The dilemmas of pendulum politics: balancing paid work,care and citizenship

The relationship of paid work and care to citizenship is a central issue in feminist citizenship theory, echoing the longstanding dilemma between ‘equality’ or ‘difference’-based claims to full citizenship. The implications for feminist politics are discussed in the UK context where such politics can be characterized as a pendulum swinging away from an ‘equality’ towards a ‘difference’ model, in reaction to New Labour’s fetishism of paid work. The article explores the dilemmas this raises. It proposes an alternative model, which promotes both a more equitable gendered distribution of time and work (paid and unpaid) and also a more balanced way of life, which allows women and men time just to be. Social policies, it is argued, are crucial to the achievement of such a model.     

A feminist challenge to the gendered politics of the public/private divide: on due diligence,domestic violence,and citizenship

This article examines the feminist appropriation of the legal principle of due diligence to politicize acts of violence at the hands of private actors within the private sphere. This move expanded traditional notions of state responsibility for violence against women under international human rights law. Using frame analysis, we focus on the institutionalization of this feminist understanding of due diligence through its discursive incorporation in international human rights policy documents and its mobilization in cases of domestic violence litigated within the UN and the Inter-American and European human rights systems. Through this discursive framing work and its institutionalization, feminists have challenged the gendered politics of the public/private divide to change the terms on which differently positioned women can engage with the state and global governance institutions. We argue that this change can potentially reconfigure women's state-bounded and transnational citizenship. The implications of due diligence as a political and sociological concept require more careful consideration by citizenship and human rights scholars.     

Conceptualizing lived religious citizenship: a case-study of Christian and Muslim women in Norway and the United Kingdom

The concept of ‘religious citizenship’ is increasingly being used by scholars, but there are few attempts at defining it. This article argues that rights-based definitions giving primacy to status and rights are too narrow, and that feminist approaches to citizenship foregrounding identity, belonging and participation, as well as an ethic of care, provide a more comprehensive understanding of how religious women understand and experience their own ‘religious citizenship’. Findings from interviews with Christian and Muslim women in Oslo and Leicester suggest a close relationship between religious women's faith and practice (‘lived religion’) and their ‘lived citizenship’. However, gender inequalities and status differences between majority and minority religions produce challenges to rights-based approaches to religious citizenship.     

Gender equality in Germany: Comparing policy change across domains

Focusing on the past 25 years in three central arenas of political, social, and civil rights, this article engages in the current debate over policy change and the direction of German politics by analysing the issue of gender equality. Combining T.H. Marshall's concept of citizenship and Hall's analysis of policy change, I obtain a two-level framework that differentiates between policy changes and categorises reform in Germany in three different domains. The case studies are: quotas in political representation (political citizenship), women and reconciliation policy (social citizenship), and anti-discrimination policies (civil citizenship). Comparing policy change across domains demonstrates that change in these three arenas has occurred to different degrees and for different reasons; electoral competition has fostered policy change in representation, while the male-breadwinner model has slowed down reform for reconciliation of family and employment. A conservative affirmative action regime stands in opposition to individual anti-discrimination and limits potential change. This comparison across domains defines the dependent variable ‘policy change’ in a more nuanced way, helping to pinpoint and differentiate specific areas of reform.     

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.     

Second-class citizens? Gender in African citizenship law

In recent publications, Manby (2009, 2010) has pointed out serious inequities in African citizenship laws. As women are one of the largest groups at risk of unequal treatment, we systematically examine sub-Saharan African citizenship laws for discriminatory provisions and language. We find that for laws currently in force, legal treatment of women is uneven, both across the continent and within countries. We consider the role gender plays in transmitting citizenship to children, as well as differences between the genders in citizenship transmitted through marriage. Some countries are gender neutral in most or all aspects of the law, others are gender neutral with respect to parents and children but favor men in transmitting citizenship to their wives, and others still discount the role of women in both respects. We employ quantitative methods to understand the background conditions that influence citizenship law, finding that temporal and demographic factors have some systematic influence. To understand when and how citizenship laws may change, we examine case study evidence of women's movements as a means for bringing about gender equality, finding that targeted legal action or major constitutional overhauls can help render citizenship laws more gender neutral.     

Birthplace,bloodline and beyond: how ‘Liberian citizenship’ is currently constructed in Liberia and abroad

As a twenty-first century post-war, emigrant-sending country, Liberia reflects global citizenship norms while simultaneously departing from them, and this unique positioning offers new opportunities to theorise citizenship across spatial and temporal landscapes. In this article, I examine ‘Liberian citizenship’ construction through a historical prism, arguing that as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so too did conceptualisations of citizenship – moving from passive, identity-based citizenship emphasising rights and entitlements to more active, practice-based citizenship privileging duties and responsibilities. Given the dynamic trends in citizenship configuration across the globe and particularly in Africa, this article fills gaps in the growing body of literature on citizenship and participation in emigrant-sending countries by contributing to wider debates about how identities, practices and relations between people transform in the aftermath of violent conflict. Empirical evidence presented is based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013 with 202 Liberians in urban centres in West Africa, North America and Europe.     

