Being Canadian: Citizenship in Canada

This article analyses interviews conducted in 1996–97 with 78civic leaders in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. In part, the interviews focused on what it means to respondents to be Canadian. Among the respondents were 36 immigrants and 23 persons not of European ancestry, including four aboriginal people. The article addresses the challenge of creating a sense of citizenship—a moral sense of belonging—among a population of increasingly diverse origin in anglophone Canada. The argument proposed is that despite the diverse ancestral and geographical origins of the inhabitants of the country, Canadianness exists. Canadians, both native‐born and immigrants, recognize themselves as Canadians. They do so because they recognize the opportunities and freedoms available to them in Canada, and the day‐to‐day respect they enjoy. To be Canadian and recognized as such by others is meaningful. Even very recent immigrants do not define themselves primarily as members of their ancestral cultural communities. Spinner's concept of pluralistic integration seems a better way to describe Canadian society than the popular concept of multiculturalism.     

After the Truth Commission: Gender and Citizenship in Timor-Leste

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) has completed its work, women’s citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women’s experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future.     

Gender,Citizenship, and Constitutionalism in Zimbabwe: The Fight Against Amendment 14

This article examines the nexus between gender, citizenship and constitutionalism. By using the case study of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of Zimbabwe, I seek to illustrate how the rights of women with respect to citizenship are manipulated by the state, with this discrimination often couched under African 'culture' or 'tradition'. The article also interrogates the limitations of utilizing the courts in the struggle for gender equality, because of the patriarchal values which are upheld and promoted, often erroneously. In describing the surprising victory by civil society groups and activists in challenging both the courts and the state nationally, this piece concludes with some thoughts on how a broader struggle for gender equality is necessary in the pursuit of social justice.     

Thinking Globally,Integrating Locally: Gender,Entrepreneurship and Urban Citizenship in Germany

Germany's refusal to pursue active integration policies for three decades has unleashed surprising do-it-yourself-integration processes among migrant communities, as demonstrated by dramatic changes in the Turkish ethnic economy since 1990. This study embeds these developments in an analytical framework linking economic enclaves and urban citizenship. Initially motivated by structural unemployment and social exclusion, guestworkers and their offspring are turning to self-employment, not only adding new jobs to an otherwise moribund national economy but also promoting urban revitalization in cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne. The study outlines generational differences within the Turkish-German community, ascertaining that third-generation ethnics are more likely to start businesses outside the food sector and more willing to embrace FRG citizenship. It describes the size and scope of ethnic enterprises across Germany, followed by a treatment of women entrepreneurs in Berlin. Ethnic associations indirectly foster “participatory” consciousness among males, but women tend to identify directly with the society that offers opportunities not available to them in the purported Turkish homeland. Instead of producing “parallel societies” (as German politicians often insist), ethnic businesses and local community involvement are crucial in bridging majority and minority cultures, on the one hand, and in granting Turkish entrepreneurs top-level access to state policy-makers—even without the formal rights of citizenship.     

Introduction: Gender, Citizenship and Participation: Opportunities and Obstacles in the Twenty-first Century Politics

THIS special half issue of Parliamentary Affairs brings togetherseveral pertinent themes that have been the source of debate—academicand broader—in recent years. We hear much about the ‘crisisof participation’ in which ‘traditional’ formsof political activity attract the participation of ever-decreasingnumbers, although the extent to which this is a ‘natural’development of social change or the result of political bankruptcyremains to be decided. While, for     

Citizenship and Mediated Society

This paper challenges the idea of the liberating potential of information and communication technologies in terms of their meaning related to citizenship. It shows that the mechanisms that are supposedly conducive to the democratization of society can function as the mechanisms of exclusion of citizens. Adopting the critical-cultural perspective applied to issues of consumerism and their relations to citizens in media environment, the paper addresses the mediated appearances and manifestations of citizenship. The line dividing “old” from “new” media that is commonly used to apply to new media their participatory democratic potential lacks a reflection that would more explicitly admit new media limitations. These, when seen more in depth, appear as comparable to those of mass media. If in the beginning of the 1990s the Internet was embraced as truly enhancing political action, today its consumer realities, together with the spread of racism and xenophobia, need to be critically studied. As studies have shown, the Internet increasingly encourages the individual to look for private solutions to the problems of public nature which contributes to the understanding of citizenship not as a public but predominantly as a private affair. If cyberspace is becoming a vital link for new social movements and different groups of political activists, when seen from a broader citizenship perspective, the Internet has to be discussed also with regards to its limited democratic potential.     

