Functioning Citizenship at the Water’s Edge: Everyday Democracy in Global Port Cities

The research project "Functioning Citizenship at the Water’s Edge: Everyday Democracy in Global Port Cities" (supported by the Volkswagen Foundation) examines the tools people use to orient themselves politically in port cities transformed by automation, regeneration, and the entrepreneurial state. Waterfront development, heritage tourism, and smart port technology are not merely economic processes. They transform class structures, democratic conditions, and the citizenship conditions of port city communities.

The project asks how maritime local culture enables people to orient their political life and deal with the challenges port cities face. He is developing a comparative framework across four cities (Bremerhaven, Valparaíso, Lüderitz, and Singapore) asking how the same structural forces of deindustrialisation, global capital, migration, automation, and regeneration produce different political and social outcomes in different national and historical contexts.