges theworld is facing require "a multilevel political architecture, in which supranational,- 2 -regional and local political authorities play different but complementary roles." Anyenvironmental activist should agree. How can you think globally and act locallyif you do not adopt this framework? So cities should calm down a bit. Yes, it isheartwarming to see how mayors and cities step in when a vacuum is created, e.g.,when Trump’s administration retreats from the USA’s endorsement of the Parisagreement. However, states are needed in order to invest the huge sums of moneyin research and development of alternative technologies, to coordinate between allthe institutions, firms, and individuals, who have good intentions, to introduce noveleducation policies to educate the young generation about the risks associated withclimate change, and to legislate and regulate so that all members of the nation willadopt a more responsible and environmentally friendly way of life.Bauböck’s second reason for thinking of a multilevel political architecture is the‘democratic recession’ and the rise of populism. Urban citizenship, he argues,must be complimentary to, not instead of, national citizenship, and should gohand in hand with some form of international citizenship. This has some far-reaching institutional implications, e.g., national citizenship itself should be open forimmigrants' naturalisation and should "automatically include second generationsborn in the territory." We therefore need "urban citizenship that is derived fromresidence rather than nationality and that complements national citizenship insteadof replacing it." An interesting question, which might raise some worries amongnationalists, though, is whether urban citizenship should be granted to immigrantsbefore their naturalization. Some countries accept this, but in most states becominga national citizen is a prerequisite for voting in municipal elections as well. Thusalthough some cities around the world were pioneers in this respect, e.g., Torontoand Hamburg, deciding to offer immigrants who settled in them voting rights inmunicipal elections before naturalization, yet they failed to implement this because ofappeals to the Canadian and German Supreme Courts (Lenard 2015). It seems that,in some countries, city-dwellers are more ready for the combination that Bauböckoffers than their fellow citizens in small cities and rural areas.I want to suggest a third reason why we need urban city-zenship on top of, and sideby side with, national citizenship, and, arguably, global citizenship. In a study I havebeen conducting with Jonathan Wolff in several European and South Americancities, we have found that when city-dwellers are asked two questions—whatbothers them about inequality in the city and what bothers them about inequality inthe state—they raise very different concerns. We conclude that people’s politicalexpectations from the city authorities and the city as a whole are very different totheir expectations from the state and the national government. For example, whenasked about inequality in the city, very rarely do city-dwellers relate to materialinequality of any kind (income, pensions, etc.); however, they do mention quite anumber of expectations and concerns that are spatial (access to parks, distance tokindergartens and schools, number of pubs in one’s area, frequency and variety ofpublic transportation, commuting time) and, perhaps more interestingly, relational(feeling secure and relaxed in one’s neighbourhood, social capital, trust, capability toenjoy the ‘cool’ parts of the city and genuinely feel part of it, and the like). The latterexpectations are not mentioned when these people are asked about their concernswith regard to inequality in the state. If this is so, then urban city-zenship differs- 3 -from, and complements, national citizenship, and the two institutions—the state andthe city—should focus on what they are, apparently, more capable of providing.The state and national citizenship will probably relate more to material inequality;whereas the city and city-zenship will relate more to spatial and relational inequality.References• Acocella, Joan. 2008. My Kind of Town: New York. Smithsonian Magazine.• Bell, Daniel and Avner de Shalit. 2011. The Spirit of Cities. Princeton UniversityPress.• de Shalit, Avner. 2018. Cities and Immigration. Oxford University Press.• Lenard, Patti Tamara. 2015. Making Politics More Welcoming. Literary Reviewof Canada.- 4 -

Thinking Like a City, Thinking Like a State

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Thinking Like a City, Thinking Like a State

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