Diversity of Belonging in Europe: Public Spaces, Contested Places, Cultural Encounters

Diversity of Belonging in Europe analyses conflicting notions of identity and belonging in contemporary Europe. Addressing the creation, negotiation and (re)use of diverse spaces and places of belonging, the book examines their fascinating complexities in the context of a changing Europe.

Taking an innovative interdisciplinary approach, the volume examines renegotiations of belonging played out through cultural encounters with difference and change, in diverse public spaces and contested places. Highlighting the interconnections between social change and of culture, heritage and memory, chapters analyse multilayered public spaces and the negotiations over culture and belonging that are connected to them. Through analyses of diverse case studies, the editors and authors draw out the significance of the participation or exclusion of differing community, grassroots and activist groups in such practices and discourses of belonging in relation to the contemporary emergence of identity conflicts and political uses of the past across Europe. They analyse the ways in which people's sense of belonging is connected to cultural, heritage and memory practices undertaken in different public spaces, including museums, cultural and community centres, city monuments and built heritage, neglected urban spaces, and online fora.

Diversity of Belonging in Europe provides a valuable contribution to the existing bodies of work on identities, migration, public space, memory and heritage. The book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in contested belonging, public spaces and the role of culture and heritage.