Discourses Of Citizenship Research Articles

Choice paths in the Swedish upper secondary education – a critical discourse analysis of recent reforms

Decentralisation policy in Sweden emphasises school capitation allowance, the local upper secondary schools’ decision‐making and pupils’ choices in contrast to previous bureaucratic governing. The aim of this article is to discuss how pupils’ educational choice paths are a part of the different kinds of integration and differentiation processes within upper secondary education. By doing so, the intention is to make a theoretical contribution to the ongoing discussion in this research field. In the light of Habermas’s theory of communicative action combined with Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, educational choice paths have been studied as a process within three educational practices in a local quasi‐market in Sweden: (1) choice of upper secondary school, (2) choice of upper secondary programme, and (3) choice of courses and subjects within a programme. Some of the results demonstrate that pupils’ choice paths can be vocation‐oriented, career‐oriented and consumption‐oriented. It is argued that these different types of choice paths are related to a market discourse. Other results demonstrate that pupils’ group‐oriented, interest‐oriented and tradition‐oriented choice paths are built upon an active citizenship discourse, which is about creating meaning in terms of seeking knowledge and establishing social relations in upper secondary education. The analysis of these two paramount discourses indicates that pupils’ integration and differentiation processes are ambiguous.

Citizenship and Sign Bilingualism: ‘… There is Nothing Wrong with Being Bilingual … it's a Positive and Fantastic Thing!’

The issue of the education of deaf children is addressed in relation to citizenship and sign bilingualism. Citizenship is a contested concept and those who advocate a sign bilingual approach use the discourse of citizenship when arguing for the value of their method, but so too do other approaches. The sign bilingual approach may benefit from a deeper exposition of the ways in which the concept of citizenship is being shaped, particularly by revealing the phonocentric nature of citizenship and the non-statist values of sign bilingualism. Citizenship, however, does not inevitably have to be phonocentric; sign bilingualism can draw on the concept of social justice to pursue the case for a holistic approach to the education of deaf children. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spirituality and Citizenship: Sacramentality in a Parable

The author finds resonance between the hitherto largely unrelated discourses of spirituality and citizenship. Drawing on Rahner's transcendental anthropology and Moltmann's sacramental theology of history, he proposes a spirituality that emphasizes the anonymous action of the Holy Spirit within a strong Christology. This proposal embraces the Social Quality model of citizenship and integrates Chantal Mouffe's notion of Radical Democracy. This model, with its emphasis on individuals' self-realization and their formation of collective identities in a social context, conceptually bridges the domains of spirituality and citizenship without sacrificing the integrity of either.

PARTIES, VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS, AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICS IN INTERWAR BRITAIN

ABSTRACTThe achievement of universal suffrage after 1918 stimulated new forms of democratic participation in Britain. These decades witnessed not only renewed efforts by political parties to mobilize the mass electorate, but also the establishment of new kinds of civic association, often secular in character, strongly invested in a discourse of active citizenship, and committed to creating and defending a space within associational life which was free of partisan or sectarian conflict. This article presents a fresh perspective on the political culture of interwar Britain by comparing and contrasting the experiences of four voluntary associations active during this period: the National Federation of Women's Institutes, Rotary International, the British Legion, and the League of Nations Union. It analyses their relationship with conventional party politics, rejecting the argument that these associations served as vehicles for middle-class anti-socialism, and concludes, instead, that their pluralist values and political centrism formed part of a wider response by political, religious, and educational elites to the challenge of class conflict, economic instability, and political extremism in the post-war decades.

Citizenship education in Ukraine and Russia: reconciling nation‐building and active citizenship

This paper examines the discourses framing citizenship education in Ukraine and Russia from perestroika to the present and assesses the role of the Council of Europe in promoting democratic citizenship in both countries. We argue that there is a tension between the discourses of active citizenship, strongly disseminated by international agencies (the Council of Europe in our case), and national consolidation, pursued by Ukraine and Russia since the fall of the Soviet regime. While the beginning of the 1990s was marked by democratization and individualization, from the mid‐1990s the emphasis on state cohesion became more prominent in both states. From the end of the 1990s, however, citizenship education aims started to diverge, despite a similar approach of the Council of Europe to the two countries. In Russia the government reinforced the state cohesion agenda, which led to the patriotic education discourse gaining strength. In Ukraine, nation‐building was made secondary to bringing the education system in line with international standards in order to improve the country’s competitiveness. The nature of citizenship education in the two countries therefore seems to be more a reflection of domestic political developments than the product of international policy agenda.

