Acts Of Citizenship

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either. This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either. This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

This book examines the changing character of European citizenship, focusing on 'acts' of citizenship.

What does it mean to be a European citizen? The rapidly changing politics of citizenship in the face of migration, diversity, heightened concerns about security and financial and economic crises, has left European citizenship as one of the major political and social challenges to European integration. Enacting European Citizenship develops a distinctive perspective on European citizenship and its impact on European integration by focusing on 'acts' of European citizenship. The authors examine a broad range of cases - including those of the Roma, Sinti, Kurds, sex workers, youth and other 'minorities' or marginalised peoples - to illuminate the ways in which the institutions and practices of European citizenship can hinder as well as enable claims for justice, rights and equality. This book draws the key themes together to explore what the limitations and possibilities of European citizenship might be.

This book engages the intense relationship between citizenship and security in modern politics. It focuses on questions of citizenship in security analysis in order to critically evaluate how political being is and can be constituted in relation to securitising practices. In light of contemporary issues and events such as human rights regimes, terrorism, identity control, commercialisation of security, diaspora, and border policies, this book addresses a citizenship deficit in security studies. The chapters introduce several key political themes that characterise the interplays between citizenship and security: changes in citizenship regimes, the renewed insecurity of citizenship-state relations, the emerging ways by which the political and national communities are crafted, and the ways democratic societies and regimes react in times of insecurity. Approaching citizenship as both a governmental practice and a resource of political contestation, the book aims to highlight what political challenges and contestations are created in situations where security intensely meets citizenship today. This book will be of interest to scholars of security studies and security politics, citizenship studies, and international relations.

Over the past 15 years, the citizenship debate in political and social theory has undergone an extraordinary renaissance. To date, much of the writing on citizenship, within and beyond Canada, has been oriented toward the development of theory, or has concentrated on contemporary issues and examples. This collection of essays adopts a different approach by contextualizing and historicizing the citizenship debate, through studies of various aspects of the rise of social citizenship in Canada. Focusing on the formative years from the late 19th through mid-20th century, contributors examine how emerging discourse and practices in diverse areas of Canadian social life created a widely engaged, but often deeply contested, vision of the new Canadian citizen. The original essays examine key developments in the fields of welfare, justice, health, childhood, family, immigration, education, labour, media, popular culture and recreation, highlighting the contradictory nature of Canadian citizenship. The implications of these projects for the daily lives of Canadians, their identities, and the forms of resistance that they mounted, are central themes. Contributing authors situate their historical accounts in both public and private domains, their analyses emphasizing the mutual permeability of state and civil(ian) life. These diverse investigations reveal that while Canadian citizenship conveys crucial images of identity, security, and participatory democracy within the ongoing project of nation building, it is also interlaced with the projects of a hierarchical social structure and exclusionary political order. This collection explores the origins and evolution of Canadian citizenship in historical context. It also introduces the more general dilemmas and debates in social history and political theory that inevitably inform these inquiries.

Deportation has again taken a prominent place within the immigration policies of nation-states. Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation addresses the social responses to deportation, in particular the growing movements against deportation and detention, and for freedom of movement and the regularization of status. The book brings deportation and anti-deportation together with the aim of understanding the political subjects that emerge in this contested field of governance and control, freedom and struggle. However, rather than focusing on the typical subjects of removal – refugees, the undocumented, and irregular migrants – Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation looks at the ways that citizens get caught up in the deportation apparatus and must struggle to remain in or return to their country of citizenship. The transformation of ‘regular’ citizens into deportable ‘irregular’ citizens involves the removal of the rights, duties, and obligations of citizenship. This includes unmaking citizenship through official revocation or denationalization, as well as through informal, extra-legal, and unofficial means. The book features stories about struggles over removal and return, deportation and repatriation, rescue and abandonment. The book features eleven ‘acts of citizenship’ that occur in the context of deportation and anti-deportation, arguing that these struggles for rights, recognition, and return are fundamentally struggles over political subjectivity – of citizenship. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of citizenship, migration and security studies.