Abstract
In this introductory article, the main theoretical concerns guiding this thematic issue are briefly discussed, alongside an overview of relevant literature on rights and urban citizenship. We draw on the work of Engin on ‘enacted citizenship,’ and combine Hannah Arendt’s ‘right to have rights’ with Henri Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city,’ for inspiration. The hope is that these concepts or theoretical tools help our contributors explore the ‘grey areas’ of partial inclusion and exclusion, and to connect the informal with the formal, migrants with professionals, locals with those from elsewhere. Since the contributions in this issue come from practitioners as well as scholars, we are interested in very different forms of urban citizenship being enacted in a range of settings, in such a way as to overcome, or at least side-step, social, economic and political exclusion within specific urban settings. In this introduction we reflect on urban migrants organising and mobilising to enact their own citizenship rights within specific urban spaces, and present each of the eight published articles, briefly illustrating the range of approaches and urban citizenship issues covered in this thematic issue. The examples of urban enacted citizenship practices include efforts to construct economic livelihoods, gain access to health care, promote political participation, reweave the social fabric of poor neighbourhoods, and provide sanctuary. All of which, our contributors suggest, requires the engagement of the local urban authorities to allow room for the informal, and to accept the need for improved dialogue and improved access to public services.
Highlights
Citizenship is enacted through legal and cultural, social, economic and symbolic rights, responsibilities and identifications. (Isin, 2013, p. 19)Our premise is that urban citizenship extends ‘beyond law.’ Once it becomes widely accepted—if perhaps tacitly—by urban residents that all those who live in the city should possess, for example, the right to basic health care, or secure housing, formal rights no longer equate with entitlements
Inhabitants of urban spaces enjoy highly variable life conditions, and different degrees of protection and neglect from municipal and central government institutions and actors. This means it is important to understand enacted citizenship struggles as a lens through which we can interpret efforts, mainly ‘from below,’ to promote social inclusion, for example through collaborative encounters, dialogue, self-organising and even technology, all in ways that are rarely free of friction and conflict (Isin, 2013, p. 22)
In conclusion it is to be hoped that this thematic issue as a whole helps illustrate and think through local urban practices of enacted citizenship citizenship
Summary
Citizenship is enacted through legal and cultural, social, economic and symbolic rights, responsibilities and identifications. (Isin, 2013, p. 19). Contributors to this thematic issue were asked to identify key institutions, agents, and interventions that sought to empower or facilitate social inclusion for migrants within the cities being researched Our contributors include both scholars and practitioners, interested in exploring different forms of urban citizenship which have been enacted to overcome social exclusion in specific, and comparative, urban settings. The aim is to generate debate about the possibilities of civic engagement to generate spaces for political participation, and ways and means to protect and claim basic rights These include the right to health and well-being, to physical and existential security, to work and a decent living, for non-citizens and national migrants alike, young and old, men and women. Individual articles are briefly presented discussed in the last section of this editorial introduction, which first outlines some of the guiding concepts and themes
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