Counter-terrorism and alien justice: the case of security certificates in Canada

This article examines the security certificate process that has been in effect in Canada since 1978 and the 2008 amendment (Bill C-3) of the Immigration and Refugees Protection Act. It highlights how democratic means can be used to subvert meaningful policy changes, and underscores the antinomy inherent in a nation-state's zeal to protect its citizens and appeals by a group of Arab Muslim men held under security certificates for suspected terrorist activities for their human rights to be recognised and respected by a state in which they are non-citizens. The problematic immanent in nation-states serving as guarantors of human rights and its concomitant misconstruing of human rights for citizenship rights are used to demonstrate that an ‘internal Other’ has been created in Canada. The security certificate, it is argued, in stipulating that detainees may request to be deported to countries where they regularly reside or hold nationality, makes them akin to Hannah Arendt's notion of the ‘rightless’ – people who have not only lost their home (i.e., polity) or ‘distinct place in the world’, but also their legal status. Consequently, even in an advanced democracy with grandiose claims to, and assurances of, individual liberty and fundamental freedoms, ‘rightless’ people face a great danger by the fact of being nothing beyond ‘human’.     

De-Europeanisation and Equal Citizenship in Turkey: The Case of Circassians

ABSTRACT

The Europeanisation process in Turkey that extended roughly from 1999 to 2006 boosted the political and cultural rights of diverse ethnic groups in Turkey, including Circassians, and strengthened their claims for equal citizenship. With the loss or weakening of the EU as an anchor for democratic reform in the post-2007 period, however, the de-Europeanisation process has resulted in the disappearance of the main legal and institutional basis for the democratic integration of ethnocultural minorities. Nevertheless, analysis of the activities of four large Circassian communities in Turkey shows that the same process has enhanced the cultural reification of these groups as their survival strategy.     

现代法治视野下行政处罚权的博弈研究

行政处罚权与公民权有着密切的关系,行政处罚权是以保障公民权为前提的,同时又受到公民权的制约,两者之间的冲突和对抗构成了一个博弈的过程,为了让博弈能够实现一个均衡的结果,我们务必从立法、执法、监督等方面来寻找协调行政处罚权与公民权之间的矛盾与冲突,以加快法治现代化的步伐。     

Migrants’ inhabiting through commoning and state enclosures. A postface

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I deploy the framework of commons as social systems which I have developed in my last book Omnia Sunt Communia to interpret the debate developed in this issue, enquire on the relationship between commons and citizenship, and ground the question of migrants’ inhabiting on the theory of commoning.     

‘Men are not born fit for citizenship,but must be made so’: Spinoza and citizenship

The modern conception of citizenship contains often unacknowledged key background assumptions – about the role of rights in citizenship, about the citizen modelled on a liberal autonomous and rational individual, and about the equality of citizens within a democratic state. Spinoza's political works give us a useful perspective on the historicity of these assumptions. Whereas the modern conception is abstract, universalist, and depoliticised, Spinoza's sense of the citizen's belonging is adamantly specific, particularist, and political, and offers a way forward for rethinking citizenship. The key concepts of freedom and republicanism are analysed, and a political reading is developed of Spinoza's view of citizenship in terms of a way of conducting politics.     

In space no one can see you waving your hands: making citizenship meaningful to Deaf worlds

This article suggests that there is an underlying social contract that defines relationships between deaf and hearing people and which ultimately influences state provisions as well as society's perception of Deaf people. It is outdated and does not have the consent of Deaf communities. It will be argued that any renegotiation of the social contract needs to take into consideration a number of ‘elements’ that would be the context for that negotiation. Deaf citizens are marginalised in society largely due to a citizenship that assumes an idealised individual as a speaking and hearing citizen, with a social policy constructed and made in the image of hearing culture, that is rooted in a philosophy of favouring by default the instruction of deaf children via oral means in overwhelming mainstream education. These state policies have resulted in an entrenched social exclusion of Deaf people. Citizenship is recognised as an inclusive and momentum concept and therefore this situation is not unchangeable. A renegotiation of the social contract may require a form of group rights which nevertheless recognises the transnational nature of Deaf communities. As part of that process it will be necessary for Deaf people to obtain control over how their communities are run and resources allocated. That would entail the withering away of hearing control in a social policy context within Deaf spheres of influence. The new social contract would aim not for a paternal citizenship, but an empowering and Deaf-led one.     

Talcott Parsons on full citizenship for African Americans: retrospective interpretation and evaluation

In this essay in the Thinking Citizenship Series, Lidz evaluates the contributions of Talcott Parsons for thinking about citizenship and race relations in twentieth century America.     

Autonomous peasant struggles and left arts of government

I argue that self-organisation cannot account for how grassroots struggles can pursue transnational political change. I develop an account of some ‘left arts of government’ through which resistance is facilitated and organised without reintroducing oppressive and hierarchical forms of rule. I do so by focusing on the practices of autonomous peasant mobilisations. Land occupation movements facilitate the ability of people to engage in ongoing resistance on their own behalf. They organise resistance through horizontal communication and through transnational networks involving representative structures. Finally, peasant mobilisations engage with states and international institutions to solidify gains made.