Attributes Of Citizenship Research Articles

Switzerland: Contentious Citizenship Attribution in a Federal State

Whereas, in most countries, citizenship attribution is regulated at the central level of the state, in Switzerland each municipality is accorded the right to decide who can become a Swiss citizen. Even villages of as few as 400 inhabitants have their own formal procedures and criteria by which ‘alien residents’ are to be naturalised. The Swiss case thus provides a unique opportunity for studying how membership criteria are established in negotiation processes between local politicians, and for understanding how such processes are influenced by different perspectives on citizenship by municipal actors. One consequence of different citizenship regulations and practices is that rejection rates vary significantly from one municipality to another. The goal of this paper is to explain why some municipalities pursue more restrictive citizenship policies than others. The paper uses data collected in 14 municipality case studies and 180 semi-structured interviews with local politicians, and shows that citizenship politics not only depends on different understandings of citizenship, but also on how powerful actors succeed in implementing their visions of what it means to be a Swiss citizen.

Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe

Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. By Ruud Koopmans, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni, and Florence Passy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 376p. 25.00 paper. This is a well-written, rigorous, empirical contribution to scholarship on immigration and ethnic relations in post–World War II Europe. The study adds particular value through its grounded evaluation of basic assumptions concerning multiculturalism. Ruud Koopmans and colleagues coded political claims of migrant, extreme-right, and pro-migrant/anti-racist actors in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as reported in a prominent newspaper in each country. These data inform the authors' assessment of whether migrant group makeup, national conceptions of citizenship, or supranational institutions drive the various actors' political behavior. The authors conclude that different national citizenship models best explain variations in political claims making. Postwar migration to Western Europe generates intense political conflict, according to the authors, because it raises questions about basic aspects of national sovereignty, including border control, citizenship attribution, and the principles of nationhood.

Urban Poverty: An Urgent Public Health Issue

The World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) has posed a provocative question for public health: “Why do we keep treating people for illnesses only to send them back to the conditions that created illness in the first place?”1 For the WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre), hub of the Commission’s Knowledge Network on Urban Settings (KNUS), this represents a challenge to the public health sector not only to acknowledge the pervasiveness of urban poverty as a critical pathway to ill health and health inequities, but to address this as an urgent public health issue affecting a billion people living in informal settlements, or “slums.”1 People who live in informal settlements are often systematically excluded from opportunities, decent employment, security, capacity, and empowerment3 that would enable them to gain better control over their health and lives. As noted in the Interim Report by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force, which focuses on improving the lives of urban slum dwellers: Much of urban poverty is not because of distance from infrastructure and services but from exclusion. They are excluded from the attributes of urban life that remain a monopoly of a privileged minority—political voice, secure good-quality housing, safety and the rule of law, good education, health services, decent transport, adequate incomes, access to goods and services, credit—in short, the attributes of full citizenship.4 The issue of urban poverty is not new, but it is often narrowly viewed as an economic issue that is best addressed by economic policies and interventions. Urban poverty today, as driven by globalization and rapid uncontrolled urbanization, also needs to be recognized as a social, political, and cultural process that has profound impacts on public health. Exclusion of the urban poor from the benefits of urban life fosters discontent and political unrest. Within the broader context of health and human development, rapid urbanization of poverty and ill health have been characterized as a new human security threat.5 Rapid uncontrolled urbanization results from the interaction between global and local forces. The interconnectedness of cities through trade, business, industry, tourism, international travel, information technology, and media is reshaping social determinants of health that are manifest at the city level. On the other hand, local and national governance capacity in relation to health systems, housing, transport, property rights, migration, land use policy, working conditions, and employment may be unable to cope with the speed of change brought about by global economic restructuring. Inequity in cities that leads to urban poverty, and poor health, therefore, are also products of global and local forces in the urban setting. Public health can play an important role in ameliorating urban poverty through social processes (participation, social capital, social accountability, and social inclusion) that influence urban governance at multiple nodes6 of power. Addressing urban poverty as an urgent public health issue opens a policy space for fairer health opportunities and healthier and more equitable cities.

