Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany.

Miller, Jennifer A.

Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany, by Ruth Mandel. Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Press, 2008. xxi, 402 pp. $25.34 Cdn (paper).

More than twenty years of ethnographic research inform Ruth Mandel's Cosmopolitan Anxieties, a book on the coming of age of the Turkish diaspora in Germany. Germany has long been at the centre of debates and discussions on migration, citizenship, ethnicity, foreign labour, and questions of "difference," especially after 1945. Circulating around the theme of "cosmopolitanism," each of the book's eleven chapters, as well as its very personal introduction, could be a stand-alone piece. The book's main strength is its ability to work with an incredibly diverse range of literatures and sources, as well as with a broad time span, in great detail. The book is not about the famous "guest-worker" program which began with a bi-lateral treaty with Italy in 1955, but rather about how a population of more than two million Turkish immigrants and their descendants lives in Germany, and the various meanings this postwar Turkish diaspora has. Mandel's book discusses a wide range of topics, from the politics of location to the evolution of German citizenship laws, to being Jewish in post-1945 Germany. Each chapter offers different questions, answers, and sources to the overarching theme of "cosmopolitan anxieties."

The book's primary focus is Berlin--different Berlin neighbourhoods, Berlin political campaigns, Berlin schools, the Berlin intellectual elite, Islam in Berlin, Berlin events, and the evolution of those referring to themselves as "Berliners"--but also includes a detailed look at how this multigenerational migration affects the larger German society and polity and how it affects the Turkish Republic as well. Examining, as Mandel does, what happens when immigrants "return home" to Turkey (the loss of important networks, social capital, and language) takes the scholarship beyond the traditional nation-state model and importantly sheds light on the facile question, "why are you still here?" The first chapters of the book address the negative symbolism of foreignness in Germany from past to present, exploring the historical context of foreign labour and moments of xenophobia over the past century, as well as the scholarly context of the evolution of "ethnicity studies." Mandel introduces a new process: "ethno-ethnicization," or the "auto-definition of ethnicity by the group in question" (p. 84). One of Mandel's main points is the difficulty of national symbols in Germany, due to the legacy of the past, a point she explores through reflections of being "Jewish in Germany." Mandel consistently returns to the point of the "mutability of ethnicity" by unpacking the different populations (for example, Kurds, Alevis, secular elites) and different generations that make up the problematically catch-ail term "Turk" (p. 101). Later chapters in the book revisit older debates, such as the categorization of, and politics behind, the troubling genre Gastarbeiterliteratur ("guest-worker" literature). Mandel examines how "ethnic elites" appropriate, retell, and conform to expectations often for the "consumption of German colleagues" (pp 186-187). A valuable and insightful review of the scholarship and debates of German citizenship laws informs the eighth chapter, "Practicing German Citizenship," which asks, "Is it possible to destroy the representation of the Turk as an enemy of German culture, history, and tradition?" (p. 213). Mandel proposes, in response, allowing social and cultural membership that could take on a cosmopolitan expression that reflects allegiances across unstable boundaries. The last chapters discuss the role of religion (religious sites, religious schools, and dress) as important spaces of political struggle, social conflict, and markers of Turkishness or foreignness. Mandel argues, as she has in the past, that "the headscarf crystallizes the 'foreigner problem'... [and] symbolizes the essential intractability of the 'other'" (p. 294). She also draws attention to the Neukollner Frauleinwunder, or the "girl wonders" of the Berlin Neukolln neighbourhood who, with both headscarves and navel rings, represent independent "modern girls," and toaster a sartorial commentary (p. 309). This wide-ranging discussion of topics, sources, and literature all complicate the framing of otherness in the contemporary and ever-shifting German society.

A wide range of source material, including inter alia photographs of the author and of memorials, poems, full-length short stories, and various example artwork inform Cosmopolitan Anxieties. This rich source base reveals the fraught and varied terrain that scholars who study postwar Germany must navigate. This book is a rare combination of literatures that seldom mix, and it remains very accessible to both specialists and a broader audience. It is also a rare combination of viewing "Turks" both in Germany and after their return to Turkey, meaning that it both describes the straddled existence and also deconstructs the "bridge metaphor." Cosmopolitan Anxieties offers a new way to view the permanence of a "temporary" population told from multiple points of view. Historians can gain from this book more than the standard political narratives of life in West Germany by considering a whole new range of historical actors and sources. German history is often taught as ending with reunification, but for this maturing diaspora, this is far from true. Even as German citizenship laws change, anxieties about who is German stubbornly persist. Mandel's book concludes with a positive note on how Germany is evolving to be more inclusive, and her book is also an encouraging example of how the scholarship on these tricky topics is also expanding with nuance.

Jennifer A. Miller

Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville