Do I Belong? Reflections from Europe

Description

*Shortlisted for the JQ Wingate Literary Prize, 2017* 'Belonging' is both a fundamental human emotion and a political project that affects millions. Since its foundation in 1957, the European Union has encouraged people across its member states to feel a sense of belonging to one united community, with mixed results. Today, faced with the fracturing impacts of the migration crisis, the threat of terrorism and rising tensions within countries, governments within and outside the EU seek to impose a different kind of belonging on their populations through policies of exclusion and bordering. In this collection of original essays, a diverse group of novelists, journalists and academics reflect on their own individual senses of European belonging. In creative and disarming ways, they confront the challenges of nationalism, populism, racism and fundamentalism. Do I Belong? offers fascinating insights into such questions as: Why fear growing diversity? Is there a European identity? Who determines who belongs? Is a single sense of 'good' belonging in Europe dangerous? This collection provides a unique commentary on an insufficiently understood but defining phenomenon of our age. Authors include: Zia Haider Rahman, Goran Rosenberg, Isolde Charim, Hanno Loewy, Diana Pinto, Nira Yuval-Davis and Doron Rabinovici among others. Foreword by Gertraud Borea D’olmo Introduction by Antony Lerman 1. Europe’s Problem With Otherness by Zia Haider Rahman 2. When Do You Eat Lunch? by Isolde Charim 3. The Missing Link? Building Solidarity Among Black Europeans by Rob Berkeley 4. From The European Puzzle To A Puzzled Europe by Marion Demossier 5. The Bird’s Religion by Seyda Emek 6. The Reconstructed European by Catherine Fieschi 7. Guilty Pleasure by Lars Ebert 8. A World Of Difference by Brian Klug 9. A Never-Ending Story: My Belonging Journey by Viola Raheb 10. The Paris 2015 Attacks And The Eclipse Of Senses Of Belonging In Europe by Umut Bozkurt 11. Home And Homelessness In Europe by Göran Rosenberg 12. The Undiscovered Continent by Doron Rabinovici 13. Growing Up Under Different Skies by Diana Pinto 14. The Profound And Ambivalent Nature Of European Belonging by Montserrat Guibernau 15. Questioning Belonging In The Post-Diasporic Museum by Hanno Loewy 16. The Accidental European by Nira Yuval-Davis 17. Belonging To The Contact Zone by Nora Sternfeld 18. The Unfinished Business Of Our Own Belongings by Antony Lerman Contributors Acknowledgements Index