Citizenship in a Global Context: The Perspectives of International Graduate Students in the United States

Since the inception of political theory, citizenship has been a dynamically evolving, geographically and historically specific concept. Most recently, citizenship has been at the center of debates on globalization, a phenomenon defined as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (Giddens 1990, 64). Although conceptualizing citizenship by looking beyond state borders has a long history, globalization has left its distinct mark by bringing renewed emphasis to the expanded geographic scope of belonging, allegiance, and civic participation in an increasingly global space. Indeed, “global,” “cosmopolitan,” “fluid,” and “flexible” have become frequent attributes of citizenship, stressing the need to go beyond the nation-state in describing the rights and duties of citizens. These developments hold special significance in educational settings, where preparing students for a global world has come to play an important role in citizenship education. For example, NAFSA: Association of International Educators, promoting study abroad by undergraduates in the United States, states that “the challenges of the new millennium are unquestionably global in nature. This reality imposes a new and urgent demand on Americans, one this country has been all too quick to ignore: international knowledge and skills are imperative for the future security and competitiveness of the United States” (2003, iv). By contrast, studies of international students are largely limited to examining adjustment, psychological well-being, and educational engagement, with rare attention to how students’ experiences shape, challenge, and build upon their existing views and experiences as citizens (Al-Sharideh and Goe 1998; Zhao, Kuh, and Carini 2005). Yet international students’ notions of citizenship are hardly negligible given our present time of political instability, the growing role of the United States in global relations, and the recent challenges to international education following the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Coming into intense contact with the U.S. geopolitical and

Environment and peoples in French Guiana: ambiguities in applying the laws of the French Republic

French Guiana is geographically part of Amazonia. It features a high degree of cultural diversity and it is integrated politically into France and Europe. For this reason it is subject to the same legislation as the rest of the French Republic. Locally, the diversity of the cultures and forms of knowledge results in different perceptions of sustainable management and the conservation of biodiversity. Now these questions are being raised at the worldwide level, they are as much a matter of the collective action of the State as of the individual consciousness of each citizen. In a multi‐ethnic context they must in addition take account of the local communities, both to integrate their diverse experiences and to ensure their well‐being. However, the way in which the rules decided upon in Paris are applied takes scanty account of the specificities of this overseas territory. Through various examples taken from matters concerned with the compulsory attribution of French citizenship and territorial planning, we will address the major environmental issues currently subject to disagreement: the maintenance of the traditional activities of the local forest‐dwelling populations, the development of their knowledge and know‐how, the sustainable development of inland communes, the management of protected areas, and even the project of creating a vast national park. Finally, avenues worth exploring will be proposed as a way to get out of this impasse.

The Citizenship Deficit: On Being a Citizen Child

Jacqueline Bhabha discusses what it means for a child to be a citizen in today's globalizing world, given that many of the cardinal attributes of citizenship – including the right to vote, to serve on a jury and to stand for public office – are denied children. No other group of citizens has such partial access to the benefits of membership. She suggests that citizenship is a neglected, undervalued status for children, because the attributes of citizenship are routinely evaluated from an adult-centred viewpoint. In conclusion, she suggests that, as a matter of equity and sensible public policy, children's citizenship needs to be given a different weight.

The cosmopolitan scope of republican citizenship

This essay aims to show that republicanism does not necessarily preclude the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship. The first part challenges the belief that republican citizenship must be tied to a nationalist reading, therefore reducing its cosmopolitan extension to a mere metaphor. Having argued that the political attributes and philosophical account of the notion of citizenship evolve according to the historical transformation of political communities, our contemporary era renders the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship plausible. Far from being irreconcilable, liberal cosmopolitanism has much to gain from republicanism since a thorough analysis of globalization reveals the limitations of the traditional liberal understanding of electoral and representative democracy. The second part of this article suggests that the republican theory of contestatory democracy enables us to better define the political attributes of cosmopolitan citizenship within a liberal conceptual framework.

