Grassroots practices of citizenship and politicization in the urban: the case of right to the city initiatives in Barcelona

This article aims to produce an analysis of the politicization of the citizens after Spain’s Indignados movement from a citizenship framework. The article suggests that claiming the right to the city involves more than issues of access to urban amenities: it is also about claiming the right to participate in the formation and transformation of the city and the right to appropriate the city center. This positions these rights within the larger issue of citizenship by defining it as a collective practice rather than a state-sanctioned status. Our analysis is based on the empirical evidence derived from the semi-structured interviews, politicians’ speeches, information based on media resources and official websites, and participant observation during three months of fieldwork in Barcelona in 2016.     

From citizenship to human rights: the stakes for democracy

A review of the literature on citizenship shows a trend away from anchoring citizenship practices to the nation-state and a move towards recasting the concept in universal terms. The paper examines this trend by focusing on the writings of Held, Bohman, and Benhabib. It distinguishes their ‘deliberative’ approach to citizenship, and suggests that this leads them to reformulate citizenship in a way which differs little from human rights. Although the paper shares in the view that a move to a human rights politics would pave the way for a more equitable order, it argues that there is also a risk. By drawing on the agonistic perspective on democratic politics, the paper shows that the risk is that we might undermine democratic politics by reducing it to a single principle.     

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.     

Melancholic citizenship in the south Tel Aviv protest against global migration

Combining anthropological analysis with the discipline of urban studies and the theory of melancholy, this article offers the concept of ‘melancholic citizenship’ to describe the emotion of sadness aroused among a discriminated group of citizens in light of a process that highlights their social marginality. The case study explored is the struggle of old-time Mizrahi (Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries) residents of the Hatikva neighborhood – a lower income neighborhood of south Tel Aviv – against the inflow of African migration to the area. Based on anthropological field work I conducted in the neighborhood between the years 2010–2013, I argue that the struggle of the longstanding residents aroused melancholic feelings among them when they realized that the global migration is a current indication of their discrimination as lower income Mizrahim who inhabit the city periphery and are located at the margins of Israeli society.     

Dual citizenship and theories of democracy

Dual/multiple citizenship has become a widespread phenomenon in many parts of the world. This acceptance or tolerance of overlapping memberships in political communities represents an important element in the ongoing readjustment of the relationship between citizens and political communities in democratic systems. This article has two goals and parts. First, it evaluates dual citizenship from the perspective of five normative theories of democracy. Liberal and republican as well as multicultural and deliberative understandings of democracy deliver a broad spectrum of arguments in favour of dual citizenship. Only communitarians fear that dual citizenship endangers national democracies. Nevertheless, empirical evidence and national policies largely contradict these fears. The second part of the article reverses the perspective and shows that most theories of democracy do not only legitimate and facilitate the acceptance of dual citizenship – the phenomenon of multiple citizenships induces innovation in democratic theory in turn. A second look at the relationship between dual citizenship and theories of democracy reveals that dual citizenship stimulates refinements, expansions and reconceptualisations of these theories for a transnationalising world.     

Citizenship,minorities and the struggle for a right to the city in Istanbul

Globalization is generating new forms of citizenship that often go beyond the institutional perception of social identity. These new forms of citizenship are developed in a scalable way to a greater extent than rights and obligations, and are entirely managed by the citizens themselves. To demonstrate empirical support for this issue, the case of minority communities in Turkey constitutes one of the most relevant examples, since citizenship in this country has long been associated with an idea of political loyalty and total allegiance to the nation-state. The main purpose of this article is to show how urban space and urban protest allow minorities to find alternative forms of expression for their collective identity, and to create a new understanding of citizenship beyond the classical definition, being based instead on institutional representation. The aim of this research is to examine the process of urban transformation in Istanbul, how this phenomenon shapes the structure of cities and how it gives rise to social resistance and protest, especially in neighborhoods housing minority communities. In this context, the article focuses on planning movements in Turkey through a comparative study of two urban planning projects and the citizens' protests against them.     