Reconfiguring citizenship and nationality: dual citizenship of Taiwanese migrants in China

Many researchers have redefined citizenship to better understand the membership status aspired and demanded by contemporary migrants. As a result, the concept of ‘membership’ as opposed to citizenship was proposed in delineating the decoupling between citizenship and nationality; immigrant demands for rights and state policies in response can thereby be interpreted without considering the political meanings of citizenship. However, the decoupling of citizenship and national identity can be challenged when it comes to dual citizenship, especially when the homeland and host states are engaged in political tensions. This article examines the shifting policies of China (the People's Republic of China, or PRC) and Taiwan (the Republic of China, or ROC) towards the citizenship conferred to Taiwanese migrants in China. The findings of this research suggest that political dimension (including political rights and obligations) should be regarded as an integral part of citizenship (i.e. national membership) especially in the rival-state context. The Taiwan–China case can contribute to our understanding of citizenship policy changes under the double pressure of inter-state rivalry and globalization. The globalizing forces help create conditions for ‘flexible citizenship’ in the ‘zones of hypergrowth’, while in the case of Taiwan–China inter-state competition draws governments and people back to zones of loyalty, the nationally defined memberships.     

Ethnicity,citizenship and reproduction: Taiwanese wives making citizenship claims in Malaysia

This paper focuses on the experience of one specific group of Taiwanese women married to Chinese Malaysian men to examine the contestational process of bidding for citizenship status in an ethnicized polity. Positioned within a trajectory of transnational linkages between origin and host countries, they achieve success through making use of networking links with co-ethnic Chinese Malaysian women who are well-positioned within government bureaucracy, while forwarding an argument based on familial ideology and the (reproductive) citizenship rights of their Malaysian husbands. As noncitizens, they nevertheless engage in socially contributive ‘acts of citizenship’ that signify their suitability as citizens, nonthreatening to social cohesion. Furthermore, they enhance their strategy by ethnic boundary-making efforts aimed at distancing themselves from People's Republic of China wives who constitute a stereotyped and stigmatized ‘other.’ The discussion makes a contribution to the literature on ethnicity, citizenship, and gender.     

Pacific men: how the feminist gap explains hostility

The gender gap in attitudes to foreign policy is well established in public opinion literature. Studies have repeatedly reported that women tend to be more peaceful and less militaristic than men. This article reexamines attitudes of individuals in relation to foreign policy and pits the gender gap against the largely forgotten feminist gap. We argue that the individual-level relationship between gender equality attitudes on the one hand, and tolerance and benevolence on the other, is under-researched, but also that key contributions about the effects of feminism have been mostly ignored in research on the gender gap in public opinion. We return to the notion of a causal relationship between gender equality attitudes, and peaceful attitudes, and of a feminist gap that also exists among men. In a series of novel empirical tests, we demonstrate that attitudes to gender equality, not biological sex, explain attitudes towards other nationalities and religious groups. Using individual-level survey data from five countries around the Pacific: China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States of America, we show that both men and women who reject gender equality are much more hostile both to other nations and to minorities in their own country.     

Citizenship across generations: struggles around heteronormativities

This article argues for the importance of attention to intergenerational relations in understanding the conditions for access to citizenship rights and recognition for non-heterosexual people. The case of Italy, where individual entitlements and responsibilities are largely structured around intergenerational dependence, underlines the salience of intergenerational relations in relation to sexual citizenship. Drawing on a study of the families of origin of self-identified young gay men and lesbians carried out in Italy, this article explores how access to citizenship rights and the construction of the identities that can claim recognition are mediated by processes of mutual disclosure and negotiation within families. Beyond a shared notion of family ties as defined by unconditional love, a diversity of narratives are detected, linked to differences in gender, class and family cultures. It is especially when family narratives are informed by the middle-class ideology of the democratic family as a space for the development of authentic selves that access to rights becomes conditional upon compliance with the obligations of a ‘good child’, and the conditions for the reproduction of heteronormative citizenship are set.     

Towards cultural citizenship? Cultural rights and cultural policy in Taiwan

This article reviews existing literature on the construction of cultural citizenship, and argues that cultural citizenship expands the concept of ‘citizenship’, promotes citizens' consciousness and ensures the protection of minority rights. Since the 1990s, three cultural policies have arisen related to cultural citizenship in Taiwan: ‘Community Renaissance’, ‘Multicultural Policy’ and the ‘Announcement of Cultural Citizenship’. ‘Cultural citizenship’ has expanded the concept of citizenship in two ways. First, it has led to the consideration of the minority rights of Taiwanese indigenous peoples, the Hakkas, foreign brides and migrant workers in ‘citizenship’; and second, it has placed emphasis on ‘cultural rights’ in addition to civil rights, political rights and social rights. This article begins by exploring what approach to cultural citizenship is used in cultural policy, and what approach is suitable for practising cultural citizenship in Taiwan. I argue that minority groups practise their cultural rights with the public participation of Community Renaissance. Taiwan's case bears out Stevenson's view: a society of actively engaged citizens requires both the protection offered by rights and opportunities to participate. Finally, this article shows the challenges and contradictions of cultural citizenship in Taiwan: the loss of autonomy and the continuation of cultural inequality.     