Ironies of Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil

Despite the transition from authoritarian rule to a democratically elected government in 1985, there remains in Brazil a persistent gap between the formal principles and the actual practices of democracy. The gap is particularly manifest in the daily contacts between citizens and representatives of state authority, especially regarding the treatment ofAfro-Brazilians. Analyses of the' regulated. and relational character of citizenship in Brazil, as well as observations about the attitudinal dispositions of the members of the criminaljustice system, suggest thatAfro-Brazilians are likely to benefitfromfewer protections compared to whites and are more likely to suffer discrimination at the hands of the police. Analyses of the 1988 National Household Survey (PNAD-88) support both hypotheses: Net of statistical controls for key socioeconomic indicators, AfroBrazilians are more likely than whites to be the victim of assault, and they are more likely to be assaulted by the police. Thefindings show how the perceptions of class, color, and criminality produce differential protections and treatments inconsistent with the attributes of universal citizenship. Our analysis points more generally to theformidable institutional and cultural challenges that confront the attempt to fully consolidate a democratic regime in Brazil. The demise of authoritarian rule in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay represents a critical watershed in the contemporary political history of Latin America.' Yet, for all of the attention that these events have received, it appears that the fundamental dilemmas posed by the wave of regime changes that took

Jus Sanguinis in Japan The Origin of Citizenship in a Comparative Perspective

1. Introduction The transmission of Japanese citizenship follows the principle of jus sanguinis (by parentage). Non-Japanese immigrants and their descendants, even if they were born in Japan, remain foreigners unless they go through the process of naturalization. The rule emphasizing descent rather than birthplace appears to fit well with the image of the ethnically exclusive nature of contemporary Japanese society. However, its original codification dates back to the late nineteenth century, and one cannot simply assume that the goal of ethnic homogeneity led to descent-based citizenship. This paper examines the origin of jus sanguinis in Japan as an illustration of the emergence of membership criteria in the modern state. Three European cases - Britain, France and Germany - provide a comparative perspective. I will argue that in Japan, as in the three European countries, the initial adoption of particular membership criteria had little to do with conceptions of nationhood or nationalism. The paper identifies other determinants of the principle of citizenship, including legal practices prior to the emergence of the modern state, the state's efforts to organize the populations subject to its rule, and domestic and international security concerns. 2. Analytical Framework Full citizenship, or 'nationality,' defines formal membership in a state. Two legal principles govern the attribution of citizenship at birth: jus soli (by birthplace) and jus sanguinis (by parentage). Under the system of jus soli, second-generation immigrants who are born in the host society acquire citizenship, whereas under jus sanguinis they remain non-citizens.(1) Another principle that may be combined with these two is jus domicili (by residence). This is a principle in which citizenship rights and duties are extended on the basis of long periods of residence rather than origin. How did cross-national differences in citizenship criteria emerge? What produces and sustains different principles? In his comparative study of French and German citizenship, Brubaker (1992) demonstrates how conceptions of nationhood are related to the principle of citizenship. In his view, an expansive, assimilationist understanding of the French nation led to the adoption of jus soli for second-generation immigrants, whereas an ethnocultural understanding of the nation has supported jus sanguinis in Germany. However, the legal practices of defining state membership, or distinctions between subjects/citizens and foreigners, had developed before the era of modern national states. Jus soli in England originated from the feudal relationship between the lord and the subject.(2) In France, the parlements between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries developed a set of criteria for defining who was or was not French, with emphasis on one's birth and residence in the French territory (jus soli and jus domicili components) (Wells, 1995; Brubaker, 1992:37-38). In Germany, member states in the German Confederation developed an inter-state system for organizing state membership in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. Out of concern for the influx of the migrant poor (also 'Germans') from neighboring states, they adopted jus sanguinis as the principle of transmission of state membership (Brubaker, 1992:64-71). In all of these cases, the initial adoption of particular rules about the attribution and transmission of membership had little ideological justification. Yet these original patterns of membership attribution were carried over to the modern era and formally codified into citizenship and nationality law. Given that citizenship criteria are not a mere reflection of the prevailing self-understanding of the nation, other factors help explain the adoption of a particular principle of citizenship attribution and rules about naturalization. They include the following: (a) State formation and previous legal practices The British and French examples suggest that feudalism, empire and monarchy in general are more conducive to jus soli than to jus sanguinis. …

