Citizenship Debate Research Articles

Lonely Business or Mutual Concern: The Role of Comparative Education in the Cosmopolitan Citizenship Debates

Lonely Business or Mutual Concern: The Role of Comparative Education in the Cosmopolitan Citizenship Debates

The Citizenship Debate and Theatre for Young People in Contemporary Scotland

In this article Adrienne Scullion reviews the citizenship debate in education policy within contemporary – and specifically post-devolution – Scotland. She identifies something of the impact that this debate has had on theatre-making for children and young people, with a particular focus on projects that are participatory in nature. Her key examples are drawn from TAG Theatre Company's ‘Making the Nation’ project, a major three-year initiative that sought to engage children and young people throughout Scotland in ideas around democracy, politics, and government. Revisiting a classic cultural policy stand-off between instrumental and aesthetic outcomes, she asks whether a policy-sanctioned emphasis on process, transferable skills, and capacity building limits the potential for theatre projects to develop other kinds of theatre skills, such as critical reading and/or spectatorship. With its emphasis on participatory projects rather than plays for children and young people, the article complements her earlier essay, ‘“And So This Is What Happened”: War Stories in New Drama for Children’, in NTQ 84 (November 2005). Adrienne Scullion teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow.

From Welfare State to Social Development: Winning the War of Words in New Zealand

This paper examines how ‘welfare state’ and ‘welfare’ have been displaced by a ‘social development’ agenda within New Zealand. The discussion outlines a growing attention to language and the place of vocabulary and discourse as a valid research agenda. The paper then traces the end of welfare and the rise of ‘social development’, assessing the impact on citizenship debates. It suggests reasons why ‘social development’ must be handled carefully given its assumptions around temporality, its elevation of the market, the diminishing of the social, the stunted vision of development and its peculiar view of progress.

THE IRISH TASKFORCE ON ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP – THE CLEAR ANALYSIS

Recent debates on citizenship in Ireland have ranged from minimalist legalistic definitions of Irish citizenship to efforts to encourage active citizenship. This article deconstructs the active citizenship debates of the Democracy Commission, the Democratic Audit and the Taoiseach's Taskforce on Active Citizenship, concluding that active citizenship involves social capital, deliberative democratic mechanisms and a readiness to take part in the more formal aspects of public life. The CLEAR framework developed by Lowndes, Pratchett and Stoker incorporates these three dimensions of active citizenship and is applied to the recent recommendations on active citizenship in Ireland. The CLEAR analysis concludes that the taskforce's recommendations go furthest in terms of active citizenship. The promotion of social capital features strongly in its recommendations, compared with the Democracy Commission's approach, which lays greater stress on the deliberative and readiness to take part in the more formal part of public life sections.

Estudos sobre recepção midiática e educação no Brasil

Este trabalho esboça panorama sobre a evolução dos estudos relacionados à recepção midiática e sobre como a escola brasileira se apropriou dessas idéias. Problematizam-se, então, características das propostas da área de Comunicação para a formação midiática, sugerindo-se uma perspectiva 'escolar' para essa formação: centralidade na formação histórico-política do professor e na delimitação de um território específico para a discussão sobre cidadania dentro da escola.

Citizenship Debates in the New Germany

Nowhere is the fear, guilt, and pain of Germany’s dreadful past more evident that in contemporary debates over immigration policy. This debate has pit successive Christian Democratic Union politicians, who define Germany in ethno-nationalist terms, against the German left, which seeks to replace the volkish national tradition with a post-national multicultural identity. Ethno-nationalists and multicultural post-nationalists speak powerful, but mutually exclusive, moral languages that galvanize large segments of the German public. At the national level, extremists rarely succeed in Germany’s immigration debates, and the legislation that prevails represents a chaotic mix of liberal and nationalist policies.

The Canadian Hispanic Day Parade, or How Latin American Immigrants Practise (Sub)Urban Citizenship in Toronto

In this paper I explore immigrants' notions and practices of citizenship, and how these contribute to the citizenship debate. In order to achieve this, I examine Latin American immigrants' struggle for belonging in Toronto by looking at the Canadian Hispanic Day Parade. This multicultural celebration of ethnic diversity takes place in a marginalized suburban neighbourhood of the city, and I argue that Latin Americans use it to affirm the existence of a Latin American identity and community in Toronto. But, while the parade serves to contest dominant representations of immigrants, visible minorities, and the disadvantaged, it also reveals how forms of community mobilization can internalize neoliberal social relations and even promote a neoliberal agenda. The aim of the paper is to reflect upon the political potential of ethnic celebrations, as well as the constraints and complexities of immigrant citizenship practice within the contemporary context of Canadian multiculturalism and neoliberalism.

