Citizenship and inclusion: rethinking the analytical category of noncitizenship

The paper problematises the category of noncitizenship. It traces its trajectory in accounts of inclusive citizenship and argues that it is difficult to theorise it as a distinct theoretical category outside of citizenship. To support this argument, the paper distinguishes between a pluralist, political and democratic variant of accounts of inclusive citizenship and it shows how they all end up reducing noncitizenship to a journey to citizenship. To overcome this limit, the paper develops the idea of subversive politicisation and suggests that injustices and inequalities can be challenged without falling back on the vocabulary of citizenship.     

These fine lines: locating noncitizenship in political protest in Europe

Abstract

Since 2012, refugee protest camps and occupations have been established throughout Europe that contest the exclusion of refugees and asylum seekers, but that also make concrete demands for better living conditions and basic rights. It is a movement that is led by migrants as noncitizens, and so reveals new ways of thinking of the political agency and status of noncitizenship not as simply reactive to an absence of citizenship, but as a powerful and transgressive subjectivity in its own right. This paper argues that we should resist collapsing analysis back into the frameworks of citizenship, and instead be attentive to the politics of presence and solidarity manifest in these protest camps as a way of understanding, and engaging, noncitizen activism.     

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.     

The business of noncitizenship

Abstract

Private actors play an increasing role in mediating the relationship between States and noncitizens and even in creating or perpetuating exclusions associated with noncitizenship. This paper offers a way to analyse the forms of engagement of the for-profit private sector in migration control and asks what it means for how noncitizenship is constructed. It presents the private sector as acting like a buffer, altering whether and how individuals may engage with a State constructing what noncitizenship means within a State’s territory, and removing so-constructed individuals from a relationship with that State. It shows how this may occur directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. The paper addresses two main concerns: the impact on the State-noncitizen relationship and whether there are some areas of the relationship between the State and the noncitizen that should not be so-delegated. It argues that privatised migration control raises problems for standard justifications of migration control and noncitizenship construction.     

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’.     

Deliberative citizenship: a critical reappraisal

ABSTRACT

The study of citizenship as a political or moral ideal involves identifying core commitments and capabilities, the cultivation and exercise of which is often presented as a condition of being a ‘good’ citizen. Deliberative democracy was, at least until recently, associated with a conception of citizenship that endorses those qualities that equip us for a certain kind of respectful and reflective dialogue. This article reappraises this conception in light of the so-called ‘systemic turn’ within deliberative theory. It shows how systems thinking has displaced the traditional conception of deliberative citizenship, but that theorists have so far not elaborated a satisfactory replacement. A pluralist model is thus proposed, which casts light on the diverse qualities that a range of actors in a deliberative system might require. The resulting argument is not merely of interest to deliberative theorists, but to all who are concerned with the ethics of citizenship. The main reason is that it displaces the entrenched notion of a ‘good citizen’, in favour of the more heterogenous ideal of a ‘good citizenry’.     

For ‘common struggles of migrants and locals’. Migrant activism and squatting in Athens

ABSTRACT

This article analysis the socio-political form of the migrant squats, and the socio-spatial interactions they foster and generate. Drawing on empirical research, it focuses on the Athenian context where, since September 2015, political groups belonging to the anti-authoritarian and Left-libertarian movement, occupied some empty buildings to host migrants in transit through the country. From a political perspective, the squats are interpreted here as strategies of struggle to gain access to the space of the city and they also constitute instances of migrant activism and resistance to the European border regime. Moreover, migrant occupations represent practices and sites for contesting citizenship, intended as a category of political status; as such, they exceed the limits of this category and move beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, originating practices of citizenship ‘from below’, while at the same time they produce subjectivities that choose to ‘opt out’ of citizenship as a legal status. This article is situated within the contextualisation of space and autonomy. Migrant squats are looked at from the angle of the ‘gaze of autonomy’, since they are aimed both at contesting citizenship as an exclusionary feature, and at revindicating the activists’ (both migrants and non) presence in the space of city.     

On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy

Abstract

The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young people and what the policy does in their favour. A content analysis of a corpus of European and Italian legislation, policy and planning documents has been undertaken. We also conducted six in-depth interviews with politicians and representatives of Italian nongovernmental organizations in order to investigate (a) policy priorities and institutional points of view, (b) consistency between these priorities and European programmes, and (c) European Union support for the policy actions and projects promoted in Italy about youth. The results showed a general difficulty for young people to ‘engage’ and be engaged in civic and political activities. There is also a gap between the political level and an effective investment which will recognize young people as a real resource.     

