The consequences of nationalism: A scholarly exchange

The main thrust of the scholarship on nationalism has so far been concerned with its origins. But nationalism also has effects. Whether it underpins the nation-building efforts of states, is mobilised by counter-state forces or is used in everyday life, nationalism might implicate a wide range of substantive outcomes, including political regimes, public goods provision, citizenship and immigration laws, and different patterns of conflict. Yet—with a few notable exceptions—the consequences of nationalism have received significantly less scholarly attention. In response, the aim of this Exchange is to create a new dialogue between different strands of scholarship around what we know and do not know about the consequences of nationalism. We organise this Exchange around the following questions: (1) What is nationalism? (2) How can we measure nationalism? (3) What are the consequences of nationalism? (4) What are new research frontiers?     

Beyond Allegiance: Toward A Right to Canadian Citizenship Status

Canada grants citizenship expansively to most persons born subject to its territorial jurisdiction. Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms also treats naturalized and native-born citizens as equals. But new distinctions have emerged that threaten the equal status and rights of Canadian citizens. Here, I argue that the reemergence of the dormant historical norm of citizenship as allegiance is being used to cast citizens deemed disloyal out from Canada’s protection and supervision. First, I historically trace the erosion of equal citizenship status and rights in Canada under the guise of protecting native-citizens from security threats. Second, I offer a normative argument against the recent practice of denaturalizing Canadian citizens for their actions or questionable allegiances. I conclude with a preliminary recommendation for protecting the citizenship status of Canadians from revocation.     

Passports,Citizenship, Residency and Asylum: The Meanings of Decolonisation in Lesotho

In late colonial Basutoland and early independence Lesotho, the issue of who could access citizenship rights and passports became increasingly important. Political refugees fleeing apartheid South Africa took up passports on offer in the territory to further their political work. Basotho residents also took up passports in increasing numbers as a way of safeguarding their economic, social and political rights on both sides of the border. The lure of a Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC) passport drew refugees to Basutoland in the early 1960s, but it was South Africa’s decision to leave the Commonwealth in 1961 that spurred many in Lesotho to formalise their imperial citizenship as well, even as independence for Lesotho became increasingly likely. The stories of those taking up papers illuminate how citizenship became a space for contestation between individuals and governments. The stories also show how the concept of the transfer of power does not accurately reflect the ways in which the sovereignty of newly independent African states, apartheid South Africa and the United Kingdom were all limited by a series of decisions made in the late colonial period. Tracing these stories helps us better understand the limitations of the term ‘decolonisation’ for reflecting the understandings and complications of citizenship in 1960s and 1970s southern Africa.     

Taxing the indigenous: a history of barriers to fiscal inclusion in the Bolivian highlands

Following the electoral success of left wing and pro-indigenous President Evo Morales, the indigenous poor in Bolivia find themselves at the centre of a new vision of the state, echoed by a fervent citizenship project to include them as contributing participants in this new Bolivia. The state is working to initiate these hitherto informally employed subjects into an individualized fiscal regime: to make them into “taxpayers”. While the highland indigenous population have supported Morales’ political project, they resist inclusion into the broader state-sponsored project. This is not simply about avoiding financial obligations; their resistance is instead firmly rooted in the historical experience of fiscal exploitation, general suspicion of any state-run scheme as well as a clash of exchange models. I argue that in order to overcome these barriers, the Tax Office has to succeed in separating fiscal expansion from its association with an abstract state concept, and instead link it to palpable everyday life and politics, such as the union structure and Morales’ project of indigenous inclusion.     

The Anthropoceneans

What does it mean for us to be citizens of the Anthropocene, both individually and collectively? This essay tries to answer that question in order to stimulate a wider conversation about how we should respond to and shape the socioecological transformations ahead of us. 1 1 Many of the ideas and arguments in this essay are explored in greater depth in my book (in preparation), Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene: Re‐conceptualising Human‐Nature Relations (Routledge, UK). Questions of grief are also explored in Head, L. 2016 ‘Grief, loss and the cultural politics of climate change’, a chapter in H. Bulkeley, M. Paterson and J. Stripple (eds) Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change: Devices, Desires and Dissent.
     

Immigration,the Celtic Tiger and the economic crisis

Abstract

This article addresses the puzzle of why Ireland has proved so open to immigration. It compares responses to immigrants in the Republic of Ireland during the Celtic Tiger era and during the post-2008 economic crisis and finds no evidence of a political backlash during the latter period even though opinion polls suggest that opposition to immigration had increased and other evidence suggested that there had been an increase in racist incidents within Irish society. Nor did the resumption of large-scale emigration trigger political hostility to immigrants. The outcome of the 2004 Referendum on Citizenship, which removed a constitutional right to Irish citizenship to the Irish-born children of immigrants, suggested that that nationalism still matters hugely and a latent tendency towards ethnic chauvinism amongst the host population. Yet, a decade after the 2004 Referendum it looked as if the old mono-ethnic sense conception of the Irish nation had been disrupted, at least a little bit.     

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.     

After Empire: Karl Renner's Danubian model of pluralism

This article argues that Karl Renner's multinational model for the Austrian‐Hungarian Empire is an alternative model for contemporary a‐territorial, multinational and federal arrangements. Nations, in his view, should act as intermediary bodies between the relevant communities and the state. His concept of ‘subjective public law’ combines principles that most authors find mutually exclusive: individual rights, choice over one's national cultural membership, non‐territorial administration of national communities and overseeing of equal collective rights by the state. Neither Staatsnation nor Kulturnation, the model is a combination of the two under the auspices of a federal state combined with a strong theory of individual and collective rights. I provide the reader with a comprehensive intellectual biography of Karl Renner, as I argue that an understanding of the man himself, his political pragmatism and his statism are crucial to comprehending this theoretical position. Throughout his life, Renner was a German nationalist, held a strong nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire and voted in favour of the Anschluß. His concurrent careers as a scholar and as a politician account for a series of contradictions. I argue however that these can be reconciled and explained by a careful comparative reading of his scholarly work and his political statements.     

Geography's secret powers to save the world

The purpose of this paper, prepared to present at the 2018 joint Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) and International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference, is to suggest three strategies, framed as proposals, that geography and geography education can deploy to “save the world.” The first proposal is to expand explicit instruction in spatial thinking to close gender‐based achievement gaps. The second proposal is to apply research from the learning sciences to develop persuasive geography curricula and instructional materials. The third proposal focuses on ways social media and geospatial technologies can be employed in civic education, an idea termed “spatial citizenship.” The paper suggests a re‐envisioning of geography education with an enhanced focus on teaching for, in, and about a world that fully appreciates difference and acts on that appreciation.     

Playing with Infrastructure like a Carishina: Feminist Cycling in an Era of Democratic Politics

This article discusses transit infrastructure as a site of radical possibility and limitation in an age of participatory democracy across Latin America. I focus on multiple spaces of participation in Quito, Ecuador to elucidate how citizenship and infrastructure are co‐produced through gendered processes. I first analyse city space of Quito from a gendered and infrastructural lens to consider how urban environments are dictated by violence and insecurity. Then, against this backdrop, I explore the spatial strategies of the feminist bicycle collective, Carishina en Bici, which translates from Quechua to “bad housewives that cycle”. Here, I draw on the concept of “deep play” to reveal how public practices in Quito question the equitable impacts of local democratic experimentation. To examine Carishinas’ spatial practices, I focus on an urban alleycat race, the Carishina Race, to show how strategic practices of solidarity reinsert feminist possibilities in urban space.