Half-hearted promises or wrapping ourselves in the flag: two approaches to the pedagogy of citizenship

Compulsory citizenship tests and ceremonies are some of the ways in which new British citizens must prove their commitment to their adopted nationality. Existing citizens, on the other hand, have to make no such outward show of commitment; neither do they have to prove any level of knowledge about the UK in order to claim their citizenship. These differing relationships to citizenship create different relationships to ideas of nation, nationality and belonging. This paper will examine two approaches to performances of citizenship. The first one was encountered in a citizenship ceremony in Manchester registry office and demonstrates a largely epistemological approach to citizenship. The second one was in a teaching situation with British undergraduate drama students, where a more ontological approach to citizenship was observed. Examining these two models of the pedagogy of citizenship through the lens of performance allows for a more subtle and complex understanding of current discourses of citizenship and belonging.

Citizenship and the Politics of Nature: The Case of Chile's Alto Bío Bío

To date, most treatments of ecological citizenship have been concerned with identifying the ways in which particular approaches to citizenship might provide political tools for working toward more sustainable futures. The present analysis builds on an alternate perspective, which instead treats nature and citizenship as dynamic interconnected sites of power relations. While not dismissive of the existing literature, this approach is partly informed by a concern for promoting a more democratic politics of nature, rather than simply “greener” practices of citizenship. Furthermore, it calls for a more empirically-based analysis of the way in which nature is politicized by different social actors. By way of putting this perspective into practice, the essay examines the case of a conflict over hydroelectric development on the Bío Bío River, in southern Chile, seeking to document the way that nature is constructed vis-à-vis the country's dominant citizenship regime, and also to identify the insurgent voices of alternate ecological citizenships. This is achieved by comparing the discourses of nature and citizenship employed by various actors in the conflict, including proponents of the dams, environmentalists, and the Pehuenche indigenous people, whose lands were at the centre of the struggle. While environmentalists and the Pehuenche can be seen to have advanced significant challenges to the market-based citizenship of Chile's post-dictatorship liberal democracy, the failure of the resistance ultimately led to a re-consolidation of the central ideological components of the existing eco-political order.

From Charity to Citizenship NPOs in Taiwan

This paper examines the historical formation of non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Taiwan. The charity discourse has been dominated among NPOs due to the Confucian and Buddhist traditions in the early twentieth century and reinforced by Western Christian charity organizations during the U.S. aid in the Cold War period. During the Nationalist government period, NPO was a means of social control for the so-called strongman authoritarian state. The political democratization since the mid 1980s has initiated a process of rapid expansion for the NPO sector as a sign for the emerging civil society. NPOs aimed at administrative advocacy and legislative lobby mark the birth of an autonomous civil society. These NPOs adopt citizenship discourse in their formation of group identity. Cases are presented and discussed to illustrate the particularity of each stage. As NPOs become significant players in public domain, the tension and struggle between civil society and state apparatus increase. The privatization strategy of social services by the state may have the effect of re-colonizing civil society.

Learning Selves And Citizenship: Gender And Youth Transitions

Discourses of citizenship have increasingly featured in social policies aimed at young people, particularly in relation to the promotion and crafting of ‘active citizens’. The inclusion of citizenship education in school curricula, the Learning and Skills development agency post-16 citizenship development programme, and the recent Green Paper Youth Matters, all speak of instilling in young people the rights and responsibilities that come with citizenship. In this article we draw on empirical work on youth transitions to explore the ways in which citizenship is learnt and lived by young people themselves. The article draws on some of the models of citizenship identified by Lister et al. (2003) in their study on young people's perceptions of citizenship, particularly considering them in relation to the gendered experiences and realities of youth transitions to adulthoods.

The Toronto Women's Bathhouse Raid: Querying Queer Identities in the Courtroom

AbstractIn 1998 the Toronto Women's Bathhouse Committee (TWBC) organized the “Pussy Palace”, Canada's first women's bathhouse event. Held semi‐annually at a gay male bathhouse in downtown Toronto, this newly emergent and potentially transgressive form of identity politics and spatial organizing caught the eye of the policing arm of the state; charges were laid and a public trial ensued. Through an analysis of the court decision and mainstream and alternative press coverage of the Pussy Palace, in this paper we explore the unstable and highly transitory operation of “queer” sexual citizenship within the confines of both the homonormativity of the gay and lesbian community and the regulatory regimes of the nation state. We argue that the policing and judicial institutions of the state seek to neutralize the potential transgressiveness of queer identities by absorbing them into hegemonic nationalist and citizenship discourses.

