Place attachment, community cohesion and the politics of belonging in European Cities

How urban residents cope with the close ‘juxtaposition of strangers’ within cities is an enduring theme in urban research. Moreover, the particular juxtaposition of ethnic, national and religious differences brought about by post-war migration into Europe is thought to pose distinctive challenges for urban policy makers and, indeed, residents of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods and cities. This paper examines the degree to which urban residents who ‘belong’ to ethnic and religious minorities identify with these categories, their neighbourhoods and cities. The relationship between place attachment and social trust which is examined here allows us to unpack empirically the extent to which place attachment is borne out of perceptions of community (that is, social trust), as well as the material and political conditions in which it arises. The paper analyses place attachment amongst different ethnic groups in London, Lyon, Oslo and Stockholm and – in doing so – uses affective attachment to place as evidence of their imagined identification with the local political community. In focusing on cities, the aim of the Localmultidem study is to reinstate the local into analyses of European minorities’ political engagement.