Conservatism and the Re-Communitarianization of Citizenship in Canada

Abstract

While the values and practices usually subsumed under the notion of “good citizenship” are said to have changed dramatically over the past 25 years or so, scholars are still struggling to characterize the concrete nature of these changes. Proposing a novel interdisciplinary approach that marries normative theory with empirically driven political sociology, in this paper we examine the explanations and justifications that flanked a plethora of new citizenship policies implemented under the former Stephen Harper-led Conservative government (2006–2015) in Canada. Critically employing Amitai Etzioni’s comparative typology of citizenship philosophies, we examine three types of Conservative policy discourses pertaining to citizenship, namely speeches given by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, speeches given by members of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, and government press releases. In contrast to Etzioni’s optimistic presentation of neo-communitarianism in political and philosophical terms, our study reveals that the exclusionary discourses and practices that accompany this approach in practice demand greater attention. In the case of the Harper Conservatives, we argue that their approach is best understood as a re-communitarianization of citizenship in neoliberal times that creatively, but only sparingly, invokes libertarian and liberal ideals in comparison to its use of what we identify to be (1) patriotic and (2) insecure communitarian discourses. Our findings point to both the exclusionary potentials and realities of neo-communitarian citizenship. They contribute to scholarship that argues the that the destruction of social ties, solidarity and “community” through neoliberal and neoconservative politics is often camouflaged and/or advanced by aggressive neo-communitarian discourses that harken back to or reinvent past ethnic or monocultural nationalisms, while only selectively including “deserving” Others at the margins.