The Partition's long shadow: the ambiguities of citizenship in Assam,India

Citizenship practices in the Indian state of Assam have a serious fault line. The government appears uninterested in policing borders and enforcing the citizen/alien distinction. This has drawn the ire of even the Indian Supreme Court. Certain ambiguities about citizenship in post-Partition India explain these practices. Pragmatic politicians have adapted to the reality of a post-Partition space that does not conform to the idealized notion of a bounded national territory with a clearly defined community of citizens. However, the tensions between ‘the national order of things’ and the reality of a non-national space have consequences: they adversely affect governmental legitimacy. Policies premised on the fiction of hard national borders that are fundamentally at odds with ground realities cannot provide the foundation for a stable legitimate political order.     

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.     

Ethnicizing citizenship,questioning membership. Explaining the decreasing family migration rights of citizens in Europe

Citizenship does not equal belonging. In this paper, we investigate how the disjunction between the ‘imagined community’ and the formal citizenry impacts on citizens’ rights. In particular, we analyse decision-making on the family migration rights of citizens in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Our analysis shows that in these three countries, notwithstanding their different migration and citizenship regimes, the reduction of citizens’ family migration rights is based on the same discursive mechanism: the ‘membership’ of citizens of migrant origin who marry a partner from abroad is called into question. As they are excluded from membership of the imagined community, their entitlement to family migration rights is decreased. Ethnic conceptions of national community, intersecting with gender and class, play a crucial role in shaping the rights attached to citizenship in Europe today.     

Contesting belonging and social citizenship: the case of refugee housing in Armenia

Using the example of the right to housing, this article addresses the ways in which the practice of social citizenship, including popular claims and expectations and actual state provisions, has changed in post-Soviet Armenia. It examines the claims of Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan to state-provided permanent housing, which they consider the key condition for becoming ‘citizens’ and ‘locals’ in Armenia, and the Armenian state's solutions to the housing issue following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It demonstrates how the Soviet-era housing policy has left its mark on current notions and practices of social citizenship in Armenia. Even though social rights in general have decreased, notions of social citizenship are still present not only in the expectations and claims of needy refugees and citizens without housing but also in the state's acknowledgement of responsibility for its citizens' welfare (though currently providing only for those in extreme need), and in the equalising effect, the state housing programme has had for the majority of refugees who participated in it.     

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.     

The unbearable rightfulness of being human: citizenship,displacement, and the right to not have rights

Claims to human rights protection made by displaced persons are displaced from the universe of humanity and rendered ineffective by the geopolitical character of modern international human rights law, in favour of the protection of citizens' rights claims. In response, there is increasing interest in leveraging respect for and protection of the rights of displaced persons through extension of the rights enjoyed and supposedly borne by emplaced citizens. However, it is a mistake to assume that humans as citizens bear human rights or that the freedoms that they may be able to extend beyond state boundaries are universalisable. The extension of the right to citizenship functions to displace questions of human rights themselves. The question of the human in rights is in fact always displaced, as long as the human subject is acted upon as if it could possess rights. In paying attention to the critical perspectives with which displaced persons confront the citizen, she or he may come to appreciate the fact that the universality of human rights is served where one does not claim to have rights but, rather, actively engages, without limits, with others in the struggle for rights and their respect.     

Secular spaces and religious representations: reading the headscarf debate in Turkey as citizenship politics

Although in recent years there has been a relaxing attitude in Turkey towards wearing headscarf in the public sphere, the controversy surrounding the visibility and use of the headscarf has often been read through modernity/tradition dichotomy which sees the use of headscarf by women as a threat to modernity by religious subjectivities. The principal reason for this reading is that the citizenship regime in Turkey has not been simply about defining a framework of membership to a political community but rather has been used to construct modern subjectivity. This article attempts to dislocate the headscarf controversy from this dichotomous reading by moving it into the larger framework of citizenship politics. It argues that instead of interpreting the growing visibility of the headscarf within the public sphere that pits modernity against tradition, we need instead to identify the wearing of the headscarf as a specific ‘act of citizenship’ that challenges dominant citizenship practices.     

