Towards an understanding of corporate citizenship and how to influence it

Companies are in effect citizens of the countries where they operate and increasingly, with globalising markets, of the world. The potential positive environmental and social contribution of companies is every bit as great as their potential for harm. Good corporate citizenship is about understanding and managing an organisation's influences on and relationships with the rest of society in a way that minimises the negative and maximises the positive. The importance of the effective management of a company's citizenship performance is growing both for itself and society as a whole. There are a number of forces based on self‐interest and mutual advantage, in addition to ethical values which underpin any civilised activity, which if better understood and harnessed, can be used by company managers and stakeholders to enhance the positive contribution and lessen the negative. The key to this is the development of an effective ‘reputation market place’ which relies on the creation of countervailing power to balance that, particularly, of multinational companies. The main source of this power is coming from the emergence of campaigning non‐government organisations (NGOs). The article argues that companies will increasingly need to manage their citizenship performance in order to maintain and grow competitive advantage, that NGOs need to learn how to combine pressure with collaboration when engaging companies in addressing solutions to major environmental and social problems and, finally, that business schools should take more account of this new phenomenon in their research and teaching programmes.     

Citizenship agendas,urban governance and social housing in the Netherlands: an assemblage approach

This article combines recent conceptualizations of citizenship beyond the nation state with new perspectives on governance assemblages comprising both state and non-state actors. Focusing on Dutch social housing, this study explores how such governance assemblages produce agendas that attempt to shape citizenship. Employing an assemblage approach, this study first demonstrates how state and non-state actors amalgamate by providing a historical overview of the urban governance of social housing in the Netherlands. Second, taking account of the territory that the assemblage claims, it shows how underprivileged neighbourhoods become the spatial locus of these assemblages. Third, examining what this amalgam produces, the article shows how the assemblage imposes a citizenship agenda on the population of these neighbourhoods, distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens. Acknowledging that citizenship agendas are produced by a multifaceted amalgam of state and non-state actors, this article emphasizes the need for rigorous academic analysis of such governance assemblages.     

We are all denizens now: on the erosion of citizenship

This article makes a contribution to the general theory of citizenship. It argues that there is a need for a supplementary concept of ‘denizenship’ to illustrate changes to and erosion of postwar social citizenship as famously described by T H Marshall. The first aim is to construct a more theoretically developed idea of what the concept of a ‘denizen’ means in sociological terms. In its conventional meaning, this term describes a group of people permanently resident in a foreign country, but only enjoying limited partial rights of citizenship. I label this Denizenship Type 1. By contrast, Denizenship Type 2 refers to the erosion of social citizenship as citizens begin to resemble denizens or strangers in their own societies. The argument then is that there is a general convergence between citizenship and denizenship. As such, Denizenship Type 2 provides a possible supplement to the various terms that have recently been proposed, such as flexible citizenship, semi-citizenship, or precariat to describe the attenuated social and economic status of citizens under regimes of austerity and diminished rights and opportunities. As the life chances of citizens decline, they come to resemble denizens. One illustration of this basic transition is to be found in the changing nature of taxation. This observation also allows me simply to observe that the political economy of taxation has been somewhat neglected in the recent literature on citizenship where questions about identity and subjectivity have become more dominant. As a result of these socio-economic changes, the modern citizen is increasingly merely a denizen with thin, fragmented, and fragile social bonds to the public world. The corrosion of the social, economic, political, and legal framework of citizenship offers a new slogan: ‘we are all denizens now.’     

Post‐national citizenship,social exclusion and migrants rights: Mexican seasonal workers in Canada

In the past few decades, migrants residing in many European and North American countries have benefited from nation‐states' extension of legal rights to non‐citizens. This development has prompted many scholars to reflect on the shift from a state‐based to a more individual‐based universal conception of rights and to suggest that national citizenship has been replaced by post‐national citizenship. However, in practice migrants are often deprived of some rights. The article suggests that the ability to claim rights denied to some groups of people depends on their knowledge of the legal framework, communications skills, and support from others. Some groups of migrants are deprived of the knowledge, skills, and support required to negotiate their rights effectively because of their social exclusion from local communities of citizens. The article draws attention to the contradiction in two citizenship principles—one linked to legal rights prescribed by international conventions and inscribed through international agreements and national laws and policies, and the other to membership in a community. Commitment to the second set of principles may negate any achievements made with respect to the first. The article uses Mexican migrants working in Canada as an illustration, arguing that even though certain legal rights have been granted to them, until recently they had been unable to claim them because they were denied social membership in local and national communities. Recent initiatives among local residents and union and human rights activists to include Mexican workers in their communities of citizens in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, are likely to enhance the Mexican workers' ability to claim their rights.     

