Sexual citizenship in Belfast,Northern Ireland

In this article we examine the contours and construction of sexual citizenship in Belfast, Northern Ireland through in‐depth interviews with 30 members of the GLBT community and a discursive analysis of discourses of religion and nationalism. In the first half of the article we outline how sexual citizenship was constructed in the Irish context from the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, arguing that a moral conservatism developed as a result of religious reform and the interplay between Catholic and Protestant churches, and the redefining of masculinity and femininity with the rise of nationalism. In the second half of the article, we detail how the Peace Process has offered new opportunities to challenge and destabilise hegemonic discourses of sexual citizenship by transforming legislation and policing, and encouraging inward investment and gentrification.     

Active citizenship and the governmentality of local lesbian and gay politics

This paper explores the relationship between new forms of speakability and continuing unthinkability in the context of British local government lesbian and gay work, particularly post-1997. The paper argues new municipal speech acts ushered in progressive modes of sexual citizenship; at the same time, local government's refusal to think hard, deeply or critically, limited the modes of active citizenship made possible. The paper addresses the easing out of active citizenship through an analysis of local government's self-care and its intensification of firewalls – firewalls which restricted the possibility of certain non-state forces guiding from ‘a distance’.     

Britishness Reconsidered: Interplay Between Immigration and Nationality Legislation and Policymaking in Twenty-first Century Britain

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to clarify the dynamic interplay between immigration and nationality legislation and policymaking in post-imperial and pre-Brexit Britain. In 1981 and 2002, the years on which this paper focuses, three pieces of legislation were enacted marking watershed moments for British policy regarding immigration and nationality. The British Nationality Act of 1981 established ‘British citizenship’ in the statute book. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002 claimed to introduce new meaning and value to the acquisition of British citizenship by introducing a citizenship test and pledge. Furthermore, the British Overseas Territories Act of 2002 expanded the geographic scope of British citizenship by, in theory, providing citizenship to all those eligible in the existing dependent territories. Debates on the meaning of Britishness and the political projects linking immigration and nationality legislation to it, continue today in government, academia, and the media, all of whom are competing to have a tangible impact on policy. This paper addresses two questions. First, how can we account for the protracted nature of the debate on Britishness, and government efforts to enact immigration and nationality legislation based upon it? Second, if the meaning of Britishness has evolved over time, how has it been shaped by the course of these ongoing political debates?     

The Waitangi tribunal in New Zealand

The Waitangi Tribunal has been initiating major changes in New Zealand in the relationships of Maori and Pakeha. It has helped to revitalise the Treaty of Waitangi to redress Maori grievances over land, fisheries and many other matters. The paper outlines the jurisdiction, composition and procedures of the Tribunal and discusses the Treaty briefly. The Treaty and Maori rights have been given little recognition in legislation until recently and consequently little recognition by the Courts. A major decision of the Appeal Court in 1987 in relation to land held by State‐owned enterprises is discussed, leading to a consideration of the partnership principle fundamental to the Treaty. Because the Tribunal is not exclusively concerned with judicial questions but has a political role as well, its relations with government and administration have to be considered in some detail. Notwithstanding criticism of it and the belief of some that it should have more power, the Tribunal is a major instrument of reform in New Zealand.     

‘Extreme pornography’ and the contested spaces of virtual citizenship

This paper considers issues of sexual citizenship in light of new UK legislation that prosecutes the viewers of ‘extreme pornography’. Justified as an attempt to uphold public decency, government intervention seeks to prevent people seeing ‘extreme’ images not by limiting access to certain websites, but instead by intervening in the private consumption of these images. In this paper I draw on the discourses of those who have supported such intervention, and suggest that these arguments make a claim to space that defends the rights of some citizens over others. I examine the entwining of rights of expression, rights to identity and rights to safety. In conclusion, I argue that sexual citizenship is not just about the right to occupy actual physical places but also the right to inhabit the virtual—cyberspace. I hence argue that the internet plays a key role in transforming the sexual geographies of public and private.     

The Politics of Citizenship in 1940s Britain: The British Nationality Act

The article examines the enactment of the British NationalityAct, 1948. The legislation created a legal status—Citizenshipof the UK and Colonies—that included Britons and ‘colonial’British subjects under a single definition of British citizenship,and entrenched their right to enter the UK. Between 1948 and1962, some 500, 000 non-white British subjects entered underthe legislation, despite documented evidence of elite suspicionof non-white Commonwealth migration. The article argues thatthis apparent contradiction can only be understood by examiningthe legislation in the context of past migration patterns andBritain's international position in 1948. The legislation wasonly marginally related to migration; it was rather an attemptto maintain a uniform definition of subjecthood in the faceof Canada's unilateral introduction of its own citizenship,and it was an affirmation of Britain's place as head of a Commonwealthstructure founded on the relationship between the UK and theOld Dominions. ^* For comments on earlier drafts, I owe my thanks to John Dorwin,Katie Goebs, Iain McLean, and Desmond King.     

