Ruth Mandel
Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008, 440 pp.
$89.95 hb., (ISBN 978-0-8223-4176-5); $24.95 pb., (ISBN 978-0-8223-4193-2)

Integration has become the buzzword in political debates in contemporary Germany. The 1998 election of a Social Democratic-Green coalition government marked a paradigm shift from ‘foreigner’ politics to a politics of integration. Since then, the country has seen a reform of its citizenship legislation with ius sanguinis being complemented by a conditioned ius solis; the first immigration act; the appointment of a Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration as one of only three Chancellery Ministers of State; a National Integration Plan; three so-called integration summits with political and societal representatives; and three additional Islam conferences organised by the Interior Ministry focusing on the interaction between the national majority and Muslim minorities. Despite these initiatives, Germany still has some way to go to leave behind the image of the third-generation ‘foreigner’ and redefine its identity to fully include its minority ethnic, particularly Turkish, communities. 

Although Ruth Mandel’s ethnography Cosmopolitan Anxieties leaves some of these most recent changes unaddressed, her impressive study spanning over two decades of fieldwork explores Germany’s relation to its 2.6 million Turkish Muslims. Focusing on transnational and historical links between Greeks, Turks, Kurds, Germans, and Jews, she vividly illustrates what it means to be ‘different’ in both Germany and Turkey. Mandel argues that Germany’s responses to Turkish immigrants have been charged, inconsistent and resonant of past problematic encounters with a Jewish ‘other’. For example, a differentiation is made among immigrants between ethnic German resettlers (Aussiedler) who are granted dual citizenship, and non-German guestworkers or ‘foreigners’ (Ausländer) who have to choose between German citizenship and the citizenship of their country of origin between the ages of 18 and 23. The Turkish presence in Berlin, she argues, challenges Berliners’ image of themselves as cosmopolitan. And although Berliners are cosmopolitan, they arguably lack intercultural competence and tolerance, especially towards Turkish people (p.6). Germany’s attempts at being a more tolerant and open society are thus a ‘selective cosmopolitanism’ (p.14) often marginalising the Turkish communities. Mandel also elaborates on the ways in which geopolitical events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall transformed the positioning of Turkish Muslims from much-needed labourers to unwanted ‘foreigners’, facing increasing competition from unemployed east Germans and threats by growing neo-Nazi groups.

One of the strengths of Mandel’s ethnography is the ways in which she discusses the social and racial hierarchies within Germany. She not only argues that the European ‘guestworkers’ are in a superior position to their non-European counterparts, but further differentiates on socio-religious grounds maintaining that the Catholic faith would bring Italians, Spanish and Portuguese immigrants closer to Germans than Orthodox Greeks, let alone Turkish Muslims (p.91). But she also presents a more nuanced picture, for instance, of the middle-class Turk who attended a university-track school (Gymnasium) arguing that ‘education is one means of social division within the Turkish German population’ (p.92). Another strength lies in Mandel’s discussion of the internal diversity amongst the Turkish populations in Germany, including westernised liberal Turks from urban centres such as Istanbul and Ankara; the more traditional Turk from rural areas; and Kurdish people from eastern Anatolia. Moreover, she devotes an entire chapter to the different lives of Sunnites and Alevites, highlighting for instance that Alevites focus more on the esoteric and inner purity of spirit; they include women in rituals, usually do not wear headscarves and are less interested in repatriation compared with Sunnis. In this context, she also engages in the German headscarf debate arguing that the hijab serves not only as a marker of Turkishness but also as ‘a moral marker to differentiate visibly the openly observant elements of part of the Sunni community from all others, Alevis and Germans alike’ (p.295) as well as ‘an additional symbolic dimension representing a sartorial form of resistance’ (p.305) to growing integrationist pressures. 

Mandel succeeds in tracing the shifts in the portrayal of Turks from ‘guestworkers’ in the 1960s and 1970s to ‘foreigners’ in the 1980s and to ‘foreign citizens’ from the (late) 1990s. However, she paints a somewhat gloomy picture arguing that Turkish people often retreat into their own ethnic identities and at best feel part of the local Berlin community whilst struggling to make Germany part of their identities. This invites the question whether Berlin (Kreuzberg) reveals a full picture of Turkish experiences in Germany because the Turkish communities are not only far less concentrated in particular areas in cities like Stuttgart but have also developed new forms of ethno-local (Turkish Stuttgarter), ethno-national (Turkish German and German Turkish) and national-European identities. The fact that it is not necessarily a struggle or trap to mediate between several places or identities was well expressed by Gül, a 32-year-old woman, who took two separate wardrobes on her holiday to Turkey – one to visit her relatives and the other to go to the beach with her sister. Mandel argued that ‘Gul easily accommodated the contrasting clothing, expectations, and mores, looking forward equally to the two parts of her holiday’ (p.245). Given its history, Mandel could have entertained better the unique case of Berlin. It would have also been helpful to incorporate a gender dimension in the discussions because male Turks tend to privilege more the Turkish part of their complex identities, compared with young females. In light of the fact that it can also be problematic for native Germans to develop a strong national identity, the potential of a supranational unifying identity could have also been explored further. 

This is a remarkable study which not only provides scholars in the fields of race and ethnicity, European studies and anthropology real insights into the complexities and challenges facing Germany’s Turkish community, but also makes a disadvantaged community more visible.
	Daniel Faas
                                          		   Department of Sociology
		    Trinity College Dublin	(c) Daniel Faas