Active Citizenship in the UK: Assessing Institutional Political Strategies and Mechanisms of Civic Engagement

Abstract

Shaping active citizenship, motivating civic engagement, and increasing political participation of minority groups have become some of the key political priorities in the UK since at least the end of the 1980s. Academic research shows that this shift goes hand-in-hand with a review of the integration policies in the country. The ‘politics of integration’ correspond in fact to a policy response to various social problems (such as discrimination, racism, intolerance) that emerged in various areas, and represent a new political discourse regarding active citizenship. This reflects an overall strategy meant to reframe the basis for civic and political engagement and participation in Britain. Our article is thus meant to highlight the dynamics underlying the development of the concept of active citizenship in the UK by looking at the factors that intervene in its shaping and enhancement. We identify political priorities and key mechanisms of participation that enable engagement in the public sphere. This article first considers the development of the specific ‘British discourse’ regarding active citizenship by taking into consideration the political priorities that emerged as part of the New Right discourse in the 1980s and then New Labour after 1997. We then refer to a set of data collected during our field work conducted in the UK between 2010 and 2011 with civil society activists and policy-makers in order to underline the meaning, practices, and feasibility of active citizenship.     

Did the Egalitarian Reforms of the Swedish Educational System Equalise Levels of Democratic Citizenship?

In the mid‐1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a ‘school for everyone’ intended to function like a ‘social equaliser’. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an extended curriculum of social science courses. This article examines whether the well documented gap in levels of democratic citizenship indicators between students in theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes persisted after this massive reform. Given the vast amount of empirical research that has shown that education promotes democratic citizenship, the reform could be expected to result in a decreased civic gap. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom in research on the impact of education, little evidence is found linking the initiation of longer educational programmes with more social science courses to an increase in the levels of the examined dimensions of democratic citizenship. The egalitarian reform of the Swedish gymnasium, which provided more civic education, did not produce hypothesised positive effects on any of the dimensions under study (i.e., political participation, political knowledge and political attentiveness). Rather, results support the pre‐adult socialisation models since the gap between citizens from theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes remained after the unification of the educational system.     

Assembling noncitizenship through the work of conditionality

Abstract

We develop a framework for understanding noncitizenship that combines attention to systemic processes with interest in contingency and indeterminacy in the production and substantive practices associated with noncitizen legal status categories and trajectories. We argue that noncitizenship is a dynamic, multi-scalar assemblage that brings together disparate elements in patterned and changing ways. Individuals and institutions generate the formal and substantive systems that confer or deny noncitizens the formal and substantive right to be present in a country and/or to access entitlements. Noncitizens exercise agency in choosing to make claims (or choosing to not make claims) to substantive rights, and the individuals and institutions with which they interact may facilitate or hinder such claims-making. In this process, social actors are enacting conditionality; they are working to meet the conditions required to maintain presence and access. Discretion, migrant agency, unequal social interactions, and social learning unfold over time and can generate a range of experiences of noncitizenship and legal status trajectories. These do not necessarily conform to expected pathways and timelines, and may combine access to various resources and public goods in variable and contingent ways. We illustrate the framework with data from research conducted in Toronto.     

Lived citizenship as the locus of political agency in participatory policy

Participatory policies seeking to foster active citizenship continue to be dominated by a territorial imagination. Yet, the world where people identify and perform as citizens is spatially multifarious. This article engages with the tension between territorially grounded perceptions and relational modes of practicing political agency. Studying empirically the Finnish child and youth policies, we address jointly the participatory obligations that municipalities strive to fulfill, and the spatial attachments that children and young people establish in their lived worlds. To this end, we introduce the concept of lived citizenship as an interface where the territorially-bound public administration and the plurality of spatial attachments characteristic to transnational living may meet. We conclude by proposing a re-grounding of lived citizenship in both topological and topographical terms as an improvement in theoretical understanding of mundane political agency and as a step towards more proficient participatory policies.     

Claiming rights in exile: women’s insurgent citizenship practices in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women’s movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women’s activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women’s activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.     

Bordering through domicide: spatializing citizenship in Calais

ABSTRACT

This paper examines domicidal practices against illegalized border crossers in Calais, France as a technology of citizenship and migration governance. It addresses recent calls to include actions and interventions which restrict citizenship in the context of illegalized migration within critical citizenship studies literature. Studying the state violence upholding and spatializing normative citizenship allows for a deeper understanding of citizenship’s implication in the European border regime, and raises questions on the concept’s continued application to theorizations of migrants’ political movements and spatial manifestations. The paper proposes anti-citizen politics as an alternative before arguing that the presence of this politics within the city’s squats and jungles, more than the physical occupations as such, is what the French state seeks to eradicate through acts of domicide. Working from empirical examples, the article describes a ‘carrot-and-stick’ domicide currently at work in Calais where the eviction and destruction of autonomous forms of migrant inhabitance is combined with a simultaneous offer of state managed accommodation. These tactics operate together to drive migrants out of the city of Calais, away from the UK border, and ultimately into a determination of their detain/deport-ability via citizenship’s scrutiny.     

Mapping silent citizenship: how democratic theory hears citizens' silence and why it matters

Democratic theory hears silent citizenship as disengagement or disempowerment. Normatively, silent citizenship evokes the specter of civic passivity – of democratic citizens variably characterized by apathy, disaffection, selfishness, or a lack of political knowledge. Empirically, silent citizenship is linked to deficits of democracy – including voter turnout rates, the quality of political representation, and overall government responsiveness. One problem with these conclusions, however, is that we lack any systematic conceptualization of the range of different attitudes democratic citizens might hold in silence. This article seeks to fill in this conceptual gap by mapping the range of possible motivations for citizens to remain silent in developed liberal democratic systems. The key to doing so, I argue, is to distinguish between two measures of democratic citizenship: empowerment and communication. Separating these two measures reveals an entire spectrum of motivations for silence, which I organize into five distinct degrees of silent citizenship.     

