The right to be heard: Citizenship and language

In this paper we address the importance and contestation of language in terms of citizenship and the development of political communities by focusing on the example of a minority language – British Sign Language. Language is crucial to debates about citizenship and belonging because the State has to rely on language for its very functioning, indeed political practice itself is a form of communicative action. For individuals language is deeply implicated in their ability to claim and maintain their rights and in their affective connections with others and sense of identification. The paper therefore begins by identifying that Deaf people's legal entitlements (e.g. to vote) are an abstract form of citizenship because as sign language users they have difficulties understanding both political and wider civil institutions and practices, and so lack the cultural proficiencies necessary to exercise citizenship in a substantive sense. We then go onto consider citizenship in the broader sense of how groups are included or situated in the public sphere, and in doing so to consider the extent to which Deaf people might be understood to have a liveable place in an oral society. The final section examines how the sense of injustice which flows from Deaf people's experiences of marginalisation in the public realm means that they are developing alternative forms of political commitment predicated on non-state spaces of belonging – where they can live their language – at both local and transnational scales. The paper concludes by reflecting on the notion of differentiated citizenship and the implications of Deaf people's claims to language rights.     

Topographies of citizenship: Purhépechan Mexican women claiming political subjectivities

A variety of politics are waged through recourse to the language of ‘citizenship’ and ‘democracy’: from George W. Bush's selling of free trade for the Americas by invoking freedom and democracy, to the calls for citizenship and equality by popular movements throughout Latin America and other regions. This article links these paradoxical and transnational constructions of ‘citizenship’ to the daily economic and political struggles of indigenous women in rural Mexico. A transnational and what Cindi Katz calls a ‘topographical’ analysis of local processes deepens and complicates our understanding of local changes as they articulate with global dynamics, and it transforms how we conceptualize the global. Drawing on an ethnography of local gendered political transformation in Cherán, Mexico, I map processes visible locally onto spatialities of power and meaning across scales, weaving together various symbolic and material processes—the intentional actions and negotiations of individual women; the history of Cherán as a place and community; neoliberal economic globalization; and the effects of profoundly gendered and racialized nationalisms—in order to produce a situated knowledge of global citizenship politics. This approach highlights how women in Cherán, situated within global political economic relations and the symbolic horizons of ‘modernity’, transform the meaning and practice of citizenship and political subjectivity.     

The image of the city in modern literature

This article considers the meanings attached to refugeehood, repatriation and liberal citizenship in the twentieth century. Refugees are those who have been unjustly expelled from their political community. Their physical displacement is above all symbolic of a deeper political separation from the state and the citizenry. ‘Solving’ refugees’ exile is therefore not a question of halting refugees’ flight and reversing their movement, but requires political action restoring citizenship.

All three ‘durable solutions’ developed by the international community in the twentieth century – repatriation, resettlement and local integration – are intended to restore a refugee's access to citizenship, and through citizenship the protection and expression of their fundamental human rights. Yet repatriation poses particular challenges for liberal political thought. The logic of repatriation reinforces the organization of political space into bounded nation–state territories. However, it is the exclusionary consequences of national controls over political membership – and through this of access to citizenship rights – that prompt mass refugee flows. Can a framework for repatriation be developed which balances national state order and liberal citizenship rights?

This article argues that using the social contract model to consider the different obligations and pacts between citizens, societies and states can provide a theoretical framework through which the liberal idea of citizenship and national controls on membership can be reconciled.

Historical evidence suggests that the connections in practice between ideas of citizenship and repatriation have been far more complex. In particular, debate between Western liberal and Soviet authoritarian/collectivist understandings of the relationship between citizen and state played a key role in shaping the refugee protection regime that emerged after World War II and remains in place today. Repatriation – or more accurately liberal resistance to non-voluntary refugee repatriation – became an important tool of Cold War politics and retains an important value for states interested in projecting and reaffirming the primacy of liberal citizenship values. Yet the contradictions in post-Cold War operational use of repatriation to ‘solve’ displacement, and a growing reliance on ‘state-building’ exercises to validate refugees’ returns demonstrates that tension remains between national state interests and the universal distribution of liberal rights, as is particularly evident when considering Western donor states’ contemporary policies on refugees and asylum. For both intellectual and humanitarian reasons there is therefore an urgent need for the political theory underpinning refugee protection to be closely examined, in order that citizenship can be placed at the centre of refugees’ ‘solutions’.     

