Plurality, Cosmopolitanism, and Integration: The Dangers of Comparing the Incomparable

Abstract

Following a workshop organized in Essen in January 2011, this volume investigates possible ways of understanding and, hopefully, facilitating the integration of “the others”—broadly defined in terms of ethnic and/or religious difference from the majority—into urban life in Western Europe, through their potential economic contribution to the community. The participants in the workshop convened around a discussion based on case studies from two metropolitan areas, the Ruhr in Germany and Istanbul in Turkey, both past and present. The aim was to compare and contrast, over an admittedly large divide in time and space, the status of minorities—or non-majority communities—and the dynamics of their integration (or lack thereof) into urban life, in the hope of gaining possible insights into the viability of present-day social and economic options. To put it rather simply, was there anything in the Ottoman experience with diversity and its management that might inspire the European trans-or metanational project and its dealings with a growing issue of immigration, past, present, and future?