Mobilizing the self-governance of pre-damaged bodies: neoliberal biological citizenship and HPV vaccination promotion in Canada

Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas use the term biological citizenship broadly to describe the increasing connectivity of biological categories of citizens' identities. In line with Rose and Novas, social scientists use biological citizenship today to describe the emergence of citizens' rights to protection and their increased mobilization around biology as a claim to active citizenship. In this article, I critically engage with the conception of biological citizenship forwarded by Rose and Novas, and detail the ways in which this concept is more complex and less emancipatory than is often assumed – especially in today's neoliberal age. Drawing on the example of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination promotion in Canada, I elucidate the intricacies and complex techniques that are often involved in citizenship projects. Specifically, I position HPV vaccination biocitizenship as a biopolitical tool, and pay close attention to the forms of knowledge, practical mechanisms, and types of authoritative bodies that frame biological risks for HPV and bioidentities in gendered ways. It is hoped that, through this example, the scope of biocitizenship can be expanded to encompass more than the rights and entitlements of citizens in relation to their biologies. I conclude by offering insights into theorizing emerging neoliberal biocitizenship projects today.     

Anarchy,self-governance,and legal titling

Scholars and policymakers prescribe legal titling to improve prospects for economic development and political order. However, a public choice literature exists that has long recognized that self-governance often works well and that the state may not be able to improve upon local economic institutions at reasonable cost. Although the implication that legal titling should proceed with caution is seemingly straightforward, the literature on legal titling does not take anarchy seriously as a policy option. In addition, there is a public choice literature that presumes the state is the most important source of property rights. This essay fills this gap in the property rights literature by applying the concept of “efficient anarchy” to legal titling in Afghanistan. Original fieldwork evidence from rural Afghanistan suggests that anarchy of land governance is a better option than legal titling. The essay concludes by opening up the black box of state building by explaining why it often makes sense to sequence improvements in political capacity and political constraints prior to investing in legal titling.     

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.     

Transnational citizenship: German-Turks and liberalizing citizenship regimes

This article studies the multiple connections between contemporary structures of German and Turkish citizenship, and German-Turkish migrants' own practices of citizenship transcending national borders. Hence, the citizenship structures of the two countries and the ways in which they shape and are shaped by the migrants' civic activism shall be exposed in a dialogical way. It will be argued that German-Turks constitute a transnational space, making it imperative that the existing institutions of citizenship in both countries respond to their globalized and transnationalized experiences. Addressing the literature on transnational space, citizenship studies, diaspora studies and cultural studies, and referring to a survey conducted among German-Turks, this work will briefly refer to the production of transnational space by immigrants of Turkish origin and their descendants in Germany and the use they make of the means of globalization, which provide them with a set of diversified habitats of meaning away from their country of origin. Subsequently, it will claim that the traditional framework of national citizenship has been superseded as transmigrants have become mobile between their countries of origin and of settlement in a way that may require dual citizenship as well as dual loyalty, allegiance and orientation.     

Models of citizenship: Defining European identity and citizenship

Citizenship implies membership of a political community and is internally defined by rights, duties, participation, and identity. It has traditionally been subordinate to nationality, which defines the territorial limits of citizenship. In order to theorize forms of citizenship that go beyond the spatial domain of nationality, citizenship must be seen as multilayered, operating on the regional, national and supranational levels. European citizenship as postnational citizenship is compatible with other forms of citizenship and could become an important dimension to the integration of European society in the twenty first century. At the moment, however, the tendency is to define European citizenship in terms of, on the one hand, a formal and derivative citizenship based on rights and which is mostly supplementary to national citizenship and, on the other hand, a European supranationality defined by reference to an exclusivist conception of European cultural identity. This conception of European identity and citizenship neglects other possibilities which European integration offers.     