Refugees, repatriation and liberal citizenship

This article considers the meanings attached to refugeehood, repatriation and liberal citizenship in the twentieth century. Refugees are those who have been unjustly expelled from their political community. Their physical displacement is above all symbolic of a deeper political separation from the state and the citizenry. ‘Solving’ refugees’ exile is therefore not a question of halting refugees’ flight and reversing their movement, but requires political action restoring citizenship.All three ‘durable solutions’ developed by the international community in the twentieth century - repatriation, resettlement and local integration - are intended to restore a refugee's access to citizenship, and through citizenship the protection and expression of their fundamental human rights. Yet repatriation poses particular challenges for liberal political thought. The logic of repatriation reinforces the organization of political space into bounded nation-state territories. However, it is the exclusionary consequences of national controls over political membership - and through this of access to citizenship rights - that prompt mass refugee flows. Can a framework for repatriation be developed which balances national state order and liberal citizenship rights?This article argues that using the social contract model to consider the different obligations and pacts between citizens, societies and states can provide a theoretical framework through which the liberal idea of citizenship and national controls on membership can be reconciled.Historical evidence suggests that the connections in practice between ideas of citizenship and repatriation have been far more complex. In particular, debate between Western liberal and Soviet authoritarian/collectivist understandings of the relationship between citizen and state played a key role in shaping the refugee protection regime that emerged after World War II and remains in place today. Repatriation - or more accurately liberal resistance to non-voluntary refugee repatriation - became an important tool of Cold War politics and retains an important value for states interested in projecting and reaffirming the primacy of liberal citizenship values. Yet the contradictions in post-Cold War operational use of repatriation to ‘solve’ displacement, and a growing reliance on ‘state-building’ exercises to validate refugees’ returns demonstrates that tension remains between national state interests and the universal distribution of liberal rights, as is particularly evident when considering Western donor states’ contemporary policies on refugees and asylum. For both intellectual and humanitarian reasons there is therefore an urgent need for the political theory underpinning refugee protection to be closely examined, in order that citizenship can be placed at the centre of refugees’ ‘solutions’.     

Intimate citizenship? Rethinking the politics and experience of citizenship as emotional in Wales and Singapore

Conversations around, and conceptions of, citizenship have changed over time. Assumed initially as a mark of membership, of belonging to a political community (Marshall 1950), the essence of what it means to be a citizen and what the contractual ties of citizenship are have evolved over time. This evolution has been encouraged by processes of migration and increasing mobility. More recently, our ability to traverse geographical and political boundaries has meant that notions of borders and boundaries, of who belongs where and why, have also been subject to dramatic changes. This article investigates the impact of such mobility on the individual lived experience of migrant women who, as a group, have been traditionally excluded from more formal political arenas, and asks questions of what citizenship means for them. Though I do not contest the very political fact of citizenship as status, this article challenges the way in which the nature of this status is assumed or implied for all. This article therefore argues that citizenship itself is a much more fluid concept, incorporating the emotional and lived experience of individuals and that it is in these emotional accounts through which citizenship, and its extended rights and political capabilities, must be understood through a sense of everyday, grounded and personal politics.     

'People Try to Put Us Down …': Participatory Citizenship of 'Generation X'

This article evaluates the participatory citizenship of Australian young people. Its argument is that in the utilisation of empirical research 'contemporary citizenship needs to recognise what people actually do' (R. Prokhovnik, Feminist Review 60(2) 1998: 95). For this research, an alternative approach to the exploration of participation has been developed which questions the traditional, institutionalised measures of political participation and/or notions of civic engagement that do not look at a broad range of individual and organisational experiences. The article is based on a survey of 18-34-year-old Australians conducted via telephone, by Newspoll Market Research, in early 2001. The article shows that rather than 'Generation X' having homogeneous (or even negligible) participatory experiences, four distinct participatory typologies emerge. These four typologies are labelled as Activist, Communitarian, Party and Individualistic to reflect the clustered modes of participation. The article also explores the relationships between participation and the discussion of political and social issues.     

A neoliberal nexus: Economy,security and the biopolitics of citizenship on the border

In this paper I explore what the development of an expedited border-crossing program called NEXUS reveals about the changing political geography of citizenship in contemporary North America. Developed after 9/11 as a high-tech solution to competing demands for both heightened border security and ongoing cross-border business movement, NEXUS and other so-called Smart Border programs exemplify how a business class civil citizenship has been extended across transnational space at the very same time as economic liberalization and national securitization have curtailed citizenship for others. The biopolitical production of this privileged business class citizenship is explored vis-à-vis the macroscale entrenchment of neoliberal policy through NAFTA and the microscale production of entrepreneurial selfhood. By examining how this transnational privileging of business class rights has happened in an American context of exclusionary nationalism, the paper also explores the relationship between neoliberalism and the development of new spaces of exception defined by exclusion from civil rights. Examples of such exclusion include ‘expedited removal’ and ‘extraordinary rendition’, two forms of American anti-immigrant control that have been developed in concert with expedited border-crossing programs. Examining these forms of expedited exclusion and comparing the carceral cosmopolitanism they produce with the soft cosmopolitanism of the NEXUS lane, the paper ends by offering an argument about the relationship between the neoliberal privileging of transnational mobility rights and its exclusionary counterparts.     

