A Space of Performing Citizenship: The Gängeviertel in Hamburg

Abstract

A performative perspective on citizenship allows us to overcome conventional views of citizenship and points a spotlight on the question of how people articulate claims as rights (Isin, Performative citizenship. In Shachar A, Bauböck R, Bloemraad I, Vink M (ed) Oxford handbook of citizenship, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 500–523, 2017). In this chapter, I will focus on this question by using the example of the Gängeviertel—the abandoned quarter in the middle of Hamburg that was occupied by an activist initiative in 2009. Since then, the Gängeviertel activists continue to publicly articulate claims concerning the self-management of the place and the right to the city. They apply these practices in situ, and therewith continuously produce a space of performing citizenship. I will illustrate some of these practices and point out how they contribute to an effective articulation of claims with the help of a spatial entanglement of the public to the place. With reference to Lefebvre’s concept of the production of social space, I will show thereby that place-specific conditions play a particular and important role.