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.     

Ethno-nationalism in process: ethnicity,atavism and indigenism in Riau,Indonesia

Fifty-five years ago the Republic of Indonesia was founded on the motto Bhinneka tunggal ika (unity in diversity). Today unity has all but disintegrated as separatism and ethnic conflict tear at the nation's political and social fabric. This paper explores the historical foundations of ethno-nationalism with reference to the perspectives of Riau Malays. It argues that current conflict is not the result of recent phenomena, as is so often reported in the media, but is the surfacing of fault-lines that have long lain beneath the seemingly unified nation-state. Since 1945 and the declaration of Indonesian independence, unity has been achieved by Jakarta's imposition of order on the periphery. By analysing the relationship between the centre and periphery through the eyes of Riau Malays, a much clearer account of power emerges. This paper briefly highlights Riau accounts of the struggle for independence (1945–65), shows how atavism and indigenism have been symbolically and ritually realized on the ground (1965–97) and examines some key developments in Riau after the fall of Suharto (1997–2001). Despite recent changes, the politics of diverse peripheries have become localized, indigenized and fragmented, and alternatives to a Jakarta-centred vision for Indonesia's future are as marginalized as ever.     

Creating the Islamic Republic of Iran: wives and daughters of martyrs,and acts of citizenship

This paper develops a notion of citizenship which accounts for interruptions of, and compliances with, routines in governance. It applies the concept beyond a legal status and electoral practice to decipher how everyday encounters with the state can lead to creative institutional reconfigurations. Focusing on the wives and daughters of martyrs from the Iran–Iraq war (1980–1988), this paper poses ideologically committed contestation and collaborations with national structures of power as acts of citizenship. With particular attention to temporality and constructive uses of memory, this discussion introduces a governing technique created and utilized by women to remake the state as they assert a self-determined citizenry status.     

Blood donors,development and modernisation: configurations of biological sociality and citizenship in post-colonial Singapore

This article examines the governmental apparatus organised around Singapore's Blood Transfusion Service (SBTS) and the knowledge, experts and techniques associated with transfusion medicine. I term this apparatus, which was in place in the Singapore from its first steps towards political independence in 1959 until 1990, ‘Singapore's haemato-logic assemblage’. Drawing on the work of Foucault, the article explores how this assemblage overflowed into and reconfigured understandings of biological sociality and citizenship in post-colonial Singapore. More specifically, it argues that, in the 30 years following independence, this assemblage brought into being a new figure of the biological citizen by creating a sphere of possibilities for Singaporeans to think and act accordingly. This new figure of the citizen is ‘the blood donor’. Articulated around the SBTS and the knowledge and techniques of transfusion medicine, this donor is a Singaporean who gives blood to save the lives of fellow citizens and participates, thereby, in the development and modernisation of the newly independent nation. To substantiate this argument, the article shows how the haemato-logic assemblage helped to realise this new figure of the citizen by creating – through narratives, statistics, spaces and rewarding schemes – a sphere of possibilities in which Singaporeans could think and act as blood donors.     

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.     

Labor migration,ethnic kinship,and the conundrum of citizenship in Turkey

This paper explores the ambiguous purchase that claiming Turkish ethnicity has in Bulgarian Turkish migrants' attempts to access formal and social citizenship. I suggest that despite the new Citizenship Law, which appears to eliminate ethnic privilege, the emphasis on Turkish ethnicity continues to play a significant role in the migrants' attempts at inclusion. I seek to resolve this seeming tension between, on the one hand, the continuing significance of ‘Turkishness’ in migrants' discursive claims, and, on the other hand, the failure of most of these claims to materialize in practice by addressing the question of social and economic capital. Although ethnic belonging continues to be an important facet of citizenship, social class makes a significant difference in determining who qualifies as a citizen and has access to social citizenship. I thus argue that we need to expand the current terms of the debate on the inclusiveness of citizenship in Turkey, which revolve around ‘denationalization’ and ‘postnationalism,’ to include questions of class-based exclusion.     

A history of sex and the state in Southeast Asia: class,intimacy and invisibility