Wage Labor and Social Citizenship in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa

The scholarly literature on the South African democratic transition generally recognizes the decisive role of organized labor and black trade union organizations in the collapse of the apartheid regime. Labor's contribution in this regard was premised on a view of liberation that was not limited to the achievement of political rights and civil liberties, but crucially included a discourse of social citizenship enabled by expectations for employment creation, redistribution and decommodification of social provisions. Labor's social citizenship discourse was largely translated into the massive electoral support that the government of the African National Congress (ANC) has enjoyed since 1994. Conservative macroeconomic policies, and the deepening crisis of stable employment that have characterized the South African transition radically challenge, however, wage labor as an effective vehicle of social inclusion and the repository of collective identities and solidarity. The downgraded material conditions and the growing commodification of everyday life that confront a widening share of the black working class question the links between citizenship and wage labor emerged in past struggles. At the same time, the ANC government's social policies have turned the celebration of waged employment into a set of moral and pedagogical imperatives that prioritize labor market participation and the individual responsibility of the poor as alternatives to redistributive interventions regarded as conducive to welfare ‘dependency’. The article analyzes the shifting position of waged employment in relation to access to social services and social citizenship discourse in two specific cases: manufacturing workers in the East Rand region and employees of the Greater Johannesburg municipality.

Who Is the Citizen's Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship

The objective of this Article is to integrate legal and social conceptions of citizenship as they materialize at the geographic, political, and social border crossings that accompany transnational mobility. Rather than pose the question is the citizen?, I ask is the citizen’s Other?, partly as a means of surfacing what we mean by citizenship by thinking about who we designate as its alterity. Against the current of most contemporary scholarship, I commend resurrecting the concept of statelessness as an antipodal reference point for citizenship. My intuition is that a version of statelessness still dwells in the substratum of much citizenship discourse, and that rendering a plausible account of it under contemporary conditions may prove helpful in linking conversations about legal and social citizenship. I supplement the conventional understanding of the stateless person (apatride) as one who lacks any citizenship in a state by also designating as stateless one who possesses citizenship but lacks a state. My analysis draws on Hannah Arendt’s famous exegesis on the relationship between the apatride, the refugee, and the condition of rightlessness, as well as contemporary refugee jurisprudence. I demonstrate how subject positions commonly identified as the citizen’s Other, including the refugee, the alien and the second-class citizen, are better understood as nested within a larger matrix where the apatride represents the ultimate negation of citizenship. I then introduce the notion of the heft of citizenship as a method of assessing how legal citizenship and social citizenship interact to position an array of subjects between these stylized poles of citizenship and statelessness.

(In)Security and Citizenship: Security, Im/migration and Shrinking Citizenship Regimes

This Article points to a widening gap between citizenship theories and practices. Although discourses of citizenship resonate widely and are used extensively by scholars and policy makers, the author argues that the social, economic, political and even psychological processes of citizenship are shrinking in a contemporary context of global insecurity where im/migration and ever more restrictive national security concerns have become enmeshed in law, as well as in the public consciousness. As a result, this Article explores new trends of securitization and related processes of marketization, racialization and the invisibilization and/or instrumentalization of women and evaluates their impact on citizenship in Canada and Britain. A citizenship regime framework structures the analysis and highlights the contraction of citizenship in both countries. In the end, despite their purported concern with citizenship, social exclusion and social cohesion, British and Canadian state’s responses serve to perpetuate feelings of insecurity on the part of both citizens and non-citizens.

On the Borders of Europe: Citizenship Education and Identity in Cyprus

This paper is about the concept of and how it could be used as an educational framework to alleviate existing tensions regarding education and Euro-pean/national/state identity in the context of Cyprus. To this end, the paper serves both a descriptive and a normative agenda, in that it largely describes recent theoretical and political development in civics and education in Europe and in Cyprus, in order to explore, in the last part of the paper, the potential of using and citizenship as tools for reflection and dialogue over (Greek)-Cypriot and identity. The study of European citi-zenship is complicated due to its different meanings and associations with national identities; I argue that in Cyprus this is further complicated by a political problem of community conflict and partition, which has long been challenging peoples' national identities. Cyprus, an island lying on the borders of (traditional geographical definitions of) Europe and one of the European Union's most recent member-states needs to revisit its approaches to as a condition of EU membership. The paper illustrates how ongoing discussions and debates over the political problem of Cyprus render it extremely difficult to take decisive steps towards reconceptualising existing Greek-Cypriot civics and education curricula, exactly because notions of national identity have so far been inextricably interwoven into these curricula. It is proposed that a revisiting of the meaning of and the discourses of post-national, multicultural and European citizenship, as well as human rights and democracy might be useful tools to address and identity dilemmas deriving both from EU membership and the political problem in Cyprus.

Citizenship and sign bilingualism: ‘. . . there is nothing wrong with being bilingual . . . it's a positive and fantastic thing!’

