Claiming Citizenship: Marginalised Voices on Identity and Belonging

While the Roma in Finland share history and national myths with the majority population, they have maintained their particular sense of identity. In spite of increasing recognition, manifested in legislation, their socio-economic position is still poor. This article explores the articulation of citizenship, identity and belonging among Finnish Roma. The study is based on conversation-like interviews with Romani activists. Recognising the marginalised position of Finnish Roma, the interviews are seen as a form of claims-making. The overarching narratives which evolve from the material point to a threefold sense of exclusion from full citizenship, entailing a material, symbolic and emotional dimension. While notions of the “good state” constitute a rather dominant and inclusive narrative, exclusionary practices are located in the area between the public and private realm.     

Sexual Citizenship in the European Union

This article examines two different uses of the language of citizenship: in the context of the 'sexual citizen', and the transnational 'European citizen' of European Union politics. It begins with an exploration of how the concept of citizenship has been constitutively built on a set of binary constructs of in/exclusion and can prove a disciplining and regulatory concept. Yet, simultaneously, citizenship can have an active and democratic potentiality. The article interrogates these two faces of citizenship by considering the mobilization of lesbians and gay men through the International Lesbian and Gay Association Europe (ILGA Europe), and the engagement of ILGA with the institutions of the European Union. The article concludes that European and sexual citizenship underscores the tension, not only between active and passive citizenship forms, but more generally, between identity and difference. This tension demands, in turn, a reappraisal of identity-based thinking, in favour of a more coalitional, affinity-based politics .     

Dis-embedding the Sexual/Social Contract: Citizenship and Gender in Nepal

Carole Pateman's work has been central to feminist critiques of the social contract, revealing it to be better understood as the sexual/social contract in which not only is the contracting individual male, but constructed through the active exclusion of women from the pact. These gendered roles are argued to be the result of the restructuring of society in the advent of modernity. The ramifications for the relationship between gender and citizenship in the non-West where modernity has taken a different trajectory are unclear. By mapping out the nature of citizenship as it evolves in its historical form in Nepal, this article argues not only that citizenship comes to be gendered in historically and culturally specific ways, but that the specific manner in which Nepal has been inserted in the late capitalist global economy--via 'development'--has resulted in de-politicized forms of citizenship with local and global constraints on the enlargement of its political potential.     

Citizenship and preemptive war: The lesson from Iraq

This paper argues that citizens should be wary of a policy of Reformed Preemption such as is found in the National Security Strategy of the United States. This policy is too permissive with regard to the use of force and it suffers from epistemological difficulties. The war in Iraq is examined in an effort to see how the new policy of Reformed Preemption will be employed in practice. This case shows us two risks of the new policy: it permits wars even when the threats are vague and merely potential; and it allows for disproportionate use of force.     

重塑公民:当代中国农民公民身份的考察与反思

无论从何种角度考察,公民首先表现为一种资格,权利与义务的内在规定是其本质的要义所在,只有二者统一,才能外化为公民身份.当代中国农民的公民身份在新中国成立后表现出单向度的特点,税费改革后这个特点发生了逆转,但也使农民的公民身份陷入了困惑.当前,农村社会发生了重大变迁,融入许多新的时代因素,新农险以其法理性契约关系的模式给重塑农民的公民身份以启迪,让我们反思过去,审视当下,积极创造条件以塑造新时代理性的农民公民.     

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.     

Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Citizenship: Evidence from a Social Laboratory

Will frequent interethnic personal contacts help Western countries overcome the strains associated with migration‐based ethnic diversity? To address this problem, the authors of this article studied a setting – high school – that ‘forces’ individuals to have personal contacts. It is argued that schools are social laboratories from which one can learn about the likely effects of a less‐segregated society. Moreover, this study concerns a European national setting (Sweden), rather than the very special American case. The article also focuses on three interrelated but distinct aspects of democratic citizenship: civic knowledge, institutional trust and interethnic tolerance. To estimate the contextual effects of ethnic diversity, multilevel modeling is used to analyse the 1999/2000 CIVED dataset, which covers 3,000 high school students nested within 94 schools. The authors conclude that interethnic contacts do not have the positive effects assumed in much of the literature, but their findings are less pessimistic than many recent reports of the deteriorating fundamentals of social life.     

Citizenship and the Constitution

The status of “British subjects”, the relationship between the individual and the State, and the concept of “rights” and “liberties” are relevant to the current political debate about “British identity”, citizenship, “multiculturalism”, a “British Bill of Rights”, and whether there is now a need for a written constitution. This article describes the confused contemporary understanding of what is meant by “British” citizenship and analyses the parallel developments of citizenship and our constitutional arrangements. The Human Rights Act, devolution and Gordon Brown's proposed constitutional renewal are important steps in setting out the ideas and principles that bind us together as a nation. Together with a coherent definition of the rights and obligations of British citizenship, constitutional reform would achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British today.     

Contested Engagements: Youth and the Politics of Citizenship

In this paper, a framework is presented for exploring how youth perform their citizenship through political engagements. The framework provides a way to explore the agency of youthful citizens as imagined by different agents and the ways that youth understand their performances as citizenship. Using interviews with university students and administrators at six universities in Manchester and Glasgow, a distinction is highlighted between agency and the performance of political acts in the production of citizenship, and the implications of this distinction for the development of autonomous citizens.     

Citizenship and the speaking subject

This article explores the ways in which schools have historically promoted – or failed to nurture – the speaking voices of future citizens. It sets out a theoretical rationale for taking pedagogies of speaking seriously and reports on a project designed to enhance the communicative awareness and confidence of 11–18-year olds. It concludes by considering practical ways in which civic practices nurtured in schools can avoid being hampered by unacknowledged disparities of communicative competence.     

Citizenship and Solidarity: Reflections on the Canadian Way

Numerous accounts of contemporary liberal democratic citizenship focus on the introduction and subsequent erosion of social citizenship rights through neo-liberal governing practices. These studies demonstrate that the progressive erosion of social entitlements and social policies has aggravated poverty, economic insecurity, and social exclusion, especially among already marginalized groups and those with tenuous links to the wage economy. Less attention, however, has been directed to the implications of withering social citizenship rights and associated social policies for the ongoing generation of social solidarities and collective identities. This article draws upon the Speeches from the Throne of the Federal Parliament to demonstrate the recent and complex interrelationships among social citizenship, national identity, and social solidarity in Canada. It argues that, in the immediate post-World War Two years, the idea of social citizenship was conflated with federally inspired discourses of pan-Canadian nationalism. The decline in social programs during the past two decades in Canada thus has represented more than simply a shift in governing philosophies and practices. Rather, neo-liberal governance has challenged Canadians', especially English Canadians', sense of shared identity and national community. The article concludes by examining the most recent and unsuccessful attempts by the federal government to rebuild and reaffirm a sense of shared identity and community.