This essay offers a history of international marriages that questions the definition of marriage and what it meant to belong, as a legal subject or citizen, to a colonial state in Southeast Asia. European imperial states deployed monogamous marriage alongside other weapons of empire as a justification for intervention into Southeast Asian societies. With monogamous marriage came also European notions of belonging that traced surnames and legal subject status (later citizenship) via husbands and fathers. The ramifications for individuals in international marriages between Asian women and European men are well known. However, the vast majority of ‘international marriages’ were not those between colonial Europeans and Southeast Asian women, but between Southeast Asian women and lower class Asian men from India and China. Colonial states ignored or failed to register these lower class intra-Asian intimacies because their unions did not threaten colonial rule so long as they ensured a continuous pool of labor and promoted the colonial economy. Unlike recent theories which argue for an omniscient state that penetrates into the personal lives of its populations, this essay maintains that states intensely regulated marriage and belonging for some subjects but not for others. This longstanding unevenness in the management of intimate unions provides a historical context for understanding shifts in the marital regimes of contemporary postcolonial states. Taking a long-term view, the essay asks if recent increases in international marriages might be better understood as spikes rather than as absolute increases resulting from ‘globalization’. A historical framework ties the rise and fall of international marriage to early modern trade patterns, imperialism's labor requirements, war, and the recent demand for labor that has arisen from low birth rates and economic changes. Each of these ‘events’ entailed a large-scale movement of populations which resulted in the development of intimate unions.     

Class,Politics and the Progressive Dilemma

This article considers contemporary class inequalities and how they might shape a progressive politics in the UK. Drawing on findings from the BBC Class Survey, it outlines changes in the class structure, class mobility and class identities. It is argued that the class structure is increasingly polarised and fragmented, with a wealthy elite, a vulnerable precariat and fragmented middle and working classes in between. Declining upward social mobility is a source of anxiety for middle‐class and working‐class parents alike. Class identification, especially working‐class identification, has weakened over time, although class snobbery is far from dead. Class has changed and the class basis of politics is changing now too. A progressive politics is possible if the political parties of the centre‐left appeal to the majority of the electorate rather than one class, acknowledge common concerns and worries and appeal to shared hopes and dreams that straddle class boundaries.     

The in-between: Local civil society organizations and their community-based structures in South Kivu,the Democratic Republic of the Congo

This article examines the relationship between local civil society organizations and community-based structures in peacebuilding interventions in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It observes that elite led organizations in the provincial capital rely on information provided by the members of multiple community-based structures in order identify local needs which are addressed through their peacebuilding efforts. Further, it argues that the relationship between these two actors present both groups with the legitimacy to undertake peacebuilding activities at the community and provincial level. It argues that local civil society organizations rely on their relationship with community-based structures which they establish and support in order to develop locally grounded peacebuilding interventions and gain the legitimacy necessary to gain access to international funding and implement their programmes in targeted communities in South Kivu province.     

Intersex/variations of sex characteristics and DSD citizenship in the UK,Italy and Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Citizenship studies is highly relevant to understanding intersex, variations of sex characteristics (VSC), and Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), yet little scholarship exists to date about intersex citizenship. This article outlines and develops the foundations for a distinctive intersex citizenship studies, addressing health citizenship, children’s citizenship, legal rights, and breaches of human rights experienced by intersex people and those with DSD. The paper presents original qualitative data from research in the UK, Italy and Switzerland with intersex people and their advocates, medics, and policy stakeholders. It shows that asserting citizenship is crucial for intersex people and those with VSC or DSD. This extremely marginalised population require social, intimate, children’s and health citizenship. Intersex citizenship addresses both medical and human rights issues in an integrated way.     

Borders,citizenship and change: the case of the Sami people, 1751–2008

The Sami, an indigenous people in north-western Europe, today faces the challenge of having their territory, Sápmi, partitioned among four nation states; Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Whereas borders and citizenship are generally used to defend cultures, interests and territories, separating those who belong from those who do not, this perspective does not include how a non-dominant indigenous people such as the Sami is affected by the partitioning of their territory. Initially, when the first borders were established, the states showed respect and consideration for the Sami and their rights, but during the following centuries, more and more restrictions were being placed on the trans-border movement of the Sami people. In this process, the Sami also had to become citizens in one of the states, and even though the process of changing citizenship remained relatively uncomplicated up until the early twentieth century, the partitioning of the Sami into separate national arenas caused divisions within the people. This article focuses on how the establishment of state borders partitioning Sápmi and the enforced citizenship in the states affected the Sami, and how they acted in response to this development.     

When the exception becomes the rule: borders,sovereignty, and citizenship

Borders are a unique political space, in which both sovereignty and citizenship are performed by individuals and sovereigns. Using the work of Agamben and Foucault, this article examines how decisions made at the border alienate each and every traveler crossing the frontier, not simply the ‘sans papiers’ or refugees. The governmentality at play in the border examination relies on an embedded confessionary complex and the ‘neurotic citizen’, as well as structures of identity, documentation, and data management. The state border is a permanent state of exception that clearly demonstrates the importance of biopolitics to the smooth operation of sovereign power.     