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.     

Counter-Hegemonic Citizenship: LGBT Communities and the Politics of Hate Crimes in Canada

Relying on a case study in which violence targeted at lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered (LGBT) individuals and strategies used to counter this violence is examined, this paper argues that public policies and laws that aim to protect groups cannot guarantee access to substantive citizenship. They can, however, be used as a resource by oppressed groups to force a shift in the boundaries of the citizenship regime. Considering that violence targeting LGBT people (hate crimes, discrimination, etcetera) is an indicator that they are denied access to substantive citizenship, this paper examines how the citizenship of LGBT people can be extended in ways that allow this group to enjoy substantive citizenship. Citizenship is a useful lens to assess power relations, understand situations of oppression and develop strategies to challenge this oppression. Relying on the concept of citizenship regime and informed by work on radical democracy, the author introduces the Gramscian notion of hegemony. In doing so, she proposes a new way of thinking about citizenship. Her model, counter-hegemonic citizenship, brings us to consider citizenship as a process, rather than a status or a set of rights, and to focus on meaningful struggles that can lead to the redrawing of the boundaries of the citizenship regime for all oppressed groups. This paper inscribes itself in a body of literature concerned with struggles for equality and the role of laws and public policies for achieving this end.     

Civil Society and Global Governance: The Possibilities for Global Citizenship

In this article we reassert the role of governance as well as of civil society in the analysis of citizenship. We argue that to analyse global civil society and global citizenship it is necessary to focus on global governance. Just as states may facilitate or obstruct the emergence and development of national civil society, so too global governance institutions may facilitate or obstruct an emerging global civil society. Our key contention is that civil society at the global level thrives through its interaction with strong facilitating institutions of global governance. We start with a discussion of civil society and citizenship within the nation-state, and from there develop a model of global civil society and citizenship. Through analysing the impacts of various modes of global governance, we identify strategically appropriate forms of political and social engagement that best advance the prospects for global citizenship.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

Paradise Paved? Reflections on the Fate of Social Citizenship in Canada

The aim of this paper is to assess the potential of the concept of social citizenship for articulating progressive policy development in Canada. I argue that the revisioning of social citizenship is hampered by a recent notion that it is part of the superseded welfare policy paradigm of the past. Many analysts characterize a shift in the objectives of Canadian social policy as a move away from a 'golden age' policy paradigm, which emphasized the social rights of citizenship, to a neo-liberal paradigm promoting market citizenship. I suggest that there is an overstatement in the current literature of the extent to which social citizenship rights were ever realized, or even pursued, in Canada. There are two tendencies toward over-generalization in the literature that obscure a more complex picture of social policy development in Canada. The first concerns the relationship between social policy and the social rights of citizenship. The blurring of these two concepts underlies some of the overstatement in the literature about the past implementation of social citizenship rights. The second tendency to over-generalization relates to the observation of a paradigm change in social policy orientation. While things may be shifting, there are grounds to believe that this is largely a within-paradigm intensification--from mean and lean, to meaner and leaner. Finally, I suggest that the conceptual foundations of the social rights of citizenship must be re-worked in a way that acknowledges contestation over the terrain and quality of the 'social' and that challenges the distinctness and priority of the 'market'. There is a continuing need to strengthen and promote the social rights of citizenship as a discursive and practical challenge to neo-liberal interpretations of the 'good' society as a 'market' society. This would involve contesting the claim that the market is the arbiter of the quality of life, and claiming the market itself as a social arena.     