Dual Citizenship Debates in Armenia: In Pursuit of National Identity since Independence

Abstract: Dual citizenship has been a highly contested issue in Armenia since independence. Contesting perceptions of Armenian national identity have largely contributed diverging policies on dual citizenship. On the one hand, pragmatists have emphasized state security concerns, endorsed a civic type of national identity and rejected dual citizenship. Nationalists, on the other, have emphasized pan-national/ethnic security concerns, endorsed an ethnic vision of national identity and advocated dual citizenship based on ethnic criteria. Following a liberal nationalist approach, this article argues that national identity is not just a function of a pre-existing ethnicity or religion. It is primarily a political phenomenon and requires shared political experiences within a bounded political community. Therefore, granting citizenship diaspora Armenians with different political experiences and worldviews most probably will restrict the capacity for self-determination among local citizens and will aggravate the existing democratic deficit and endemic lack of trust in government. Key words: Armenia, democracy, dual citizenship, national identity, nationalists, pragmatists ********** Constitutional amendments a pivotal political issue for Armenia. (1) Among several changes that the amended constitution does not contain is a clause banning dual citizenship, specified in Article 14 of the constitution. (2) The issue of dual citizenship in Armenia has been at the heart of political debate since independence. As the National Assembly's (NA) Deputy Speaker, Ara Sahakyan, announced in 1994, debates around dual citizenship and citizens' rights and obligations divided the NA into two extreme poles. (3) This article discusses two interrelated themes. First, it will present official and opposition attitudes on dual citizenship in Armenia from 1994 2005. In this section it will be argued that the dual citizenship debate in Armenia is essentially a result of differing perceptions of national identity. While the pre-1998 official discourse on national identity clearly leaned toward a civic type, the post-998 official discourse is marked by a tendency toward an ethnic definition of national identity. A great deal of the literature on citizenship indicates that the historical link between citizenship and nationality is disappearing as a result of processes such as globalization and the proliferation of human rights. The importance and impact of those processes is undeniable. Yet the Armenian case indicates that the current debates on citizenship also debates about nationhood. As William Rogers Brubaker argues, debates on citizenship are debates about what it means, and ought mean, be a member of a nation-state in today's increasingly international world. (4) Moreover, while adopting international norms and the standardized language of universal rights, states in a position mold and adjust the discourse domestic priorities and security concerns. Second, based on the theory of liberal nationalism, an argument will be made against dual citizenship in Armenia. It will be argued that concessions and tolerance possible only when there is trust within ethical communities, that is, states whose citizens have special moral obligations each other, but not outsiders. (5) The sense of shared national identity (based on shared political experiences), and belonging a bounded political community, helps sustain the trust and solidarity needed for citizens to accept the results of democratic decisions and the obligations of liberal justice. (6) Some Theoretical Considerations on Civic and Ethnic Typology of National Identity Since the mid-twentieth-century, scholars have categorized nationalism based on a Western/civic/liberal and Eastern/ethnic/organic definition. According this definition, civic national identity, which emerged in the late sixteenth-century in Western Europe, and later in North America, is based on concepts of individual liberty, choice, and rational cosmopolitanism. …

