Urban solidarity and everyday politics

This case starts from the argument that the many urban crises in the form of the dominance of technocrats in political affairs, the increasing numbers of refugees in Europe and the extension of the so called ‘refugee crisis’ raises urgent political and ethical questions. Based on a research study on racial injustices we seek to develop an extended phenomenological reconceptualization of the political through the concept of everyday politics and politics of hospitality. Phenomenology of critical geography is here not only a philosophical/theoretical practice, but even more importantly, it is at the same time a political practice of restructuring the world in order to generate new and liberatory possibilities for meaningful experiences and existence. Taking phenomenology of critical geography as a starting point, everyday politics transcends the institutional level and implements a much broader understanding of the ‘political’. Everyday politics is what we experience and live through and our shared capacity to act. It is about forms of perceiving the world and relating to it – how we make sense of the world. Everyday politics is centered in the lived world, drawing attention to the way we experience it from within. That includes the experiences of those who are living in and suffering from situations of oppression. The case is based on an examination everyday politics through three issues: action, empowerment, and spaces of political freedom. While dynamics such as dehumanization; for example, growing neo-nationalism and fear of Others, Islamophobia, and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe emerge as crisis that close possibilities for justice the emergence of a new politics of hospitalities create hope for the way in which the world can be re-created through political action. It is concluded with a quest of a ’new humanism’. It involves a political thinking that emphasizes co-existence and is characterized by a renewed critique of the current directions in politics, as well as different forms of everyday resistance, experiments, and disruptions. Keywords: Everyday politics, hospitality, humanism, solidarity.