Acts of citizenship as a politics of resistance? Reflections on realizing concrete rights within the Israeli asylum regime

This paper investigates how Eritrean refugees in Israel and civil society organisations who engage with refugee issues contest the exclusionary politics of asylum in Israel. It presents various acts of claims-making initiated by Eritrean refugees themselves or in response to hostility by others, as well as acts inaugurated by Israeli civil society organisations on behalf of or with refugee populations. Drawing on the concept of activist acts of citizenship developed by Engin Isin, the paper subsequently analyses to what degree those acts have redefined aspects of social and political membership for Eritrean refugees in Israel. In a further step, it shows the limitations of such acts in terms of developing a solidaristic refugee-citizen agenda that profoundly challenges hegemonic public discourse and political debate. The paper concludes by arguing that activist acts of citizenship are best studied in relation to the transformative power they may have on the various individuals engaging in them, but not as a strategy for a wider politics of resistance, as ultimately nation state politics continue to determine the actual realisation of concrete rights.     

Enacting multi-layered citizenship: Turkey’s Armenians’ struggle for justice and equality

Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, Turkey’s Armenians have been subjected to a trade-off between the limited minority rights granted by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty and equal national citizenship. Traditionally a closed, depoliticized community, the citizenship practices of the Armenian minority have become increasingly differentiated in recent years. Building on a notion of citizenship as multi-layered and constituted through collective practice, this article investigates the implications of the political acts of Turkey’s Armenian minority on sub-national and national citizenship in Turkey. We show that Turkey’s Armenians are coupling rights demands, identification, normative references, and mobilization at the sub-national, national, and transnational levels in innovative ways, and are thereby negotiating different layers of citizenship in Turkey in a way that strengthens equal national citizenship.     

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.     

From privileged to thwarted stakeholders – Polish migrants’ perceptions of the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014 and the UK General Election in 2015

Scotland in 2014 and 2015 provides an ideal context for examining EU citizenship political rights as established in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 from the perspective of Polish migrants resident in Scotland. We argue that the contrast between Polish migrants’ full enfranchisement in the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014 to then being disenfranchised from the UK General Election in 2015 is a significant site for observing how EU laws interact with state-centric and also ‘post-national’ notions of citizenship. Our participants’ experiences of voting in the Referendum and subsequently not being able to vote in the General Election were articulated in the following terms: (a) the justification of their political rights in terms of their stake and contribution in the UK; (b) their frustrations with regards to anti-migration rhetoric and the limitations of European citizenship; and for some, (c) their plans of apply for British citizenship in the context of EU membership uncertainty.     

Stakeholder citizenship: the complexities of Polish migrants’ citizenship attachments in the context of the Scottish independence referendum

This article focuses on the experiences of Scotland’s largest foreign-born minority group, namely Poles, in the run-up to the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. We draw on 20 in-depth interviews to explore our participants’ intentions and justifications for voting (or not) in the referendum. We found that our participants tended to emphasise the jus domicili principle when justifying their eligibility to vote in the referendum. However, our participants extended the jus domicili principle in their justifications to also include the intention to stay in Scotland as a central aspect of their continuing stake in (and right to vote in the referendum to determine) Scotland’s future. Through exploring our participants’ justifications for voting in the referendum, we were able to examine and better understand how migrants constitute their citizenship through articulating their substantive attachments (social, economic and relational or familial) in their adoptive country and in their country of origin.     

Governance and transnational civil society: the problem of transnational rent-seeking

The expansion of transnational civil society challenges the regulatory reach of nation-states, both individually and collectively. One regulatory challenge is that transnational civil society organizations (TCSOs) can avail of opportunities to engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking in ways which benefit a small group of organizations or individuals but which impose significant social costs. This article suggests that certain roles played by TCSOs lend themselves to rent-seeking behaviour and it explores the hypothesis that TCSOs can engage in, or facilitate, transnational rent-seeking where they constitute transnational special interests and/or private transnational authorities. To this end, the article outlines a brief theoretical framework and applies it to case studies of two TCSOs, representing transnational trade associations and industry lobbies, and sports associations and regulators. While the conclusions here are tentative, the article argues for further research including refinement of the theoretical framework and empirical testing.     

Enslaved by one's body? Gender,citizenship and the ‘wrong body’ narrative

This paper uses the concepts of slavery, citizenship, the body and political subjectivity to interrogate how gendered bodies are produced, regulated and normalised. It explores the ‘wrong body’ claim within transsexual narratives to analyse how we can be enslaved by/to our body. The coercive force of embodied existence is demonstrated by examining how gender norms act on us through our bodies, thus identifying the body as a major conduit of power. It argues that the ‘wrong body’ claim must be understood as a discursive construction that is rendered possible by established gender norms and practices, which place heavy restrictions on the available actions of individuals. These norms and practices are linked to the normalising processes of becoming an acceptable citizen. It is argued that the enslaving effects of embodiment can be mitigated through constructing alternative narratives of gender based upon performativity and fluidity. Such alternative gender narratives are used to contest and disrupt the meaning of the acceptable citizen, thus opening up new claims for citizenship and new forms of embodied subjectivity. These narratives are then used to critique the medical community's understanding and treatment of transsexuality, which is itself a site of coercion and normalisation.     

Intimate encounters: the ambiguities of belonging in the transnational migration of Indonesian domestic workers to Malaysia

In this article I explore ‘belonging’ both in terms of personal relatedness and national belonging in the context of Indonesian domestic worker migration to Malaysia. Riddled with metaphors of kinship both on the level of diplomatic ties between the two ‘kin states’ of Indonesia and Malaysia as well as on the level of intimate relations between employers and employees, the migration of Indonesian domestic workers to Malaysia allows for a critical analysis of the ways in which boundaries are drawn and redrawn on the political as well as on the intimate level of daily coexistence. The article argues that kinship provides a fruitful avenue from which to consider belonging in context of the specific relations between Indonesia and Malaysia and explores how belonging to the family and the nation is negotiated by Indonesian domestic workers, Malaysian employers and so-called ‘maid agents’.     

Making claims for migrant workers: human rights and citizenship

Migrant workers claims for greater protection in a globalized world are typically expressed either in the idiom of international human rights or citizenship. Instead of contrasting these two normative frames, the paper explores the extent to which human rights and citizenship discourses intersect when it comes to claims by migrant workers. An analysis of the international human and labour rights instruments that are specifically designed for migrant workers reveals how neither discourse questions the assumption of territorial state sovereignty. Drawing upon sociological and political approaches to human rights claims, I evaluate the Arendtian-inspired critique of international human rights, which is that they ignore the very basis ‘right to have rights’. In doing so, I discuss the different dimensions of citizenship and conclude that international rights can be used by migrant workers to assert right claims that reinforce a conception of citizenship that, although different from national citizenship, has the potential to address their distinctive social location.