Like no other city in the world, Berlin shows the scars of the Cold War; its two divided parts are slowly and imperfectly growing back together. The most clearly visible division in the city, the Wall, also served to distract from other divisions within the city, less prominent but no less fixed. Class divisions and the gaping divide between citizens and non-citizens continue to divide the city. The Cold War served to elide these conflicts not only here, but in many parts of the world, and these divisions are now returning to define the post-Cold War era.
Berlin, with its multiple divisions between haves and have-nots, is an important location for a study of those divisions that continue to shape the world. The effects of reunification have not always been positive, and a large number of former East Germans feel left behind by the economic development and technological focus of the city. Many immigrants have no access to the technology-based "new economy," and form an underclass marked both by class and by culture. The fact that many of Berlin's immigrants are from Islamic cultures, and that after decades of exclusion Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise among the disenfranchised younger immigrants, makes this a particularly important aspect of the study. Many commentators have located a global shift from East vs. West to North vs. South, and Berlin is in many ways at the heart of both of these oppositions.
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