Citizenship at Home and Abroad

Editor's Note: What is the meaning of citizenship in the context of globalization? The proliferation of transnational organizations in the postwar era coupled with the internationalization of human rights and the rise of supranational governmental institutions have led some observers to claim a kind of postnational citizenship is emerging with its own set of benefits and burdens that is related to, yet distinct from, citizenship within any given country. Generally speaking, this burgeoning debate over postnational citizenship has been organized around two related questions. First, there is the question of what Thomas Pogge (2004) has called the morality of citizenship, that is, how should the role of citizen be designed and performed. In response to this question, scholars have disagreed not only about the specific elements of citizenship that ought to be preferred, but also about the very idea of citizenship as a single ideal that can be meaningfully theorized across different political settings. Second, there is the question offeasibility: what kind of shared citizenship is actually possible in a world made up of separate nation-states? In reacting to this question, scholars have disagreed about how the political relationships within and between sovereign states shape and constrain postnational citizenship, either making possible a wholly new type of transnational citizenship or simply permitting a new projection of national citizenship abroad. In an effort to advance discussion of the central questions in the postnational citizenship debate, the Sawyer Law and Politics Program at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs solicited five essays. With an eye toward the normative ideals and practical possibilities of postnational citizenship, the authors were asked to consider the conventional practices of citizenship out of which--and against which--new kinds of citizenship are thought to be growing. The resulting essays are presented here in edited form. The first two essays, by Margarita Este'vez-Abe, Glyn Morgan, and Jill Frank, squarely address the normative question of how citizenship ought to be structured. Este'vez-Abe and Morgan argue that citizenship ought to be structured around the maximization of individual choice, discovery, and invention. The authors root their argument in the observation that highly productive advanced industrial societies depend on the capacity for individual creativity. These societies and the ways in which they are organized must be taken seriously for reasons of power. In short, today, one either lives within an industrially advanced society or risks being dominated by one. Indeed, for Este'vez-Abe and Morgan, these societies not only are powerful, but they also are worthy of praise because they can promote social well-being through properly organized markets and appropriately crafted social policies. In contrast, Frank rejects the idea that good citizenship can be measured according to some fixed standard of law or institutional design. Drawing on a close reading ofAristotle's political philosophy, Frank argues that citizenship ought to be understood as an activity guided by practical wisdom and preserved by virtue. The hallmark of good citizenship is not an ideal of creative individuality, as Este'vez-Abe and Morgan would have it, but an ongoing practice of

Slaves, Immigrants, and Suffragists: The Uses of Disability in Citizenship Debates

In an article published nearly two de-cades ago, Joan Scott discussed the difficulty of persuading historians to take gender seriously. A common response to women's history was that “women had a history separate from men's, therefore let feminists do women's history, which need not concern us,” or “my understanding of the French Revolution is not changed by knowing that women participated in it.” Despite the substantial number of works on women's history, the topic remained marginal in the discipline. Simply adding women to history, Scott argued, while necessary and important, would not be sufficient to change the paradigms of the profession. To accomplish that, feminists had to demonstrate that gender was “a constitutive element of social relationships” and “a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (1055, 1067).

Exoticising Citizenship: Anthropology And The New Citizenship Debate

L'A. propose quelques reflexions sur la contribution de l'anthropologie au nouveau discours - post-liberal, post-nationaliste, et post-communiste - sur la citoyennete, discours marque par la problematisation des notions d'egalite et de liberte, et par l'articulation des notions de droits de l'homme et de difference culturelle. Comment developper une anthropologie post-coloniale engagee tout en conservant la distance caracteristique de la demarche ethnologique ? Elle suggere qu'une theorie anthropologique de la citoyennete doit integrer la dimension theorique (histoire des idees) et pratique (terrain de revendication et d'action politique) de la citoyennete, et contribuer a la critique politique du faux universalisme revendique par la philosophie de la citoyennete. Elle soutient que les concepts developpes par l'anthropologie (pluralisme culturel, identite hybride, difference culturelle, categorie de sexe et politiques de la parente) sont au coeur du projet de citoyennete de la modernite. Le commentaire met en perspective la question de l'anthropologie de la citoyennete dans le contexte australien et reprend les questions du multiculturalisme et du feminisme evoquees par l'A.

Vocabularies of citizenship and gender: the UK

Citizenship has re-emerged as a key concept in late 20th century academic and political discourse in the UK. This article explores the changing nature of this discourse in mainstream political and in aca demic and activist debate. The latter both reflects the mainstream political debate and provides critical perspectives on it. In particular, it is here that we find a gender dimension and critical attention to differ ence. The article concludes by speculating about possible future directions in UK citizenship debates.

Citizenship: A Challenge to Teacher Education

This paper considers issues of democracy and citizenship firstly as they can be historically situated as part of ‘Scottish consciousness’. Whilst recognising Scotland's membership of the unitary state which currently characterises the United Kingdom, it goes on to point up more recent divergences in relation to the political, social and economic contexts of education in Scotland. The course process within which the research was pursued is outlined, and the salient features described. It is argued that in terms of reported behaviour in relation to a range of indices, for example voting behaviour and factual knowledge of policy processes and the machinery of government, the cohort described might legitimately be considered as less than active citizens, and to that extent dubious educators of young citizens. However, a more process oriented approach revealed more hopeful findings at the level of principle and values. Differences in the citizenship debate as between Scotland and England are noted, and implications of the research for teacher education and citizenship education in Scotland are suggested.