The issue of the education of deaf children is addressed in relation to citizenship and sign bilingualism. Citizenship is a contested concept and those who advocate a sign bilingual approach use the discourse of citizenship when arguing for the value of their method, but so too do other approaches. The sign bilingual approach may benefit from a deeper exposition of the ways in which the concept of citizenship is being shaped, particularly by revealing the phonocentric nature of citizenship and the non-statist values of sign bilingualism. Citizenship, however, does not inevitably have to be phonocentric; sign bilingualism can draw on the concept of social justice to pursue the case for a holistic approach to the education of deaf children. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Afghan Hazara Refugees in Australia: Constructing Australian Citizens

This paper explores the construction of Australian citizenship, in particular contestations over membership in the community, through the interactions between two groups of people who live and work in a regional town in Australia: volunteer English language tutors and Afghan Hazara refugees who were granted temporary protection visas (TPVs). The paper examines the power relations which operate between the two groups and other relevant institutions. Of particular interest is the way the tutors and other groups tend to infantalise the Hazara through their efforts to ‘protect’ them and the way the Hazara in turn attempt to deal with and resist this treatment. In contrast to the mostly negative media images of Afghan refugees in the Australian media, the English language tutors construct and represent the Hazara using a discourse of citizenship, couched in terms of their membership in and economic contribution to the community. This membership is contested by certain groups when the Hazara are seen as not being adequately grateful for the help given to them by the community.

Remapping Worker Citizenship in Contemporary Occupational Health and Safety Regimes

The article draws on the rapidly growing field of citizenship studies to map and explore the dynamics of contemporary occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. Using two key dimensions of OHS regulation (protection and participation), the author constructs four ideal types of worker citizenship (market, public, private industrial, and public industrial citizens). Historically, workers have been written into OHS regulatory regimes in each of these ways. Most recently lawmakers have created a new species of OHS regimes, best described as mandated partial self-regulation. Its distinguishing characteristic is its flexibility, such that worker citizenship can take on any of the forms previously described, often without changing the statutory framework. Using Ontario as an example, the study finds that in the late 20th century, workers made significant strides toward public industrial citizenship and, surprisingly, even under a neoconservative government, workers successfully defended their participatory rights and saw their right to protection modestly strengthened through increased enforcement. The conditions under which this regime operates, however, constantly threaten to undermine the efficacy of worker participation rights and to weaken the enforcement effort. Some suggestions are made about using a citizenship discourse to revitalize the worker OHS movement and strengthen OHS rights.

Proposisi Kewargaan dalam Islam: Tafsir Baru Konsep Ummah

An Islamic term relating to discourse of citizenship is ummah. In Islamic terminology, the term is a unique one, and no other equal term of Western languages that has the same range of meaning as it does. While other terms—e.g. the people, the nation, or the state—are respectively limited under certain culture, ethnic, race, geography, language, historical element shared or combination of them all, the term of ummah goes beyond these all borders of meaning. This article is aimed at revealing the range meaning of the term ummah and reformulating it in the current modern context. The term is stated in the Qur’an 64 times in 24 different chapters, surah, through two expressions of meaning. First, it is used in homonym with several meaning like certain time, model, animals, related to term ummi , or genie. Secondly, it is used in terms of unification of religious community with its all branches. As comparison, in the Madinah Carter the term is used in two senses of meaning. First, in the article 1, with likely exclusive sense, it is used to mean an organization or community that shares a same religion. Secondly, in the article 25, with more inclusive sense, it is used to mean a pluralistic community that share or live in a socio-politic unity. The two kind of using the term ummah in the Qur’an and the Madinah Carter indicate that Islam has given clear identity to the concept of ummah , and taught a spirit of universality that is bundled by the spirit of shared faith brotherhood. The concept goes beyond the limitation of ethnicity, race, group, language, and territorial border, as what is going on in the Western knowledge and practices.

Contemporary Discourses of Citizenship

Meanings of “citizenship,” a concept that has informed teaching practices since nation-states first institutionalized schooling, are shaped over time and through cultural struggles. This article presents a conceptual framework for the discourses that currently construct the meanings of citizenship in contemporary Western cultures, particularly the United States. Using discourse analysis, the authors examine texts related to citizenship and citizenship education from 1990 through 2003, identifying seven distinct but overlapping frameworks that ascribe meaning to citizenship. The “civic republican” and “liberal” frameworks are the most influential in shaping current citizenship education; five others are the most active in contesting the terrain of citizenship practices in lived political arenas. The “transnational” and “critical” discourses have yet to significantly challenge the dominant discourses that shape citizenship education in schools. This article questions the view of political life in Western democracies that is promoted by the dominant discourses of citizenship in K–12 schooling.

Unequalizing Citizenship: The Politics of Poland’s Health Care Change

This article discusses health care change with respect to the transformation of the social order within Poland and transnationally. It considers the implications for health care equality and the understanding of citizenship, of a process of health care reform which constitutes part of a transition involving the formation of new power asymmetries based on poverty and wealth. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in Nowa Huta, the article shows how health care change has contributed to poverty and how the introduction of liberal democracy has been accompanied by the perception of a loss of health rights.The article questions the language of citizenship which underpins the aspiration for health equality in the EU, and indicates the implications of the occlusion of the politico-economic effects of capitalism in citizenship discourse.