The implications of information and communication technologies for sexualities and sexualised violences: Contradictions of sexual citizenships

A key aspect of globalisation, glocalisation and transnationalisation is the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Such technologies have major implications for sexualities and sexualised violences, and raise profound implications, contradictions and challenges for sexual citizenship. These implications include the affirmation of sexual citizenship, with the creation of new forms of sexual communities; and the denial of sexual citizenship, with the production of new opportunities for pornography, prostitution, sexual exploitation and sexual violences. The article goes on to focus particularly on the contradictory implications of ICTs for sexual citizenship. These include the simultaneous development of more democratic and diverse sexual communities, and sexual work and sexually violent work; movements beyond the exploiter/exploited dichotomy; complex relations of non-exploitative and sexual exploitation, commercialisation of sex, and enforcement of dominant sexual practices; blurring of the social, sexual–social, sexual and sexually violent, and of the sexually ‘real’ and sexually ‘representational’; closer association of sex with the ‘visual’ and the ‘representational’; increasing domination of the virtual as the mode(l) for non-virtual, proximate sociality, and possible impacts of the virtual on increased non-virtual, proximate sociality, even greater possibilities for ‘pure relationships’; shifts in sexual space and sexual place; development of new forms of transnational sexual citizenship, within shifting transpatriarchies. Contradictions between the scale of global material sex economies and the representation and reproduction of the sexual through ICTs appear to be increasing.     

Claiming indigenous rights through participatory mapping and the making of citizenship

This paper considers how participatory mapping, through the notion of indigeneity, is involved in the making of participants' political agency and the possible implications for local struggles over customary land and resources. Empirically, the paper draws on a field study of participatory mapping as a cartographic-legal strategy for the recognition of the customary rights to land and resources of the Dayak, an indigenous ethnic group in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. In this paper, we use citizenship as a basis for our analysis. On this basis, we discuss how the notion of indigeneity has assembled actors across different scales and how this has enabled indigeneity to develop as a site for claiming customary rights to land and resources through participatory mapping. One of our main arguments is the need to understand indigenous citizenship as a process that develops over time and through networks of actors that transcend the borders of the state and expand the formerly exclusive relationship between the state and its citizens in the making of citizenship. We challenge Isin's clear distinction between active and activist approaches to making claims of citizenship, suggesting instead that these approaches are mutually constitutive.     

Critiquing the heteronormativity of the banal citizen in New Zealand's mediated civil union debate

This article extends Billig's (1995) landmark thesis on banal nationalism by considering how processes of national deixis circumscribe the boundaries of citizenship and forms of belonging within nation-states. Drawing on critical analyses of sexual citizenship, the article provides a discursive analysis of the debate over civil union in the New Zealand mainstream press during 2004–2005. It argues that this mediated debate represented an historical moment where the routine deictic flagging of the nation, and the correlated flagging of the ‘banal citizen’, fundamentally broke down, thereby allowing this unmarked and ‘ordinary’ process to be systematically examined. Four major discourses are identified in press coverage: ‘Homosexual’ subjects as abnormal and disordered, tolerance, equality and human rights, the sanctity of marriage and the preservation of the family (and the social order). Although the passing of the Civil Union Act does mark a (faltering) step forward in sexual equality, we argue that the presence of these discourses suggests that forms of both ontological and cultural heterosexism persist in New Zealand society. Despite the Act conferring new legal rights, ultimately we conclude that the four discourses act to restrict the extent to which ‘homosexual’ subjects are considered ‘valid’ and ‘legitimate’ citizens. In continuing to structure the public politics of sexual citizenship in New Zealand, these discourses have influenced recent debates over legislative moves towards ‘marriage equality’ in ways that raise concerns over the continuation of heterosexist norms, as well as exclusionary forms of homo-nationalism. More generally, this research demonstrates the effectiveness of Billig's work as a valuable and productive analytic lens to explicate concerns over the exclusionary nature of citizenship itself.     

New spaces of citizenship? Rethinking gendered participation and empowerment in South Africa

This paper draws on empirical research in South Africa to explore questions about the exclusionary nature of citizenship, the problems and possibilities of participatory citizenship and its potential reconceptualisation through the lens of gender. The paper examines some of the major debates and policies in South Africa around issues of citizenship, participation and gender and explores why the discursive accommodation of gender equity by the South African government is not fully realised in its attempts to construct substantive and participatory citizenship. It explores some of the emergent spaces of radical citizenship that marginalized groups and black women, in particular, are shaping in response. Findings suggest that whilst there are possibilities for creating alternative, more radical citizenship spaces, these can also be problematic and exclusionary. The paper draws on recent feminist writing to examine the possibilities for rethinking citizenship as an ethical, non-instrumental social status, distinct from both political participation and economic independence. This reframing of citizenship moves beyond notions of ‘impasse’ or ‘hollowness’, challenges the public/private distinction that still frames many debates about citizenship and considers the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity. The paper argues that citizenship is shaped by differing social, political and cultural contexts and this brings into sharp focus the problematic assumption of the universal applicability of western concepts and theories.     