Urban Community Gardens as Spaces of Citizenship

A growing body of literature conceptualizes urban agriculture and community gardens as spaces of democratic citizenship and radical political practice. Urban community gardens are lauded as spaces through which residents can alleviate food insecurity and claim rights to the city. However, discussions of citizenship practice more broadly challenge the notion that citizen participation is inherently transformative or empowering, particularly in the context of neoliberal economic restructuring. This paper investigates urban community gardens as spaces of citizenship through a case study of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It examines the impacts of community gardens on citizenship practice and the effects of volunteerism on the development of community gardens. It explores how grassroots community gardens simultaneously contest and reinforce local neoliberal policies. This research contributes empirically and theoretically to scholarship on urban food movements, neoliberal urbanization, collaborative governance, and citizenship practice.     

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?     

Political Theology,Religious Diversity and the Nature of Democratic Citizenship

ABSTRACT

Driving this essay is a question central to political theology; that is, how can I keep faith with my distinctive commitments while also forming a common life with neighbors who have a different vision of life to me? My response has four parts. First, I develop a normative definition of politics within which to situate an account of citizenship and the political implications of deep religious plurality in a shared polity. Second, I examine how citizenship is not just a legal status that entails certain rights and duties, but also denotes an identity, a performance of politics, and a shared rationality. Third, I identify the dominant ways in which citizenship is understood in the contemporary context, namely, through either a nationalist or cosmopolitan framework, contrasting these with a consociational conception of citizenship. And lastly, I lay out how a consociational framework provides a more generative basis for conceptualizing religious diversity.     

Party responsiveness and voter confidence in Australia

Numerous studies have shown that Australians have little confidence in their political parties. This article presents the results of a study investigating whether the responsiveness of Australian parties to what their voters want drives this lack of confidence. It analyses two aspects of party responsiveness: programmatic responsiveness in electoral manifestos and perceived responsiveness that centres on Australian voters’ assessment of how well their parties meet their demands. The analysis finds that programmatic responsiveness has no significant influence. Instead, how Australians perceive their parties to be responsive has a modest effect on their confidence in those parties. The study suggests that, however, it is incumbency which has the most powerful effect on voter confidence.     

Protecting the citizen body: The commonwealth's role in shaping and defending an ‘Australian’ population

This article traces the activities of the Commonwealth in shaping a population that it felt comfortable with and capable of governing successfully from 1901 to 1962. We argue that the body of desirable Australian citizens was defined negatively by who was to be excluded, in particular ‘aboriginal natives’. This quickly became an area of administrative rather than legislative concern. A close examination of the archival record illuminates the bureaucratic image of the desirable Australian and the modes by which that image was generated. The administrative activities increasingly focused on the ‘hard cases’, particularly those of the so‐called ‘half‐castes’. A narrow reasoning process, propensity to make expedient changes to established practice, and the metaphorical language in which the issue was discussed shaped the administration's thinking on citizenship policy.     

Locating strangers: multiculturalism, citizenship and nationhood in Australia

Questions over identity politics, difference, and associated claims of authenticity, now occupy centre-stage in many countries. In this paper we focus on the nature of multiculturalism, citizenship and identity politics as they are emerging in Australian society. Essentially, we argue that the demands of political recognition of cultural particularity by specific groups are presenting complex challenges to the public institutions of contemporary liberalism that rest on the neutrality of the public sphere in its treatment of free and equal citizens regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. The ideas of nationhood and national consciousness still present themselves as essential aspects of contemporary political life, even though many questions concerning a re-conceptualization of nation and citizenship abound. This is the context through which the paper examines nationhood in Australia, particularly the points of tension arising from contrasting notions of citizenship and national culture. Our intention is to provide a glimpse of Australian society in the face of these changes and to draw some theoretical and analytical conclusions concerning the challenges to state and civil society.     