Rooted displacement: the paradox of belonging among stateless people

Abstract

Stateless people are noncitizens everywhere. Yet, unlike many noncitizens, they are not border crossers. Despite the majority’s physical rootedness in the countries of their birth, the stateless are nonetheless forcibly displaced. Their peculiar form of noncitizenship displaces them in situ as they lack the right to choose to belong to the specific communities within which they were born and raised. Using The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic as case studies, this article illustrates how the stateless are either forcibly cast into liminality or made to take on the nationality of a country with which they do not identify when the State can no longer tolerate their noncitizen status.     

Contesting the ‘Active’ in active citizenship: youth activism in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

In post-apartheid South Africa, efforts to encourage practices of citizenship and new citizens who will act in ways that support communities and the nation are promoted by government policies and networks of international organizations, civil society groups, and NGOs. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogy of citizenship that is common in these efforts and the role of ‘active citizenship’ within it. Relying on interviews with leaders of NGOs and activist groups and on participatory research with six organizations, we examine the ways in which different meanings and aspects of active citizenship are mobilized. Active citizenship is often dismissed depoliticizing citizenship and dampening dissent. The activists we interviewed and with whom we worked, however, challenge that critique. A central issue in our analysis are competing views as to whether active citizenship should be evaluated in terms of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘disruption.’ While some agents might incline toward effective and incremental change, many youth activists understand active citizenship as a tool that enables radical, disruptive acts capable of decolonizing South African society. Their use of active citizenship points to the need to avoid conflating citizenship with particular political goals and to not assume that active citizenship is necessarily and unequivocally enrolled in post-political consensus.     

Europe as a Beacon of Democracy? Citizenship Policies Relating to Youth and Migrants in Portugal

Abstract

This article aims to compare discourses about national and European policies on active citizenship and democratic participation, with a particular focus on youth and migrants. For this purpose we analysed official documents of public institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to assess how the process of Europeanization has influenced national policies with regard to increasing political participation and citizens' civic awareness. Additionally, we conducted interviews with policy makers and NGO leaders in order to integrate and compare different levels of discourse and thus identify potential dissonances. Analysis of the documents shows that there is a strong concern to match national policy priorities with those established by international organizations. Notwithstanding positive perceptions, NGO leaders and policy makers criticize the ways policies have been implemented, stressing the need to adopt a strategy that bridges the gap between the prescribed and the real, as well as the importance of overcoming the hegemony of economic factors in policy decisions. In this regard, NGO leaders criticize the cynicism of political leaders and policies motivated by demographic and economic concerns. In relation to European identity and integration, NGO leaders argue that Europe must be collectively constructed; yet, policy makers stress that the failure of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 resulted from a deficit in the negotiation process. In sum, this article suggests that it is necessary to promote greater involvement of civil society in the design and implementation of policies which, in turn, may contribute to the strengthening of shared democratic principles.     

Beyond "Ethnic Democracy": State Structure,Multicultural Conflict and Differentiated Citizenship in Israel

Critical theoretical models usually aim to explain complex sociopolitical realities and open some space for constructive change. The "ethnic democracy model," developed by the Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha, comes to justify the existing state structure in Israel in which democracy is selective and differential vis-à-vis the various social groups in Israeli society. A systematic critique of this model demonstrates the attempts made by Israeli political sociologists to turn the ethnic nature of Israeli democracy into a stagnant ideal-type in a time where regime dynamism and democratization is considered an ideal in world politics. In order to pinpoint the deficiencies in the ethnic democracy model, multiculturalism is utilized as a normative theory that better explains the sociopolitical reality in Israel. This paper concludes by suggesting searching for state recognition of the political benefits of differentiated citizenship and group rights to reduce the rising ethno-cultural conflict in Israeli society.     

Twenty-first century cyborgs: cosmetic surgery and aesthetic nationalism in Colombia

Abstract

In this article, I explore the institutional and symbolic construction of aesthetic nationalism in Colombia around a fetishization of women’s surgically exaggerated breasts and buttocks. While political scientists have focused almost exclusively on the internet and social media, other technological advancements have altered the relationships between state and society, public and private, and bodies and national inclusion. Combined with the transnational flow of ideas, goods, and people and a political economy that embraces cosmetic surgeries as a development model, this intersectional analysis suggests that aesthetic nationalism in Colombia has recentered the female body in the practice of nationalism, communicating political information, belonging, and power. Based on archival research, direct observation, and elite interviews, I argue that cosmetic interventions play a key role in conferring citizenship rights and defining the borders of the political community. This study contributes to our understanding of how intersectionality can help explain the ways in which technology shapes national body politics, disrupts conventional modes of political communication and representation, and positions the body at the center of contemporary citizenship practices.