Placing Panethnicity: Performing Arab Space on Sonnenallee

The multicultural Berlin district of Neukölln is home to a large number of very diverse foreign-born and migrant-background residents.  Some 140 nationalities make up 40% of the population in 2010.  Among the migrants least welcome by the dwindling, sometimes xenophobic, native German majority are the asylum-seekers from the Middle East.  Unlike their Turkish neighbors, the Arabic-speaking refugees from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and other countries in the region have a precarious foothold in Berlin.  Establishing a small business, even if it is unprofitable, demonstrates self-sufficiency to the authorities.  Ironically, immigration laws partly account for the “parallel societies” so deplored by the likes of Thilo Sarrazin, who characterized Turkish and Arab immigrants as lacking “a productive function, except for running fruit and vegetable business.”  This research looked into the ethnic enclave of distinctively Arab businesses and institutions clustered around a segment of the five kilometer long artery, Sonnenallee.  These businesses do not sell fruits and vegetables, but rather goods and services that demarcate a specifically Arab space.  The Arab businesses are frequently engaged in illicit or off-the-books activities to make ends meet in an economy from which they are formally excluded.  Based upon field work and interviews with shopkeepers and customers, religious and ethnic association leaders and members, government officials, and Turkish competitors who cluster along a different Neukölln street, I report on the place-making activities of Arab Berliners.  I find this street offers “safe” public space for Arab political and cultural expression and the forging of “pan-ethnic” community.   Beyond common Arabic language, this street and nearby square is the location of pan-ethnic demonstrations and the center of ethnic associations, mosques, and predominantly Arab parks, schools, and other institutions in which solidarity crosses national lines.  The symbolic boundaries of pan-ethnic space separate Arabs from both Turks and Germans.