Youthscapes: the politics of belonging for ‘Makwerekwere’ youth in South African schools

This article is framed within the global context of immigration and the resultant debates around citizenship, belonging, inclusion and exclusion. The task of schools as social institutions is to ‘integrate’ and ‘educate’ immigrant youth and as such they can be seen as the primary sites where the politics of belonging and struggles over belonging and citizenship are waged. Drawing on the conceptual framework of ‘youthscapes’ and the theoretical framework of critical race theory, this article engages with the contradictions inherent in schools and the manner in which the South African education system is implicated in constructing different ‘kinds’ of citizens and reproducing hierarchies of belonging, even in its efforts at inclusivity.     

Beyond the state? Civil sociality and other notions of citizenship

Social scientists generally begin with a definition of citizenship, usually the rights-bearing membership of nation-states, and have given less attention to the notions of citizenship held by the people whom they study. Not only is how people see themselves as citizens crucial to how they relate to states as well as to each other, but informants' own notions of citizenship can be the source of fresh theoretical insights about citizenship. In this article I set out the four notions of citizenship that I encountered during interviews and participant observation across two contrasting regions of Mexico in 2007–2010. The first three notions of citizenship were akin to the political, social and civil rights of which social scientists have written. I will show that they took particular forms in the Mexican context, but they did still entail a relationship with nation-states – that of claiming rights as citizens on states. But the most common notion of citizenship, which has been little treated by social scientists, was of civil sociality – to be a citizen was to live in society, ideally in a civil way. I argue that civil sociality constitutes a kind of citizenship beyond the state, one that is not reducible to the terms in which people relate to states.     

Reforming the French welfare state: Solidarity,social exclusion and the three crises of citizenship

The article explores recent debates about citizenship and social provision in France. It examines the essential concepts comparable to ‘social citizenship’, as understood in British debates, and the role that they have played in the development of the French welfare state. Its conclusions are threefold. First, social provision in France is founded on the principle of solidarité, which holds that all citizens face a series of social risks (unemployment and illness) that make them dependent on one another. Second, as the traditional insurance principle (the core of the French welfare state) is founded on socio‐economic conditions (concerning the nature of social interdependence and social risk) that no longer exist, the emergence of these social ills has led to not one but three crises of citizenship: a crisis of coverage, of legitimacy and of participation. Third, while it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, recent policy reforms suggest that the difficulties faced by French welfare are encouraging moves towards the British model of tax‐based (rather than insurance‐based) financing of social provision.     

Deliberative citizenship and deliberative governance: a case study of one deliberative experimental in China

Deliberative democracy requires a new type of deliberative citizenship and deliberative governance. However, there has been little examination of the connection between deliberative citizenship and deliberative governance. Moreover, despite a growing literature that has examined a diversity of concepts of Chinese citizenship, the newly emerging deliberative citizenship has not been studied. This paper attempts to fill these two gaps by studying the role of deliberative citizenship in deliberative governance practice. Drawing on an experiment this author organized in 2010, this article examines the question of whether deliberative citizenship can be harnessed to solve a particular social problem and how deliberative forums can become a new form of deliberative governance mechanism. It examines what kind of conditions help or hinder the development of deliberative citizenship and deliberative governance, and identifies the limitations of local deliberative democracy in China.     

Social reproduction and the limits of a neoliberal approach: the case of Singapore

Should citizenship status confer social rights independent of an individual's economic contribution? This study approaches this question through looking at social settings in which answers are contested. Specifically, it documents and analyzes qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with 221 Singaporean citizens. As such, it complements existing critical policy studies on shifting conceptualizations of social citizenship and the rise of neoliberal governance. Data analysis illustrates interviewees' perceptions and lived experience of neoliberal, or ‘market citizenship’, bias in state population policy. Interviewees, moreover, find existing pronatalist incentives helpful but insufficient, largely because they see a decision to have more children as a long-term commitment requiring continual investment. They call for more generous, sustained, and universal state provisions for education and health, as well as homemaker allowances, which would be closer to feminist and classical formulations of citizenship-as-social rights.     

Digital citizenship and neoliberalization: governing digital citizens in Denmark

Digital citizenship is becoming increasingly normalized within advanced democratic states. As society and governmental institutions become reliant on digital technologies, citizens are expected to be and act digitally. This article examines the governance of digital citizens through a case study of digitalization efforts in Denmark. Drawing on multiple forms of data, the article showcases how digital citizens are governed through a combination of discursive, legal and institutional means. The article highlights the political, but also institutional work that goes into making citizens digital. Providing this case study, the article contributes to current critical perspectives on the digital citizen as a new political figure. It adds new insights into digital citizenship by connecting this figure to wider processes of neoliberalization and state restructuring, pushing for a more pronounced focus on governmental practices.     