Civic Education in Cyprus — Issues in Focus: A Curriculum Research Study

This paper presents a curriculum research study aiming at investigating how citizenship in primary schools of Cyprus is constructed. First, the central issues, concepts and attitudes imported by civic education textbooks are identified and their relationship with the unresolved political problem of Cyprus is examined. Furthermore, the way in which civic education textbooks may affect the roles of the citizens is investigated. Content analysis of the civic education textbooks is performed on the basis of 12 factors which were the issues, concepts and institutions identified from the general aim of education in Cyprus as well as from the aims of civic education in primary schools. Findings are discussed in the light of the citizenship, social cohesion, conflict resolution and multiculturalism debate.

Different standards and standard differences: Contemporary citizenship and immigration debates

Basing social differentiation upon ascriptive characteristics is neither new nor novel. People vary. Societies differentiate people. They classify some of their variation. Most societies make distinctions of gender and age: "males" are not the same as "females" and "the young" are not the same as "the elderly." In many societies, the common classifications of criminality, mental health, race, sexuality, and intelligence have produced standard groups of "murderers," "madmen," "blacks," "lesbians," and "idiots." 1 But not all human variation is significant in all cultures. Nor does the mere existence of difference necessarily imply its broader import. "For reasons of convenience, power, or moral judgment, we select from among a myriad of traits and then sort people, objects and situations into categories which we then treat as real."2 Classificatory processes reflect unique cultural mappings of distinct political landscapes and constitute particularistic social categories. Discrete meanings and consequences are then associated with these categories.

Citizenship education: Australian and Singaporean perspectives

The issue of what it means to be a citizen of a country is currently on the educational agenda in both Australia and Singapore. It seems that over the years, both nations have realised that the schooling system is a powerful and effective vehicle through which a country’s united vision can be disseminated, and through which individuals can be encouraged to make a valuable contribution to the national good. For a variety of reasons, however, the nature of a united vision appears to be problematic for both Australia as well as Singapore. With both countries being considered, this paper presents a brief history of the citizenship debate; reports on the current status of this debate; explores the place and role of the schooling system in citizenship education; suggests what the two countries have in common and how they can learn from each other; and offers suggestions for essentials which need to be incorporated into any citizenship education program which may be envisaged.

Immigration and citizenship debates: reflections of ten common themes.

"This article begins with the view that access to citizenship and to citizenship rights has become the principal object of struggle between immigrants and the rest of society in Western Europe.... In examining ten recurring themes of current debates on immigration and citizenship, the author hopes to summarise and critically examine the main arguments. The article also tries to show that arguments against the extension of rights to immigrants generally give priority to collective rather than individual rights. In this way, human rights violations towards immigrants are sanctioned (and sometimes even recommended) by socialist and conservative writers alike.... This article concentrates on themes relating to the acquisition of citizenship in the metropolitan state by immigrants from the former colonies." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)

The Citizenship Debate: Women, Ethnic Processes and the State

As 1992 is fast approaching, and with all the implications of the Single European Act, many questions arise as to the nature of the future European society, and how relationships between individuals, social groupings, states and the European institutions are going to be affected and shaped. One of the central as well as general questions which arises in this context is what will be the fate, in this 'new Europe', of those social groupings that at present have secondary access to state powers, such as ethnic minorities and women. There is a real danger that the common denominator among the different European states would be the lowest common denominator and that, while some of Europe's inhabitants would get higher degrees of freedom and mobility, others would be doubly discriminated against (Gordon, 1990). It is not surprising, therefore, that 'citizenship' has become a very popular subject of debate recently, appropriated by both Left and Right. Citizenship, not just in the narrow formalistic meaning of having the right to carry a specific passport, but citizenship as an overall concept which sums up the relationship between the individual and the state. As Melanie Philips (1990) has put it, 'There appears to be a great yearning for it, even though no one actually knows what it is'. This paper examines some of the problems that the treatment of the subject of citizenship in the literature reveals. In particular, the paper looks at various attempts by the Left and feminists to resolve the question of citizenship and social difference, especially in regard to ethnic minorities and women. The basic position of this paper is that, for an adequate theory of citizenship, the examination of the differential access of different categories of citizens to the state and the implications this has on relations of domination, is of central importance. At the same

The Citizenship Debate: Women, Ethnic Processes and the State

The Citizenship Debate: Women, Ethnic Processes and the State