The Unyielding Boundaries of Citizenship: The Emancipation of 'Non-Citizens' in Romania, 1866–1918

This article attempts to contribute historical data to studies of the emergence and development of the institution of citizenship in Romania. Designed as an overview of Romanian citizenship legislation between 1866 and 1918, the article focuses on the contradiction between claims for the universality of bourgeois-democratic liberal ideology and the hierarchic and illiberal citizenship practice, which disenfranchised a considerable number of men, denied women substantive civic and political rights and excluded from state citizenship significant ethnic and religious minorities. Special attention is devoted to the legal status of these categories of 'non-citizens,' to their strategies of emancipation and their relationship with the Romanian national ideology.     

Performative citizenship and the politics of scale: Local,national and global citizenships in Zimbabwe

This paper explores the interaction between different scales of governance and performative citizenship, understood as acts by citizens that claim new political rights and reshape the political arena. Performance allows citizens to creatively transform the meanings and functions of citizenship during struggles over rights. The paper focuses on a series of examples in Zimbabwe, which highlight the entanglement of different scales of citizenship and the ways that the acts of citizenship both challenge and sustain these relationships. This is examined through a framework that combines theories of performative citizenship with concepts from human geography that examine scales of governance. The argument draws out the implications of these dynamics in relation to conflicts over customary citizenship in rural Zimbabwe, the issue of dual citizenship among white Zimbabweans and the exercise of citizenship rights by non-Zimbabweans. It highlights both the ways in which citizens have harnessed the creative potential of acts of citizenship which address multiple scales, and the constraints that scalar hierarchies put on citizen action. The examples demonstrate that new forms of political rights can be produced across scales, but that opportunities for creative acts of citizenship are unevenly distributed due to these scalar hierarchies, which are produced by postcolonial legacies.     

Subjects or Citizens? India,Pakistan and the 1948 British Nationality Act

Independence in the case of British India occurred at relatively short notice in August 1947, but tying up the loose ends of empire stretched over years. Under these circumstances, the realignment of subjecthood and citizenship necessitated by decolonisation was protracted, and raised complex questions about identity in both the new states of India and Pakistan and the former imperial power itself. This article thus takes as its focus the drawn-out process of disengagement that followed formal independence in relation to one case study: the various ways in which Britain sought to square the working of its 1948 Nationality Act with Indian and Pakistani citizenship legislation that took shape in the 1950s. India and Pakistan faced the common challenge of establishing who now belonged within their new borders. Britain likewise was forced to recalibrate its ideas about nationality and think afresh about the rights of its subjects in view of the new sets of relationships that now linked colonies, old dominions and the ‘mother country’ within the Commonwealth. In practice, applying the 1948 Act's provisions in relation to India and Pakistan became infused with anxieties about ‘race’, which surfaced repeatedly as British officials in London, Delhi, Karachi and consulates around the world sought to manage its operation to suit British interests.     

‘Las Vegas is not where we are’: Queer readings of the Civil Partnership Act

This article interrogates the United Kingdom's new Civil Partnership Act, which is intended to create a new legal status of ‘civil partner’. The Act confers benefits and imposes legal responsibilities on those same-sex couples who register their relationships. Analysing the Governmental material produced in support of the legislation, as well as Parliamentary debates, the article provides a critical analysis of the ideological underpinnings of civil partnership. A series of dichotomies—marriage/not marriage; sex/no sex; status/contract; conjugality/care; love/money; responsibilities/rights—informs the Government's construction of the category of ‘same-sex partner’. Those dichotomies lend themselves to a deconstructive analysis, applying the insights of queer theory. The result is a skepticism regarding the Act's replication of a marriage model for same-sex couples. Instead, the article concludes by advocating the search for more pluralistic and flexible legal models that better represent the diversity of relationship forms found today.     