Dilemmas of citizenship: Recent literature on citizenship and Europe

Citizenship, Nationality and Migration in Europe. David Cescarani and Mary Fulbrook (Eds), London, Routledge, 1996, hbk and pbk, pp. 225

Citizenship, Europe and Change. Paul Close, London, Macmillan, 1995, hbk and pbk, pp. 335

Citizenship and Democratic Control in Contemporary Europe. Barbara Einhorn, Mary Kaldor and Zenek Kavan (Eds), Cheltenham, Edgar Elgar, 1997, hbk, pp. 239

Citizenship, Democracy and Justice in the New Europe. Percy Lehning and Albert Weale (Eds), London, Routledge, 1997, hbk and pbk, pp. 212     

Mononationals,hyphenationals, and shadow-nationals: multiple citizenship as practice

Multiple citizenship has in recent decades moved from an unwanted phenomenon in international relations to a fairly common transnational status. Multiple citizenship has nevertheless so far been studied mainly as a political and juridical status by comparing national legislations. Much less notice has been given to actual dual citizens' citizen participation and construction of citizens' identities. Only when citizenship is studied as these kinds of practices do the hypothetic possibilities and problems associated with the status get their meanings and contents. This paper concentrates on examining dual citizens' identifications to their respective citizenships and how these affiliations transfer into possible citizen participation. Results are based on extensive analysis of survey (n = 335) and interviews (n = 48) carried out among dual citizens living in Finland. Contents and forms of dual citizens' national identification and citizen participation were reviewed through ideal types: resident-mononationals, expatriate-mononationals, hyphenationals, and shadow-nationals.     

Rhetorical citizenship: studying the discursive crafting and enactment of citizenship

This article argues for the relevance of a rhetorical approach to the study of citizenship, proposing the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a term for a fourth dimension of citizenship and as a scholarly approach to the topic in addition to the dimensions of status, rights, and identity commonly recognized in the literature. We show how this view aligns with current views of the multidi Citizenship Studies mensionality of citizenship, explain our use of the term rhetoric, and illustrate the usefulness of a rhetorical approach in two examples. In close textual readings both examples – one vernacular, one elite – are shown to discursively craft and enact different notions of citizenship vis-a-vis the European refugee crisis. We conclude that a rhetorical perspective on public civic discourse is useful in virtue of its close attention to discursive creativity as well as to textual properties that may significantly, but often implicitly, affect citizens’ understanding of their own role in the polity, and further because it recognizes deep differences as inevitable while valorizing discourse across them.     

Immigrant meanings of citizenship: mobility,stability, and recognition

ABSTRACT

Based on interviews with 21 immigrants in Norway, including both naturalized citizens and ‘denizens’, this article addresses immigrant meanings of citizenship and naturalization. The findings show that the interviewees attributed three meanings to citizenship. First, Norwegian citizenship served as a powerful means of spatial mobility, thereby facilitating transnational connections. Second, citizenship signified a legal stability that may guard precarious immigrants against ‘liminal legality’, i.e. enduring legal uncertainty. Third, citizenship was conceptualized as a formal recognition of equality and belonging, although ‘race’ and ethnicity persisted as salient markers of inequality and alienage. The article contributes empirically to the growing literature on the experiencing side of citizenship and naturalization by delineating what citizenship means to different groups, and to whom it matters the most. Theoretically, it contributes by demonstrating that citizenship acquisition may not only be strategic, but also rooted in needs of symbolic sanctioning of equality and belonging, particularly important to individuals debarred from naturalization.     

Legitimacy,citizenship and state redress

This article explores how state redress programmes work to legitimate the state. The primary thesis concerns how state redress aims to restructure citizenship identity. This restructuring enables civic identification by victims of state wrongdoing which in turn enables greater legitimacy. Consequently, redress constitutes a movement by the state from lesser to greater legitimacy. The article illustrates the legitimating thesis by examining two Canadian responses to state wrongdoing with regard to indigenous peoples, Gathering Strength (1998) and the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat). This context provides material for contrasting the legitimating thesis with a competing approach – redress as ‘therapy’.     

