Practices of community-building in a globalised context Urban neighbourhoods have come to occupy the public imagination as a litmus test of migration, with some areas hailed as multicultural success stories while others are framed as ghettos. In an attempt to break down this dichotomy, Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood filters these debates through the lenses of geography, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. By establishing the interdisciplinary concept of the 'transnational neighbourhood', it presents these localities – whether Clichy-sous-Bois, Belfast, El Segundo Barrio or Williamsburg – as densely packed contact zones where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, producing a constantly shifting local and cultural knowledge about identity, belonging, and familiarity. Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood offers a pivotal response to one of the key questions of our time: How do people create a sense of community within an exceedingly globalised context? By focusing on the neighbourhood as a central space of transcultural everyday experience within three different levels of discourse (i.e., the virtual, the physical local, and the transnational-global), the multidisciplinary contributions explore bottom-up practices of community-building alongside cultural, social, economic, and historical barriers. Urban neighbourhoods have come to occupy the public imagination as a litmus test of migration, with some areas hailed as multicultural success stories while others are framed as ghettos. In an attempt to break down this dichotomy, Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood filters these debates through the lenses of geography, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. By establishing the interdisciplinary concept of the 'transnational neighbourhood', it presents these localities – whether Clichy-sous-Bois, Belfast, El Segundo Barrio or Williamsburg – as densely packed contact zones where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, producing a constantly shifting local and cultural knowledge about identity, belonging, and familiarity. Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood offers a pivotal response to one of the key questions of our time: How do people create a sense of community within an exceedingly globalised context? By focusing on the neighbourhood as a central space of transcultural everyday experience within three different levels of discourse (i.e., the virtual, the physical local, and the transnational-global), the multidisciplinary contributions explore bottom-up practices of community-building alongside cultural, social, economic, and historical barriers. Acknowledgements Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood: An Introduction Stephan Ehrig, Britta C. Jung and Gad Schaffer Challenging Accusations of Separatism: Transnational Neighbourhood and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Insa Sané’s Comédie urbaine (2006–2017) Christina Horvath SECTION I VIRTUAL NEIGHBOURHOODS “We will be ephemeral”: Encounter, Community and Unsettled Cosmopolitanism in Senthuran Varatharajah’s Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen (2016) Maria Roca Lizarazu All Saints Catholic Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC: From Religious Space to Transnational Territory of Multiterritorial Mexican Immigrants Emilio Maceda Rodríguez Networking and Representing the Transnational Neighbourhood Online: The Linguistic Landscapes of Latin Americans in London’s Seven Sisters Naomi Wells SECTION II OVERLAPPING NEIGHBOURHOODS The Translocalisation of Place: Sectarian Neighbourhoods, Boundaries and Transgressive Practices in Anna Burns’ Belfast Anne Fuchs The Quiet Unification of a Divided City: Jerusalem’s Train-Track Park Gad Schaffer Ruins and Representation: Remembering Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City Daniela Bohórquez Sheinin The Materiality of the Wall(s): Mural Art and Counterspace Appropriation in El Paso’s Chihuahuita and El Segundo Barrio Anna Marta Marini SECTION III NEGOTIATING STRANGENESS AND MOBILE NEIGHBOURHOODS Transnational Neighbourhoods in Barbara Honigmann’s Das überirdische Licht (2008) and Chronik meiner Straße (2016) Godela Weiss-Sussex Territories of Otherness: Genoa’s Prè Neighbourhood as a Deviant Terrain and Exotic Counterspace in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s La Superba (2013) Britta C. Jung “Your Allah can’t see you here”: Moscow’s Subterranean Spaces and Dissimulated Life in Svetlana Alexievich’s Vremya sekond khend (2013) Emma Crowley Transnational Neighbourhood and Theatrical Practices: The Concept of Home, Negotiating Strangeness and Familiarity, and the Experience of Migrant Communities in North Essex Mary Mazzilli About the Authors