Date Published:

Abstract:

All around the world, urban spaces are disputed over issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Urban citizenship within such spaces has been found to be fragmented, or even ‘dark.’ Intermediary organizations that represent spatially concentrated communities, such as Community Councils (CCs), often operate under these contentious circumstances. This paper focuses on the role of intermediary institutions in the contested city of (East) Jerusalem. We situate this case in the discussion on urban citizenship and highlight the precarity of the concept in a non-democratic context where most people are stateless residents. Building on in-depth interviews and site visits, we suggest that CCs implement a limited form of urban citizenship via a range of functions that vary from service provision to political representation. We explain the multifaceted nature of this limited urban citizenship and the process by which it is created, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. Through this case, we seek to enrich the literature on urban citizenship and CCs in contested cities with an emphasis on the multiple logics that operate in space, including the urban and the national.

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