The Politics of Multiscalar Citizenship: The Case of Lesbian and Gay Organizing in Canada

Citizenship is increasingly viewed as a multiscalar social practice, constituted and contested at local, urban, national and transnational scales. This paper attempts to bring this insight to bear on the study of queer social movement politics. A multiscalar perspective, we argue, enriches our understanding of contemporary LGBT citizenship struggles. Using qualitative case studies of lesbian and gay organizing at the pan-Canadian and urban levels in Canada, the paper demonstrates the relationships that exist between and among citizenship struggles and practices across scales. Queer political struggles at the urban level diverge widely from those at the pan-Canadian level. By using a multiscalar approach, we are able to demonstrate these critically important political differences. The paper contributes to an understanding of multiscalar citizenship by showing the different forms of politics that are produced at different scales of social movement organizing.     

知识分子:与阶级社会共始终的阶级

知识分子是人类社会阶级分化的第一个直接产物,其产生和阶级的产生是同一原因,其形成和阶级的形成也是同一过程。知识分子的基本状况受社会发展的水平和脑体分工的程度制约,它经历了一个从农业经济时代的远离物质生产领域到工业经济时代的进入物质生产领域再到知识经济时代的主导物质生产领域的过程。知识分子是知识经济社会的第一阶级,是与阶级社会共始终的阶级。     

Interweaving Aboriginal/Indigenous Rights with Urban Citizenship: A View from the Winnipeg Low-Cost Housing Sector,Canada

State-society relations around low-cost housing in Canada changed from a period of strong federal leadership centred on social rights to a period of state retrenchment. A coalition of housing stakeholders from the public, private, and voluntary sectors self-organized in Winnipeg to create new low-cost housing following the 1993 discontinuation of federal social housing programs. This move toward urban citizenship was not received in the same way by Aboriginal peoples pursuing a distinctive set of rights centred on self-determination alongside common social (housing) goals. While Aboriginal rights are given regard at the federal level, they were not embedded in localized citizenship processes. Expanding the theorization of urban citizenship, the empirical results in this article reveal that discourses of democratic racism and cultural neutrality permeate mainstream views, running counter to Aboriginal citizenship pursuits.     

Gender Stereotypes,Information Search,and Voting Behavior in Political Campaigns

It is still unclear exactly how gender influences vote choice. Using an information processing perspective, we argue that instead of directly influencing vote choice, candidate gender guides the amounts and types of information that voters search for during a campaign, and that effects of gender on vote choice ultimately come from differences in information search influenced by candidate gender. Using two unique experimental datasets, we test the effects of candidate gender on vote choice and information search. We find that subjects change their search based on a candidate’s gender, seeking out more competence-related information about female candidates than they do for male candidates, as well as more information related to “compassion issues.” We also find that evaluations of candidates’ traits and issue positions are important predictors of subjects’ vote choice.     

The Making of Mexican Illegality: Immigration Exclusions Based on Race,Class Status,and Gender

This article examines the history of US citizenship and deportation policies that have always been based on race, class status, and gender, as well as the effects of such policies on the making of Mexican illegality. Mexicans have been constructed as unassimilable and a threat to the US national polity. They are also viewed as working class likely to become a public charge. Mexican women have been imagined as extremely fertile and while their production has been desired, their reproduction has been feared. These social, political, and legal constructions resulted in the creation of Mexican illegality despite time of residence in the United States, ties to US citizens, or birthright citizenship. While scholars have documented immigration laws that have expatriated US citizen women (mainly of European racial backgrounds), policies that allowed for the deportation of “public charge” cases, and the racialization of Mexicans, who were once considered legally white for naturalization processes; the three identity-based exclusions have not been examined together to understand Mexican experiences in the United States. This article utilizes a racial, class, and gendered analysis to understand the making of Mexican illegality that began with the 1790 citizenship statue in which the United States Congress limited US citizenship rights to “free ‘white people’ and women’s citizenship was determined by their fathers or husbands.” The making of Mexican illegality continues with today’s immigration restrictions that perceive Mexicans as a threat to: national security, the white racial makeup of the country, and the stability of the economy.