What can Post‐Democracy tell us about TNCs and Extraterritorial Violations of Human Rights?

This article considers the problem of extraterritorial human rights violations committed by transnational corporations (TNCs), and draws on Crouch's framework in Post‐democracy to illustrate why the issue has proved so difficult for states to regulate. I begin by examining the problem of corporate regulation more generally, and set out Crouch's analysis to show why and how corporations have become so influential. The second section considers the area of business and human rights, and explains why there is ‘a governance gap’ in relation to extraterritorial human rights violations committed by corporations. The third section describes efforts at the international and domestic levels to regulate corporations in relation to this issue. It concludes that while new international principles and innovative hybrid schemes are playing a valuable role in norm creation and standard‐setting, the enforcement of these principles remains limited. Corporations have largely succeeded to date in their lobbying efforts to remain free of any direct obligations under international law.     

Government,corporate or social power? The internet as a tool in the struggle for dominance in public policy

This paper sets out to demonstrate to corporations the need to monitor closely and to respond genuinely to public opinion. It predicts a rise in the power of citizens and a government response to that power that will include regulation to protect social and environmental interests. The paper gives an overview of the ways in which the economic sector, embodied in corporations, has risen to and maintained a position of dominance both within nation states and globally. It provides a model that illustrates the power relationship between corporations, governments and the public, noting in particular that the fundamental key to corporate dominance is the positioning of the public as consumers. Using the framework of legitimation, the paper then demonstrates and theorises the rise of opposition to the dominant order and the corporate and government responses to such opposition. It is proposed that these responses may be insufficient to maintain corporate dominance and that a new model is likely to gain ascendance. In this new model the public make a shift from consumers to citizens in order to reassert their role in governance. Internet sites of activist groups are examined in order to determine the ways in which the sites are used as a tool to facilitate a shift towards the second model. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Meso‐discourses,state forms and the gendering of liberal‐democratic citizenship

This article builds upon Michel Foucault's fleeting observation that ‘the state consists in the codification of a whole number of power relations’ and that ‘a revolution is a different type of codification of these same relations’ (Held et al., 1983, pp. 312–3). Specifically, the article uses the case of Canada to argue that distinct state forms rest on particular meso‐discourses which inform a logic of governance, historical configurations of the public and private and gendered citizenships. The meso‐discourses of separate spheres, liberal progressivism and performativity (the logics of governance for the laissez‐faire state, the Keynesian welfare state and the neo‐liberal state, respectively) have coded and recoded gendered citizenships, thereby providing women and men with differential access to the public sphere and to citizenship claims. The neo‐liberal state's meso‐discourse of performativity is especially challenging for women and all equity‐seeking groups because it prescribes the ascendency of market relations over political negotiation or ethical considerations, as well as the attrition of social and political citizenship rights. Social citizenship is being eclipsed by market citizenship.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

Medical aid as protest: acts of citizenship for unauthorized im/migrants and refugees

This article examines organized efforts by citizens to provide medical aid to unauthorized migrants in Germany. A case study of an activist organization in Berlin highlights how prevailing forms of governance through citizenship are disrupted. Three major themes are explored. First, historical contingencies and policy realities explain why, given examples of grassroots protest by migrants in other settings, efforts in Germany have been driven primarily by citizens. Second, migrants' biolegitimacy shapes specific ideas of relative deservingness. As a result, advocacy for some groups, such as survivors of torture or refugees from specific geopolitical settings, is more highly valued than that which addresses needs of unauthorized labor migrants. Finally, although their sustained efforts have resulted in challenges to policy and called into question prevailing notions of citizenship, medical activist organizations have become increasingly institutionalized, which may jeopardize their goals. As this case illustrates, the distinctive ethics associated with providing medical care has the ability to disrupt the scaling of citizenship by the state by treating noncitizens – especially ‘illegal’ noncitizens – ostensibly as citizens, thus protesting citizenship as the exclusive organizing principle of German society.     

