Whose Neighbourhood is it? On Belonging and Neighbourhood Citizenship in the Baka Neighbourhood of Jerusalem Hila Zaban Abstract The neighbourhood of Baka in Jerusalem, Israel is heavily populated with Jewish immigrants from Western countries who are a part of the long-standing on-going gentrification process of the neighbourhood. The immigrants have influenced the neighbourhood in many ways, including the strengthening of a tradition of participation in local affairs. For immigrants, I shall claim, it might be easier to belong to their new country by belonging and committing to their place of residence. The on-going gentrification process has created a heterogeneous community of people of various social groups who, on the one hand, wish to live together but, on the other, strive to keep the neighbourhood ‘theirs’. Residents’ sense of belonging to the neighbourhood as well as their commitment to it makes them struggle against any perceived threats to their quality of life and to the neighbourhood’s character. By participating – sometimes alongside and sometimes in opposition to the city council, the local governance institution and each other – residents are performing democracy on a small scale and becoming citizens of their neighbourhood. Neighbourhood citizenship, I shall claim, is a form of citizenship that is evolving alongside other forms of citizenship, above or below the state. Using an ethnographic and detailed example from one of the struggles in Baka, I would claim that being committed to a place nowadays makes one want to participate in determining and shaping the character of that place. This in turn constructs new forms of citizenship that are constantly in progress and evolution. Nowadays there are many grassroots movements of people demanding to take part in the decision-making that affects their lives starting from the most local level. By using the Baka example and theorising it, I aim to show what local level participation looks like today. Key Words: Belonging, commitment, neighbourhood citizenship, participation, gentrification, immigration, democracy, Jerusalem, Israel. ***** 1. Gentrification and Western Immigration in Baka Historically, Baka was not a Jewish neighbourhood. It was established at the end of the 19 th century by wealthy Palestinians and was inhabited by Muslim and Christian Palestinians as well as Armenians and Greeks, who were later forced out during the 1948 war (Israel’s war of independence). While a handful of Armenians, Greeks and Palestinian-Arabs did stay in the neighbourhood, the vast majority of