Globalisation and regulation of citizenship—Filipino migrant workers in Japan

This paper examines the state’s contradictory roles in globalising its workforce and transforming its regulatory capacities, and the implications these changes have for the human and citizenship rights of an increasing number of migrant workers. We investigate foreign workers’ protection and rights at both ends of the migration chain by using the specific examples of the Philippines and Japan. The discussion identifies areas for greater activism and mechanisms for the promotion of the rights of migrants from both ‘above’ and ‘below’. First, the highly aggressive role of the state in globalising labour markets is theoretically discussed. The paper then examines the role of the Philippine state in labour export and the implications of its embrace of neo-liberalism for its capacity to strongly pursue migrant worker welfare. The contradictory positions of the state in promoting globalisation, on the one hand, and discourses of human rights for migrant workers, on the other, are highlighted. In the Japanese case we examine the role of the state in both regulating and restructuring its labour market, and the structural dependence placed on the legal and illegal importation of migrant labour. Despite this dependence, we reveal the contradictory positions held within Japan’s state apparatus which result in a deliberate marginalisation of migrant workers. The important role of NGOs in disseminating information to migrant workers about their rights in Japan is highlighted. We explore the relationship between the individual and the state in the context of globalisation through the discussion of citizenship as a negotiated concept. We then examine the changing reality brought about by globalisation processes in terms of responsibility towards the protection of any worker (regardless of passport) but also with regard to activism on behalf of migrant labour. Finally, we emphasise the important future role to be played by NGOs in making the needs and rights of globalised workers more broadly recognised and attended to at both local, national and transnational levels.     

Imagining a Shared State in Palestine–Israel

Abstract:  There has been much deliberation over future solutions to the Palestinian–Israeli impasse. These invariably revolve around the two-state solution. However, some have argued that a one-state solution would be preferable because it stresses the need to imagine Palestinians and Israelis as connected rather than as separate. This article examines notions of a one-state solution and highlights the useful role that geographers can play in discussing such notions. In particular, it focuses on the need to re-think relationships between citizenship, national identity and the nation-state in order to emphasise the importance of shared pasts, presents and futures in the region. The article also outlines the relevance of postcolonial, diasporic and transnational theories to geographical discussions on the one-state solution and concludes that the use of such theories potentially allows a more hopeful exploration of the complex identities, lives and performances of people as they struggle to negotiate contested spaces and places.     

The practical application of counter‐terrorism legislation in England and Wales: a prosecutor's perspective

This article gives a prosecutor's perspective on the practical application of UK terrorism legislation. It gives an overview of the working relationship between the Counter Terrorism Division's specialist prosecutors, police officers and the intelligence services, in order to outline some of the challenges in investigating and prosecuting terrorism cases, and to inform on prosecutorial decision‐making. It summarizes the main additions and changes to the criminal terrorism legislation over the last decade and gives examples of how some of the key powers and offences have been approached and used by prosecutors. The article deliberately concentrates on the criminal aspects of terrorism legislation and the importance of using due process to prosecute alleged terrorists fairly and proportionately. It describes how prosecutors use a mixture of the ordinary criminal and specialist terrorism laws depending on what is deemed appropriate in any given case. It is not intended to be a critique of the legislation itself or an analysis of what may or may not need to be changed. That is a matter for Parliament; the prosecutor's role is to apply the law not to make it. The article concludes that the criminal justice system is the correct place for terrorism prosecutions to take place and that the UK can continue to retain due process and respect for human rights while seeking properly to protect national security.     

Gender and Post‐war Relief: Support for War‐Widowed Mothers in Occupied Japan (1945–52)

This article analyses the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war‐bereaved in post‐Asia‐Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities and dissolution of the Federation of Bereaved War Victims, the first support group for the war‐bereaved that initially began as an organisation for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Federation went on to create two separate groups – the Victims’ Federation and Widows’ Federation – whose members, scope and objectives presented stark gendered divisions. By examining this divide, and by analysing the earlier histories of the organisations, this article explores the relationships among gender, military, death and bereavement, and post‐war relief. The article pays particular attention to the tensions and negotiations among various interest groups, including military widows, women widowed from other causes, feminist activists, male lawmakers, bereaved fathers and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. I place the dissolution of the Federation in its social and political contexts and analyse its relationship to the contemporaneous discussions on female citizenship. In particular, I focus on two areas mobilised by Japanese feminist activists since the early twentieth century: suffrage and motherhood. The short history of the Federation provides a means to examine the reconfiguration of the connection between gender and citizenship during the demilitarisation and democratisation processes that occurred in occupied Japan.     

Sexual citizenship, political obligation and disease ecology in gay Seattle

While rights and freedoms of sexual citizenship have been foregrounded in geography, vaguer attention has been given to questions of political obligation. Feminist work on political obligation, grounded with a framing in political ecology of disease, however, provides a means to correct this neglect. Empirically, I narrate a story of local public health politics in Seattle, WA. There, a cultural panic played out in the media over the alleged failure of political obligations by gay men around sexually transmitted infections. Political obligation and ecology usefully extend the concept sexual citizenship on its own terms by moving beyond a rights-versus-obligation polarity, highlighting the biophysical realities of sex, recognizing the spaces in which sex occurs, and noting the social relations inherent in sex and sexuality. Thus, this paper contributes to deeper thinking for activists involved in working through these questions as well as bolstering the notion of sexual citizenship in political geography.