Global citizenship as a national project: the evolution of segye shimin in South Korean public discourse

The idea of global citizenship in contemporary South Korean public discourse has revolved mainly around a national endeavor to boost the county's stature and competitiveness amid economic globalization. Based on a review of two decades of published media references to segye shimin (‘global citizen’ in the Korean language), this article shows that the specific usages of segye shimin – mainly by elites from government, academia, and journalism – underscore how the ‘developmental citizenship’ that marked South Korea's past authoritarian military regimes has carried on since the transition to civilian-led democracy. In contrast with the burgeoning academic discourse on cosmopolitanism that focuses heavily on moral responsibilities to humanity and the planet, South Korea's discourse of global citizenship has been closely aligned with neoliberalism and filled with exhortations to the domestic population to overcome numerous perceived liabilities seen as impeding the country's advancement. While global citizenship discourse in South Korea has emphasized top-down national strategic imperatives, a bottom-up approach to cosmopolitanism is also emerging as the country gains confidence and the notion of segye shimin gradually gains traction across the wider society.     

Rights,bioconstitutionalism and the politics of reproductive citizenship in Italy

The introduction of a restrictive law on assisted reproduction in Italy in 2004 sees the privileging of a conservative model of family relations and a patriarchal conception of society. This law excludes many individuals from full reproductive citizenship. The 2004 Act excludes gay couples, single people and people who are carriers of genetically inherited conditions from access to assisted reproductive technologies. This article examines the manner in which citizen contestation of the law via Court challenges engages what Jasanoff (2011, Reframing rights: bioconstitutionalism in the genetic age, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) has termed a practice of ‘bioconstitutionalism’. Such a practice has led to a gradual judicial reworking of the Act, and demonstrates the power of individuals acting in concert to contest successfully draconian state action. It undoes the imposition of a biopolitical ordering on individuals and allows them, through their own continuous action, to perform a contestatory form of citizenship.     

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.     

Assessing models of citizenship in the EU: the idea of responsive citizenship

There is an interesting debate about democracy and citizenship in the EU. Views diverge about the features of democratic deficits currently facing the EU and accordingly, about the scope for Union citizenship. The paper suggests an analytical distinction between asymmetric and symmetric normative models of dual – national and Union – citizenship. Moreover, it proposes an alternative model of dual citizenship that puts emphasis on the responsiveness of citizens vis-à-vis phenomena that undermine democratic governance and the claim for equal respect and concern. One of the main ideas of responsive citizenship is that effective democratic control should complement procedural legitimacy in the EU as a means to prevent phenomena of political domination and guardianship. This is possible through the combination of competences ascribed on citizens through national and Community legislation vis-à-vis national and Union executive bodies.     

Debating the ghost of Marshall: a critique of citizenship

Significant changes to societies and the jettisoning of social rights are limiting access to conventional citizenship and fueling a new criterion by which a substantive ‘citizenship’ may now be claimed. Specifically, fame, fortune and a kind of martyrdom are, de facto, the new ways in which an individualistic approach is used to access citizenship, initiating a two-tiered system of inclusion. This article uses a Canadian context to examine the relevance of Marshall's concept of citizenship. The argument will follow in four parts. First, I review Marshall's construct of social rights and take up some of the ‘internal’ critiques of its limits. Second, I examine the gendered limits of social citizenship claims. Third, I explore what amounts to an ‘external’ critique of Marshall, i.e. thinkers like Beck who argue that the debate has moved on from how to do ‘social rights’ to an attack on the very notion of (social) rights. Finally, I propose what a citizenship without social rights concretely amounts to in the modern world.     

Statelessness,identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya

Statelessness as a legal and political problem has attracted increasing attention from scholars and international advocacy organisations in recent years. This attention has predominantly focussed on the legal aspects of statelessness, and has generally held the acquisition of citizenship documentation as the primary goal in remedying citizenship deprivation. This article explores the merits of this focus through a case study of the Nubians of Kenya, widely considered stateless until recently. The article connects the focus on citizenship as documented status to a liberal conception of citizenship. The article identifies the ways in which this approach is helpful, that is, as a means of pursuing legal status and possession of individual rights. It then goes on to identify more important ways in which a liberal conception of citizenship falls short of accounting for the Nubians' citizenship problems by neglecting the more collective dimensions of citizenship practice and recognition.