Diversity of Belonging in Europe

Diversity of Belonging in Europe analyzes conflicting notions of identity andbelonging in contemporary Europe. Addressing the creation, negotiation, and (re)use of diverse spaces and places of belonging, the book examines their fascinatingcomplexities in the context of a changing Europe.Taking an innovative interdisciplinary approach, the volume examinesrenegotiations of belonging played out through cultural encounters with differenceand change, in diverse public spaces and contested places. Highlighting theinterconnections between social change and culture, heritage, and memory, thechapters analyze multilayered public spaces and the negotiations over culture andbelonging that are connected to them. Through analyses of diverse case studies, theeditors and authors draw out the significance of the participation or exclusion ofdiffering community, grassroots, and activist groups in such practices and discoursesof belonging in relation to the contemporary emergence of identity conflicts andpolitical uses of the past across Europe. They analyze the ways in which people’ssense of belonging is connected to cultural, heritage, and memory practicesundertaken in different public spaces, including museums, cultural and communitycentres, city monuments and built heritage, neglected urban spaces, and online fora.Diversity of Belonging in Europe provides a valuable contribution to theexisting bodies of work on identities, migration, public space, memory, andheritage. The book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest incontested belonging, public spaces, and the role of culture and heritage.Susannah Eckersley is Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, UK, anAssociated Research Fellow at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History(ZZF) in Potsdam, Germany, and the Project Leader of en/counter/points – acollaborative European research project on public spaces and belonging fundedby HERA. Her expertise is in memory, museums, difficult heritage, migration,identities, and belonging.Claske Vos is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department ofEuropean Studies at the Humanities Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, theNetherlands. Her current work focuses on the intersection of EU funding, culturalactivism, and enlargement. Her expertise is in European cultural policy, culturalheritage, Southeast Europe, and European identity formation.