How citizenship matters: narratives of stateless and citizenship choice in Estonia

The phenomenon of statelessness is most often studied as an issue of international and human-rights law. In contrast, this paper examines narratives of citizenship choice among initially stateless Russian-speaking residents of Estonia in order to explore the practical meanings of (non)citizenship in a context where the available options include both national citizenship and statelessness. While legal aspects of citizenship do explain many of the perceived benefits and disadvantages of various citizenship options, we find that deliberations about citizenship choice also reflect extra-legal normative and affective dimensions of civic belonging. The resulting multidimensional model of citizenship helps account for courses of action that would appear anomalous if citizenship choice were merely an instrumental matter of weighing the costs and benefits of different options. It also points to a growing disjuncture among citizenship as a source of legal rights and obligations, as a normative framework, and as a site of attachment and identification.     

Multileveled citizenship and citizenship education: experiences of students in China's Beijing

With reference to three secondary schools in Beijing, this study investigates students' perceptions of multiple identities at four levels – self, local, national, and global – and the ways in which students form multiple identities. The study uses a mixed methodology of questionnaires and interview surveys to collect data, and identifies four patterns of Beijing students' multiple identities: a high value on self-identity, a strong affective orientation toward local and national identity, minimal distinction between local and national identities, and an imagined global identity. This study provides empirical data that both supplements and challenges the existing literature on citizenship and citizenship education in the context of globalization.     

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.     

Public entrepreneurship and organizational performance in Asia: Do entreprneurial leadership,ethical climate and Confucian values matter in Korea and China

This is an empirical study on the effects of Confucian values and entrepreneurial leadership on public entrepreneurship and organisational performance in Asia based on data collected from China and South Korea. This study focuses on the differences in the effects of Confucian values, entrepreneurial leadership, and ethical climate on public entrepreneurship and organisational performance between government agencies in South Korea and China. Contrary to the conventional Western perspective, this study shows that Confucian values are not necessarily negatively associated with public entrepreneurship and organisational performance. Entrepreneurial leadership and public entrepreneurship (as a mediating variable) appear to be significant factors to organisational performance. The similarities and differences between China and South Korea are discussed.     

Making citizenship public: identities,practices, and rights at Woodsquat

The common conception of citizenship is that of belonging to a political community, with the ensuing rights and responsibilities of membership. This community tends to be naturalized as the nation-state. However, this location of citizenship needs to be decentred in order to investigate current modes of democratic participation. This paper investigates current sites and practices of citizenship through reflection on a tactical housing squat of an empty department store staged by an urban social movement in Vancouver in 2002, known as ‘Woodsquat’. It uses a social movement perspective to look at citizenship, emphasizing the identities, practices, and locations of democratic engagement over the collective question of how we will live together in these places. From this point of view Woodsquat shows current limits of national citizenship, conceptually and practically, and suggests alternative possibilities for future citizenship practices located in multiple identifications with (political) communities. Moving from this analysis of political participation at Woodsquat attention is brought to the importance of spaces of democratic communication for possibilities of citizenship, where there seems to be a reinforcing relationship between public spheres, social movements, and democracy. Ultimately, then, actions at Woodsquat are argued to be a form of citizenship that emerged within a democratic public.     

State,citizenship, and the urban poor

This paper examines the dynamic, moving relationship between three concepts – those of life, law, and exception. Following a brief exposition of these concepts, this paper provides an ethnography of struggles over housing waged by the urban poor in a squatter colony in Noida that adjoins the city of Delhi, India. I argue that each concept in this triad exerts force on the other and is the dynamic relation that creates the conditions of possibility for the emergence of claims over citizenship for the urban poor. In suggesting that citizenship is a claim rather than a status, which one either has or does not have, the article shows the precariousness as well as the promise for the poor of ‘belonging’ to a polity. Joining the discussion on the politics of life, the paper argues that the notion of life allows the mutual absorption of the natural and the social, and thus illuminates aspects of citizenship forged through the struggles waged by the poor for their needs. These are aspects of citizenship which remain obscure if we reduce democratic citizenship to the domain of rational deliberative processes alone.