Gendering the ‘responsible risk taker’: citizenship relationships with gender-neutral social assistance policy

This paper explores the gendered relationships among reforms to social assistance policy, concurrent transformations in citizenship rights to benefits, and low-income parents' experiences of these changes in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Policy discourse in all three provinces increasingly constructs mothers and fathers as ‘responsible risk takers’ who are entitled to income support conditional on their employability efforts (for example, attendance in welfare-to-work programmes) or market citizenship. Qualitative interviews with 41 mothers and five fathers illustrate how this ‘gender-neutral worker-citizen’ model can be gendered in application and is contradicted by parents' gendered identities and everyday realities when living on social assistance. Using the theoretical perspective of gender as a social structure, the paper draws upon these findings to provide empirical support for a dominant theoretical argument in feminist scholarship – that gender-neutral policy is gendered and has deeply gendered consequences.     

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship,experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.     

Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: The relevance of promoting gender equality

Notwithstanding the improvement in gender equality in political power and resources in European democracies, this study shows that, on average, declared interest in politics is 16 per cent lower for women than for men in Europe. This gap remains even after controlling for differences in men's and women's educational attainment, material and cognitive resources. Drawing on the newly developed European Institute for Gender Equality's (EIGE) Gender Equality Index (GEI) and on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth wave, we show that promoting gender equality contributes towards narrowing the magnitude of the differences in political interest between men and women. However, this effect appears to be conditioned by the age of citizens. More specifically, findings show that in Europe gender‐friendly policies contribute to bridging the gender gap in political engagement only during adulthood, suggesting that childhood socialisation is more strongly affected by traditional family values than by policies promoting gender equality. In contrast, feminising social citizenship does make a difference by reducing the situational disadvantages traditionally faced by women within the family and in society for middle‐aged people and older.     

Citizenship and immigrant anti-rumour strategies: a critical outlook from the Barcelona case

This article analyses the case of the Barcelona Anti-Rumour Network, an initiative promoted by the City Council and social organizations, in order to deal with the uncontrolled proliferation of rumours, prejudices and stereotypes about immigration. Rumours convey false information with the aim of exploiting the fears of citizens often disconcerted in the face of the changes brought about the arrival of a considerable number of foreign immigrants. The article analyses, through policy analysis and in-depth interviews, the role of communication in immigration policies and the concept of citizenship that exists behind this strategy. Such policies can run the risk of focusing too much on the denial of rumours rather than on the affirmation of rights, as this may question the eligibility of the immigrant population to obtain the status of citizenship.     

Workers without rights as citizens at the margins

This article presents a normative account of citizenship which requires respect for labour rights, as much as it requires respect for other human rights. The exclusion of certain categories of workers, such as domestic workers, from these rights is wrong. This article presents domestic workers as marginal citizens who are unfairly deprived of certain labour rights in national legal orders. It also shows that international human rights law counteracts the marginal legal status of this group of workers. By being attached to everyone simply by virtue of being human, irrespective of nationality, human rights can complement citizenship rights when both are viewed as normative standards. The example of domestic work as it has been approached in international human rights law in recent years shows that certain rights of workers are universal. Their enjoyment cannot depend on citizenship as legal status or on regular residency. The enjoyment of labour rights as human rights depends, and should only depend, on the status of someone as a human being who is also a worker.     

Equal Employment Policy in Germany: Limited Results and Prospects for Reform

This article contributes to feminist debates on equal employment policy in Germany by pointing out the shortcomings of current German equal employment policy in the private sector and by suggesting a new approach to shore‐up the gaps of current policy. The first section of the article critically assesses existing legislation and the voluntary regulation of gender equality in the private sector by the social partners. The second section addresses prospects for reform and discusses a new approach to gender equality in the workplace. The article concludes with suggestions for a more effective equal opportunity law as a crucial part of a labor policy that includes issues of gender equality.     

Quasi-citizenship as a category of practice: analyzing engagement with Russia’s Compatriot policy in Crimea

This article analyzes engagement with Russia’s Compatriot policy, as an example of ethnizenship-type of quasi-citizenship, in Crimea, as the most likely case of Compatriot engagement. The article focuses on unpacking the lived experience of Compatriot identification and engagement and the rationale for this engagement. The article finds a narrow and niche engagement with the Compatriot policy in Crimea where only the most politicized and discriminated individuals, alongside beneficiaries of the Compatriot policy, identify as Compatriots. However, the article also finds dissatisfaction with the Compatriot policy because it fails to offer the kind of status, and rights and benefits, of ‘full’ citizenship. Thus, while citizenship might be becoming fractured, via quasi-citizenship policies, citizenship remains the key point of entry to the kin-state. Focusing on the lived experience of quasi-citizenship, and examining quasi-citizenship as a category of practice, is crucial for developing understanding of the social and political impacts of quasi-citizenship policies.