This book combines a feminist critique of contemporary approaches to cosmopolitanism with an analysis of historical cosmopolitanism and the manner in which gendered symbolic boundaries of national political communities in two European countries are drawn. Exploring the work of scholars of new cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany, including Held, Habermas, Beck and Bhabha, it delivers an intervention into current debates on globalization, Europeanization and social processes of transformation in and beyond specific national societies. A rigorous examination of the emancipatory potential of current debates surrounding cosmopolitanism in Europe, this book will be of interest to sociologist and political scientists working on questions of identity, inclusion, citizenship, globalization, cosmopolitanism and gender.