ABSTRACT
Racial segregation in cities has been an urban reality for centuries (Sibley 1995), and even today, Du Bois’s quote resembles the situation of Berlin. This chapter discusses racial segregation in Berlin today. It sketches the effects on segregation of those perceived as – and labelled by the middle class cosmopolites as – deviant, working class and Eastern German right-wing radicals for the capabilities of SubSaharan immigrants in creating a resourceful setting, while coping with a situation of marginalization. In short, subtle practices of the middle classes, as some of the upcoming chapters will show, marginalize immigrants. In their creation of durable engagements, middle class residents seclude themselves from others and produce spatial fringes in which urban cosmopolitanism is literally absent. While not demonstrably motivated by explicit racism, such practices are racist in their consequences. They sharply contrast with the picture commonly painted of cities like Berlin as cosmopolitan, a stage for open encounters between people of diverse backgrounds, especially in race and ethnicity. Marketing campaigns and tourist guides celebrate the city as the natural home of cosmopolitanism, although such campaigns champions only parts of the city. Other parts of the city, in contrast, show another social reality of right-wing violence that adds to the marginalization of non-White Germans and immigrants. As we will argue, an instrumental usage of the concept of cosmopolitanism serves expansionist economic politics of the neoliberal city (market cosmopolitanism) and deviates from actual practices of immigrant populations moving in European cities, like the creation of capabilities
through moral orientations, durable engagements and fluid encounters (immigrant cosmopolitanism). Berlin reflects both these understandings of cosmopolitanism. This chapter discusses the role of market-oriented cosmopolitanism in creating spatial voids that marginalize people from places and resources in the city. How does it shape the creation of capabilities in the everyday life of Sub-Saharan immigrants? How is market-cosmopolitanism linked to the accessibility of the city for them?