Making Territory and Negotiating Citizenship in a Climate Mitigation Initiative in Indonesia

For almost two decades, the concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has been widely adopted in Indonesia, in policy initiatives ranging from pilot projects to more established PES schemes and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programmes. Drawing on a case study of a REDD+ initiative in Aceh, Indonesia, this article analyses how the initiative became an avenue to renegotiate political authority, territory and citizenship. Analysis of relevant documents, combined with focus group discussions and interviews at local and national levels, reveals the complex processes by which the authority to govern forest is claimed and legitimized through the revision of provincial land-use plans, and shows how citizenship is rearticulated through participatory mapping processes. The article demonstrates that the initiative has been negotiated and reshaped to conform to local aspirations for greater control over forests and to achieve broader development goals. The discourses of green economy and REDD+ have provided the Aceh government and communities with a new ‘surface of engagement’ to express Acehnese struggles over territory and citizenship by aligning with global climate change issues.     

Engendering citizenship: gendered spaces of democracy in South Africa

The dramatic political upheavals and transformations that have occurred throughout the world during the 1990s have served to refocus international attention on theories of citizenship and democracy. Feminist theorists have explored alternative notions of radical and substantive democracy, suggesting that extending democratization depends upon the creation of metaphorical and material spaces for women's effective participation. Related to this is a growing interest among political and feminist geographers in the scales and spaces of citizenship. Drawing upon these theoretical contexts, this paper explores how transformations in South Africa present opportunities for reworking understandings of democratization and citizenship. The paper places gender and citizenship in South Africa within international feminist debates, and explores the sequence of events through which gender issues came to prominence in South Africa during the transition to democracy. The ways in which political rights are mediated by informal structures, and the effects of this on women, are analysed. The paper concludes by discussing the ways in which the construction and contestation of citizenship in South Africa might inform broader international feminist debates.     

Sámi Citizenship: Marginalisation or Integration?

Abstract

In accordance with international conventions the Sámi is an indigenous group belonging to two populations and two overlapping civil societies within one nation state. This situation not only influences Sámi political interests and activities in general, but it also affects the individual Sámi's political orientation and decisions. Nevertheless, no thorough study has been conducted, on the individual level, of Sámi political participation and involvement. We know neither how political attitudes and participation vary within this group, nor how it varies in relation to the Norwegian population in general. Thus we know practically nothing about how recent institutional developments have influenced Sámi citizenship.

This article looks closely at variations in political involvement and participation amongst Sámi and non-Sámi living in Norway's Sámi language management area, and compares this with political involvement and participation amongst the Norwegian population in general. The Citizenship Survey shows that in terms of political interest and participation, the Sámi living in the Sámi language management area are on par with others living there, and with Norwegians in general. In several important political areas the Sámi actually show significantly more interest and involvement than Norwegians in general. Furthermore, Sámi political trust and self-confidence are as high as in the general population, and we have not uncovered any particular marginalisation with respect to women and young people's interest and participation.

There is much to suggest that our findings measure not only the Sámi's combined political interest and participation, but also their degree of participation and interest in the Norwegian political system. We do not find a picture of Sámi political segregation, nor of an extensive marginalisation. The findings point towards strong integration in the Norwegian political system, with Norwegian and Sámi public space and civil societies overlapping rather than being competitive or even antagonistic.     

Constitutional recognition and reform: developing an inclusive Australian citizenship through treaty

Eight years after the Expert Panel on Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Australian Constitution was established, institutional reform to empower Indigenous peoples in this country has not been realised. This article argues that the persistent failure to progress constitutional reform stems, in part, from dominant conceptions of Australian citizenship that deny Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoplehood. It follows that meaningful institutional reform is possible only if Australian citizenship is reconceptualised in a manner that makes room for the distinctive status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Treaties offer a path forward to develop this new understanding of Australian identity and ground institutional reform.     

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.     

Business,Politics and Money in Australia: Testing Economic,Political and Ideological Explanations

The flow of business money to political parties is a vital issue for Australian democracy. Nonetheless, there has been no systematic study of why Australian businesses contribute to political parties and why they contribute more to one party than to others. I exploit Australian Electoral Commission data on payments to parties by 450 large businesses over 7 years at the Commonwealth and State levels. Economic characteristics (income and sector) are important to understanding which businesses make political contributions. However, they are little help in understanding how businesses distribute their cash. This is best interpreted as an interaction of ideological bias and political pragmatism. If Labor has the political advantage businesses tend to split contributions evenly between the ALP and the Coalition. If the Coalition has the political advantage businesses overwhelmingly target their contributions on the Liberal and National parties.     

Australian approaches to countertrade: State and firm responses

Countertrade (or barter trade) has become an important element of the international political economy in the past 15 years, and is said to typify the emergence of neo‐mercantilist tendencies in the international system. The implications for Australia arising from this alteration in the ‘rules of the game’ with respect to the international system are profound. This article explores how the Australian government, and Australian‐based firms, have responded to the emergence of countertrade. We demonstrate that in the absence of government leadership on the issue, firms have developed their own coping mechanisms of dealing with countertrade.