论大学生恋爱中的不良倾向及其教育引导

大学生谈恋爱已经成为当今大学校园里非常普遍的一种现象,甚至已经发展成为了一种潮流。手拉着手、肩并着肩、你侬我侬的大学生情侣构成了大学校园里一道靓丽的风景线。但是,由于受多种不良因素的影响,大学生在谈恋爱过程中还明显存在着一些不良倾向,如不及时加以纠正和引导,势必会对大学生的身心健康成长产生重大的影响。     

Contractualization,depoliticization and the limits of solidarity: noncitizens in contemporary Australia

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze a particular form of noncitizenship – arising from legal long-term temporary migration – that is increasingly significant to the contemporary Australian context and to understand some of its consequences. It argues that traditional pathways of permanent settlement and full citizenship are being disrupted by new temporary migration schemes that create ‘middling’ noncitizen subjects who experience ‘patchwork’ rights and statuses across complex and diverse migration pathways. Through a close analysis of policy narratives and discourses, as well as of the existing literature on the social conditions and emerging solidarities of these noncitizens, the paper shows the various ways that noncitizenship is depoliticized and citizenship contractualized in Australia. These entwined processes of depoliticization and contractualization have intimate effects on the lives of noncitizens, and also limit and constrain the emerging solidarities that seek to challenge their exclusion. The analysis has a number of implications for the ongoing study of contemporary transformations in citizenship in other ‘immigrant democracies’ globally.     

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.     

Gay fathers,gay citizenship: on the power of reproductive futurism and assimilation

Edelman's new ethics of queer theory is focussed on the all-pervasive image of the child, which he argues provides the foundation for the hegemonic politics of ‘reproductive futurism’ (L. Edelman, 2004. No future: queer theory and the death drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press). His searing criticism raises important questions for sexual citizenship, and particularly for the gay parent as citizen. Edelman's argument that queers should abandon accommodation and instead embrace their position as the figure of negativity offers a challenge to all those gay men that seek to be fathers. In this article, I critically engage with Edelman's arguments and explore the implications of a queer rejection of reproductive futurism and parental privilege through an empirical investigation of young gay men's stories about the possibility of becoming fathers. I argue that whilst Edelman's uncompromising stance serves to open a space for gay men embracing the jouissance that is increasingly being abandoned through an assimilationist desire for citizenship, it also, more problematically, closes down possibilities for gay men and thus further reinforces present inequalities in citizenship. Is negativity the only option in the face of the onslaught of reproductive futurism or might there be a dialectical solution that is at once radically queer but also reflective of the variety of claims for sexual citizenship?     

Negotiating the Networks of Space,Time and Substance: A Geographical Perspective on the Sustainable Citizen

This paper provides a critical geographical analysis of the emerging ideals associated with sustainable citizenship. We argue that the principles behind sustainable citizenship force us to think through the full range of geographical factors which frame citizenship and yet which are routinely overlooked in both geographical and non-geographical work on the citizen. We take the sustainable citizen to be both an epistemological challenge to existing paradigms of citizenship and a contemporary national and international policy goal. As an epistemological category we claim that the very notion of a sustainable citizen destabilizes the spatial, temporal and material parameters upon which modern forms of citizenship are based. At the same time, however, we also consider the limitations associated with contemporary national and international attempts to create a more sustainable citizenry, arguing that such initiatives often belie the radical potential of thinking about citizenship in sustainable terms. We take as our empirical focus the recently implemented curriculum for global citizenship and sustainable development being enacted in Welsh schools. Drawing on interviews carried out with education officials, teachers and students, we explore what sustainable citizenship means and the opportunities and challenges it faces as a political project.     

Through the European looking glass: citizenship tests in the USA,Australia, and Canada

Discussing new or recently reformed citizenship tests in the USA, Australia, and Canada, this article asks whether they amount to a restrictive turn of new world citizenship, similar to recent developments in Europe. I argue that elements of a restrictive turn are noticeable in Australia and Canada, but only at the level of political rhetoric, not of law and policy, which remain liberal and inclusive. Much like in Europe, the restrictive turn is tantamount to Muslims and Islam moving to the center of the integration debate.     

Squaring the circle: domestic welfare,migrants rights,and human rights

Domestic welfare reform and the management of international migration in Britain have been described by David Cameron as ‘two sides of the same coin’. Heightened conditions and sanctions for the benefit-dependent domestic population, both in and out of work, are being harnessed as a means of promoting labour market change and reducing demand for low-skilled migrants – often EU workers, whose own access to benefit is being curtailed. Arguments about the post-national expansion of rights and associated cosmopolitan debate implicitly measure migrants rights against a normative model of citizenship as the yardstick of full social inclusion, but with little attention to how far citizenship itself falls short of this promise. Taking Britain as a case study, this paper considers how the concept of civic stratification can further advance analysis of the link between domestic welfare, migration and human rights in a context of intensifying controls for both migrants and citizens.     

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.