On Citizenship

Drawing on contemporary global events, this book highlights how global citizenship education can be used to critically educate about the complexity and repressive nature of global events and our collective role in creating a just world.

Exploring pressing questions around Canadian citizenship, Canada in Question delves into contemporary issues that come into play in identifying what it means to be Canadian. Beginning with an update on the status of Canadian citizenship, Peter MacKinnon acknowledges that with the exception of Indigenous peoples, most Canadians migrated to Canada in the last 400 years. In surveying the status of citizenship, the author addresses the impact of these newcomers on Indigenous peoples, and the subsequent impression that the following influx of new immigrants and migrants has had on citizenship. MacKinnon investigates the ties that bind Canadians to their country and to their fellow citizens, and how these ties are often challenged by global influences, such as identity politics and social media. Shedding light on the connection between economic opportunity and citizenship, and on the institutional context in which differences must be accommodated, Canada in Question examines current circumstances and new challenges, and looks to the unique future of Canadian citizenship.

State building is an ongoing process that first defines legitimate citizenship and then generates citizens. Political analysts and social scientists now use the concept of citizenship as a lens for considering both the evolution of states and the development of their societies. In Citizenship as a Regime leading political scientists from Canada, Europe, and Latin America use insights from comparative politics, institutionalism, and political economy to understand and analyze the dynamics of contemporary policies and politics. This book celebrates Jane Jenson's work and many of her contributions to political science and the study of Canadian politics. Featuring Jenson's concept of "citizenship regime", the collected chapters consider its theoretical and methodological underpinning and presents new applications to various empirical contexts. Contributors present original research, critically assess the idea of a citizenship regime, and suggest ways to further develop Jane Jenson's notion of a "citizenship regime" as an analytical tool. Research essays in this volume consider various social forces and dynamics such as neoliberalism, inequality, LGBTQ movements, the rise of populism amid nationalist movements in multinational societies—including Indigenous self-determination claims—and how they transform the politics of citizenship. These collected contributions—by former students, collaborators and colleagues of Jenson—highlight her lasting influence on the contemporary study of citizenship in Canada and elsewhere. Contributors include: Marcos Ancelovici (UQÀM), James Bickerton (St Francis Xavier University), Maxime Boucher (Université de Montréal), Neil Bradford (Huron University College), Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary's University), Pascale Dufour (Université de Montreal), Jane Jenson (Université de Montréal), Rachel Laforest (Queen's University), Rianne Mahon (Wilfrid Laurier University), Bérengère Marques-Pereira (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Martin Papillon (Université de Montréal), Denis Saint-Martin (Université de Montréal), and Miram Smith (York University).

The idea of citizenship is widely used in daily life. ‘Citizenship tests’ are used to determine who can inhabit a country; ‘citizen charters’ have been used to prescribe levels of service provision; ‘citizens’ juries’ are used in planning or policy enquiries; ‘citizenship’ lessons are taught in schools; youth organisations attempt often aim to instil ‘good’ citizenship; ‘active citizens’ are encouraged to contribute voluntary effort to their local communities and campaigners may use ‘citizens’ rights’ to achieve their goals. What is meant by citizenship is never static and the subject of debate by academics, politicians and activists. These ideas are manifest and contested at a range of different scales. This book therefore argues geography is crucial to understanding citizenship. The text is organised around a number of spatial themes to examine how spatialities of citizenship are played out at a range of scales. Ideas about locality, boundaries, mobility, networks, rurality and globalisation are used to reveal the importance of space and place in the constitution, contestation and performance of citizenship. In doing so, the book reveals how different ideas of citizenship can include or exclude people from society and space. Consideration is given to ways in which different groups have sought to empower themselves through various actions associated with and beyond conventional notions of citizenship. Written in an accessible way with detailed case studies to illustrate conceptual ideas and approaches, this book offers social scientists new spatial perspectives on citizenship while also bridging together strands of social, cultural and political geography in ways that deepen understandings of people and place.

Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union’s most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on “performance” broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter’s settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects’ remarkably varied lives and experiences.

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.

The essays in On Citizenship provide the reader with clear, informed, compelling insights into the vexed issue of citizenship in India today. The four writers featured in this book-Romila Thapar, N. Ram, Gautam Bhatia, and Gautam Patel-are all experts in their fields. It breaks down the history of citizenship, how it evolved during the Constituent Assembly debates, the nationwide CAA-NRC protests and makes a compelling case against the ruling dispensation.

This Course Guide provides an overview of all content and tools in the print and online resources. It also offers teachers resources for instructional planning and assessment.