Comments on Hasenfeld and Gidron: “Understanding multi-purpose hybrid voluntary organizations”

The article develops a theoretical framework to analyse the social construction of citizenship at the local level in Bolivia through the Ley de Participación Popular (LPP). It explains how decentralization at the municipal level and the introduction of participatory mechanisms affect the development of civil society in Bolivia. I argue that decentralization at the city level can provide new formal spaces for the development of civil society in relation with the state, which can in turn foster the social construction of a more inclusive citizenship regime. Many factors, however, determine if such potential is exploited. Drawing from the Bolivian experience, the article elaborates on the socio-political conditions necessary for local governance to have a positive impact on citizenship. It shows that the institutional shortcomings of the LPP, an elite-driven reform adopted in a country with a legacy of weak institutions and civil society, posed fundamental limits for social participation at the municipal level to lead to the social construction of an inclusive citizenship regime.     

Caught between two worlds: mainland Chinese return migration,hukou considerations and the citizenship dilemma

Issues about migrant rights and protection are raised in cases of return migration when the country that migrants return to prohibits dual citizenship although the migrant has naturalised elsewhere. This article explores the politics of membership and rights faced by former citizens returning to reside in the society they had left. Returning Mainland Chinese migrants with Canadian citizenship status have to navigate China's dual citizenship restriction and the impacts on their Chinese hukou status that confers residency, employment and social rights. This analysis also keeps in view their relationship with the country in which they have naturalised and left, namely Canada. Migrants shuttling between the two countries face a citizenship dilemma as they have limited rights in China whereas their status as Canadian citizens living abroad simultaneously removes them from some rights provided by the Canadian state. This paper thus introduces new and pressing questions about citizenship in the light of return migration trends.     

Security,Flexible Sovereignty,and the Perils of Multiple Citizenship

In this paper we unpack the concept of dual citizenship in relation to the meaning of sovereignty claims in situations of political exception. We take up two contending analytical frameworks to examine dual citizenship. The first framework examines dual citizenship as a human right, and makes liberal legal arguments about the increased rights and privileges afforded to dual citizens. The second framework, which we develop here, examines dual citizenship as a form of hierarchical citizenship, whose genealogy owes substantially to orientalist mythologies, and whose technologies of governance work through securitized state policies and practices of flexible sovereignty. As a form of hierarchical citizenship, dual nationality produces hyphenated citizenships that exist on a transnational plane, yet are always rooted in relations among particular nation-states. Some of the recent cases of extraordinary rendition, detention, and torture of dual national men of Muslim and Arab background will be discussed to illuminate the securitization and racialization of diplomatic protection. While citizenship is not a standard set of rights available to all, the cases we examine reveal that dual citizens with “dangerous” nationalities caught up within the post-9/11 security paradigm may find themselves as unprotected persons, existing in a vacuum devoid of diplomatic protection, human and citizenship rights.     

Immigration,society and modalities of citizenship in Singapore

In this article, I argue that three modalities of citizenship are at play in Singapore: liberal, communal and social. Using a grounded theoretical approach, I highlight the instances in which these modes of conceptualizing citizenship appear in discourse, practice and policy. While past scholarship has highlighted the contrast between liberal and communal modes of citizenship, the social mode has been largely subsumed and obscured within the rubric of communal (or communitarian) democracy and ethno-nationalist citizenship. The article analyzes the interplay among these three modes of citizenship as they played out in the discourse surrounding the 2011 General Election in Singapore. The tension between citizens and noncitizens has become a central political issue in Singapore. Less recognized, but highlighted in my analysis, liberal and communal senses of citizenship are in tension not only with each other but also with a notion of the social based on relationships of mutual benefit and obligation rather than communal, categorical belonging. Drawing on Robert Esposito's critique of modern ideas of community and (re)theorization of communitas, I argue that in the case of Singapore and elsewhere, reintroducing a notion of the social (as distinct from the communal) holds potential for discourses, practices and policies that can transcend the divisiveness associated with communalism and the socioeconomic inequalities associated with liberalism.     

地方治理中的参与式预算——关于浙江温岭市新河镇改革的案例研究

参与式预算是一种公民直接参与决策的治理形式,是参与式民主的一种形式.实施参与式预算,能够促进公共学习和激发公民的权利意识,通过改善政策和资源分配,实现社会公正,以及改革行政机构.在这种直接的、自愿和普遍参与的民主过程中,人们能够平等讨论和决定公共预算、各项政策以及政府管理.在充分吸收国外参与式预算实践的基础上,浙江省新河镇基于国家既有的法律框架,以及民主恳谈的制度平台,开始实施预算改革,扩大了公民参与政府决策的广度和深度,深刻地影响着中国基层民主的发展.在理论分析和实地调查的基础上,运用比较分析的方法,初步探讨了参与式预算在中国地方治理中的兴起与发展,力图为中国地方治理,以及基层民主政治建设提供新的观察视角.