Die vielen „Zwei Welten“. Gelebte Diversität im ehemaligen Bonner Diplomatenstadtteil Bad Godesberg

Although largely overlooked by migration and urban research, middle-class, prosperous neighborhoods are increasingly confronted with migration-related diversity and conflicts. This paper examines various facets of everyday coexistence in a highly diverse middle-class neighborhood with a large Muslim population. Based on 5 years of field research in the former diplomatic district of Bad Godesberg in Bonn, this study examines the complex figuration of different groups of “established” and “outsiders” that has emerged in the course of several phases of transformation and migration. To this end, the article draws on two lines of research dedicated to different facets of the “making and unmaking of boundaries” in highly diverse urban neighborhoods: reconstructive diversity research and Norbert Elias’s relational theory of group relations. It shows (1) how coexistence is changing as a result of local structural change (e.g., the city’s loss of significance and the increasing establishment of the upwardly mobile “Arabic community”), (2) how (in which situations and constellations, along which categories of difference, etc.) different Godesbergers perceive and narrate this, and (3) which places become spaces of encounter or conflict (and why). The analyses provide insights into lifeworld practices of conflict, boundary drawing, and negotiation and suggest approaching polarization and diversification as daily rhythmic juxtapositions and sociospatial coexistence.