Malmö as an aspiring cosmopolitan city : places and practices

Recent scholarship on immigrant incorporation in urban environments suggests that the enlarged presence and everyday interaction of people from all over the world leads to multiple cultural competence and cosmopolitan orientations and attitudes. It is widely accepted that cosmopolitanism intensifies the consciousness of the world as a whole, and allows insights and understandings that reach beyond a national perspective. If currently all cities are global in the sense that they have become part of the globe-spanning processes of neo-liberal restructuring and rescaling, does this mean that they are also cosmopolitan? While research shows that in the so-called global cities diversity has been built into the very fabric of everyday life, aspiring cosmopolitan cities such as Malmö need to be investigated. Are investments in urban structure, creativity and entrepreneurship, as witnessed in contemporary Malmö, also pathways to cosmopolitanism, and if so for whom? What is the role of the migrants living in the city? This paper discusses ethnographic indicators of the what, where and when of cosmopolitanism as a cluster of phenomena grounded in both public spaces and mundane practices