Physical Education: Part of the Learning Process

skills to be enhanced. The next step to determine the particular courses, and their sequence, that would give students an understanding of the world. These core courses would be the same in each school in a district. Whereas some people would insist . . . that what one learns, and should learn, from the humanities will differ according to one's race, ethnicity, gender, political preference, or social class (Finn, Ravitch, and Fancher 1984, 247), Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn reject such a view as unintentionally . . . antidemocratic and essentially confining rather than liberating. If desirable attributes of character and citizenship vary with the color of one's skin, the creed of one's church, the wealth of one's parents, or the birthplace of one's great-grandparents, then the humanities may as well not be taught at all, for the concept has been drained of its essential meaning (248). Secondary students must be given a substantial core background in a clearly defined sequence of social studies courses that provides them with the interpretations and understandings of their own political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural heritage within the framework of the larger world and its cultures. Second, teachers, as a group, need to determine the appropriate delivery system(s) for this content and skilldevelopment program. New technologies give social studies teachers and their students immediate access to much current informa ion. These technologies, by providing alternative delivery systems, allow social studies educators to individualize assignments and activities to address student's specific cultural and intellectual interests within the broad scope of a core curriculum. Finally, given the politically volatile nature of the social studies curriculum, parental and community support must be solicited from the very outset to insure the success of a district's program. This solicitation is an ongoing process that takes into account the constantly changing demographics affecting each school. In the final analysis, however, it is educators who must assure the responsibility for seeing that each student leaves school with an appreciation of the total world community and his or her place in it.

French Feminists and the Rights of ‘Man’: Olympe de Gouges's Declarations

For women, the legacy of the French Revolution was contradictory: a universal, abstract, rights-bearing individual as the unit of national sovereignty, embodied, however, as a man. The abstraction of a genderless political subject made it possible for women to claim the political rights of active citizens and, when denied them in practice, to protest against exclusion as unjust, a violation of the founding principles of the republic. The equally abstract gesture of embodiment the attribution of citizenship to (white) male subjects complicated enormously the project of claiming equal rights, for it suggested either that rights themselves, or at least how and where they were exercised, depended on the physical characteristics of human bodies. There is no denying the presence of bodies of the physical traits of sex and skin colour in the political debates of the French Revolution. Whether we take the conflicting opinions expressed during the writing of constitutions, the arguments about slave, mulatto or women's civic rights propounded by Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet or Robespierre, the contrasting reflections of Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft, or the minutes

High School Extracurricular Activities and Political Socialization

High school extracurricular activities are a source of the informal status networks in American secondary schools. The status networks and the norms upon which they are based do not inculcate values which stress the intrinsic worth of edu cation. Extracurricular activities are also supposed to teach the attributes of good citizenship. This study found no direct relationship between participation in high school extracurricu lar activities and attitude toward politics. The teen-ager who participates feels more integrated into the informal high school status system, This feeling of integration is associated with social trust. The more socially trusting teen-agers have a more positive attitude toward politics. Teen-agers from work ing-class backgrounds participate least, but are most likely to see the informal status system as open. It was inferred that these students were insulated by a belief in equality of oppor tunity from a direct awareness of how the status system actually operates.