The ‘problem’ with youth: young people,citizenship and the community

Fears that we are experiencing a crisis in citizenship have been increasingly directed towards youth. Popular political and government rhetoric has frequently positioned young people as a threat to the healthy functioning of citizenship and democracy. Policies have been implemented to educate them and control their behaviour, particularly in their local communities, in an attempt to foster them as citizens deemed appropriate to join adult society. This article provides evidence to the contrary, of young people who wish to be part of their local communities and incorporated in the development of relationships of mutual trust and respect. In this context it is argued that the New Labour government's approach to renewing citizenship for the modern age is contributing to the alienation of young people from any sense of inclusive citizenship. It is put forward that if we are truly concerned with the engagement and empowerment of young people, what is needed is a broader definition of citizenship that enables them to participate as young citizens and respects their voices as an important part of a fair society. This, it is argued, would entail a departure from currently dominant conceptions of citizenship towards, instead, a cultural citizenship approach.     

Racial Socialization and Racial Identity: African American Parents’ Messages About Race as Precursors to Identity

This study uses two waves of data to examine the relationships among patterns of racial socialization experiences and racial identity in a sample of 358 African American adolescents (60% female and 40% male). Using latent class analyses, we identified three patterns of adolescent-reported racial socialization experiences: High Positive, Moderate Positive, and Low Frequency. Adolescent-reported racial socialization experiences at Wave 1 were associated with Wave 2 adolescent racial identity approximately one year later. Specifically, High Positive and Low Frequency racial socialization were associated with racial centrality, assimilationist ideology, and nationalist ideology. These findings suggest that various patterns of racial socialization practices play an important role in the developing significance and meaning that African American adolescents ascribe to race.

Ethnic Identity in Context: Variations in Ethnic Exploration and Belonging within Parent,Same-ethnic Peer,and Different-ethnic Peer Relationships

Within an ethnically diverse sample of young adults (n = 223, 26% Latin American, 14% Asian American, 32% Filipino American, 28% European American), average levels of ethnic identity was found to vary significantly across different relational contexts. Regardless of ethnicity, young adults reported highest levels of ethnic exploration and ethnic belonging with parents, followed by same-ethnic peers, then different-ethnic peers. Significantly greater variation between relational contexts generally was found for ethnic exploration compared to ethnic belonging. Greater variation in ethnic identity, particularly between same-ethnic and different-ethnic contexts was associated with lower self-esteem, positive affect, relational competence, and higher negative affect, though these liabilities were only found for European American youth. The discussion emphasizes the importance of examining ethnic identity as a dynamic construct that can vary as a function of relationships, and proposes directions for future research.

Racial Identity and Academic Achievement in the Neighborhood Context: A Multilevel Analysis

Increasingly, researchers have found relationships between a strong, positive sense of racial identity and academic achievement among African American youth. Less attention, however, has been given to the roles and functions of racial identity among youth experiencing different social and economic contexts. Using hierarchical linear modeling, the authors examined the relationship of racial identity to academic outcomes, taking into account neighborhood-level factors. The sample consisted of 564 African American eighth-graders (56% male). The authors found that neighborhood characteristics and racial identity related positively to academic outcomes, but that some relationships were different across neighborhood types. For instance, in neighborhoods low in economic opportunity, high pride was associated with a higher GPA, but in more advantaged neighborhoods, high pride was associated with a lower GPA. The authors discuss the need to take youth’s contexts into account in order to understand how racial identity is active in the lives of African American youth.

Race Equality after Enoch Powell

Enoch Powell's infamous speech casts a long shadow over race equality in the UK. Looking back to the 1968 Race Relations Bill and then forwards to the present social and political landscape this article explores how an uneven race equality story has been characteristic of the UK approach since Powell's intervention. If the intended objective of the initial and later race equality bills was to reduce ethnic and racial disparities to a marginal or ‘negligible’ level, then we are a great distance from success. If the objective was slightly different, but not unrelated, and sought to reshape public conventions on racism (and ethnic and racial diversity more broadly), then the answer is more complicated but also unfinished.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.     

Identity,rights and surveillance in an era of transforming citizenship

This review essay focuses on the problem of citizenship in three different areas, namely human rights, identity politics and surveillance. Heli Askola’s work focuses on the magnitude of demographic challenges that contemporary migrant-receiving states in the Global North face, and specifically focuses on the broader demographic picture of low birth rates, and increasing diversity and populations ageing; thus, focusing the problem of identity politics in the context of citizenship acquisition in Global North states. Richard Sobel’s book explores the empowerment of American citizenship, specifically through a unique reading of constitutional and political apparatus in the United States. Finally, Pramod Nayar’s work addresses state-based surveillance mechanisms like biometrics, biobanks and the internet within the context of citizenship and how new forms of subjectivity are forged within a culture of surveillance. These three works approach citizenship through a legal category of political membership, but also a process of political subjectivization.     

Mobilisational citizenship: sustainable collective action in underprivileged urban Chile

While academics have addressed the interaction between mobilisation and citizenship in a myriad of ways, none of them have used citizenship to explain the sustainability of collective action. Drawing on an ethnographic fieldwork in Santiago de Chile’s underprivileged neighbourhoods, this paper provides an analytical framework explaining how neighbourhood activists sustain mobilisation on the basis of citizenship construction despite Chile’s transitional and post-transitional stark political exclusion. This article calls this concept ‘mobilisational citizenship’. Building on the notion of rights-claiming, mobilisational citizenship explains how durable mobilisation results from the dynamic interaction between four factors: agentic memory, mobilising belonging, mobilising boundaries and decentralised protagonism. Through mobilisational citizenship, local residents politicise their neighbourhood, build autonomous local empowerment and self-define their political incorporation.     

Does the procedural act of electing leaders enhance cooperation in divided societies? Experimental evidence from Lebanon

Studies suggest that the procedural act of participating in an election in homogenous communities enhances social cooperation and compliance with policies proposed by the elected leader by making the leader more legitimate. In this study, we implement a lab-in-the-field experiment among Shia and Sunni Muslims in Lebanon to test whether participating in the procedural act of electing a leader increases cross-group cooperation also in ethnically heterogeneous communities. We find that participation in leader election fails to increase inter-group cooperation in a heterogeneous setting. In contrast, an appeal to a common ingroup identity successfully increases cooperation. When appeal to a supraordinate identity is combined with leader elections, cooperation increases only when out-group leaders are elected and among voters who value democratic procedure. Our findings suggest that in ethnically divided societies elections can lead to cooperation only if the dominant social norms are consistent with democracy and supraordinate group identity is salient.     

The effect of socioeconomic policy and competence messages on populist radical right support: Evidence from a pre-election survey experiment

Does highlighting socioeconomic policy considerations or mainstream parties’ government competence reduce support for populist radical right (PRR) parties? Such “defuse” messages may attract PRR voters without alienating mainstream parties’ core electorate and thus, have advantages over an accommodative strategy. This study tests four “defuse” messages in an original survey experiment on a sample of 1,786 likely PRR voters in the context of the 2017 German federal election. The findings show that potential PRR voters are hardly swayed by these messages. This result is in notable contrast to findings from prior experimental studies about the malleability of PRR support. Exploratory analyses suggest that some of these null findings may mask heterogeneities. Both respondents who were surveyed during the first days of fieldwork and those with less political knowledge responded to some treatments in the expected way. Overall, these findings point to a limited responsiveness of PRR voters to “defuse” messages.