Political Citizenship Research Articles

Between citizenships: questions of home among the Burmese Indian repatriates

ABSTRACT The 300,000-strong community of Indian repatriates from Burma remain torn between a place they call home and the unresolved questions of citizenship. The Indian community in Burma, whom I term the Burmese Indians, was repatriated to India following the military coup and nationalisation in 1962 and endured a considerable loss of livelihood, home, and friends. Their recreated living spaces in the Indian cities of Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Delhi, and Calcutta are by default and design prefaced with Burma; hence, ‘Burma Bazaar,’ ‘Burma Colonies,’ ‘Burma Markets,’ and ‘Burma Camps.’ This essay explores their citizenship forms, paying particular attention to civic and political citizenship, memory citizenship, and forms of belonging based on interviews with the repatriates.

‘To the Future Turned, We Stand’: Progress and the Temporal Politics of Citizenship in the German Democratic Republic

In both parts of post-war Germany, the promise of progress played a central role in imagining and implementing new frameworks of social belonging and their formalization in the institution of citizenship. This article investigates how ideologies of progress were employed by various political and cultural actors in East Germany to support processes of citizenship formation and the consolidation of an independent statehood. I open with a brief historical discussion to argue that discourses of progress and futurity have played a significant role for all modern nation states independently of their ideological positioning. I will then proceed to show that the GDR, together with other socialist states, stands out in this regard due to the extent that its temporal politics were both modelled by and predicated on the particularity of its economic paradigm: the centrally planned economy. Following an analysis of the realm of formalized politics I will discuss how ideologies of progress manifested and were critically reviewed in the realm of literary production.

Negotiating infrastructural citizenship beyond the state: philanthropy, non-profit organizations, and the Flint Water Crisis

ABSTRACT The urban infrastructure literature has explored how infrastructure is tied to the politics of citizenship: states’ use of infrastructure to include/exclude populations and marginalized populations’ use of infrastructure to claim fuller citizenship. Often, this literature focuses on the relationship between governments and city dwellers, neglecting the role of other actors, like NGOs and philanthropic organizations, that influence infrastructural citizenship. A hallmark of neoliberalism in the Global North has been the transfer of responsibilities from the state to the non-profit sector, increasing these organizations’ power to shape urban citizenship. This paper examines how non-profit organizations participate in the politics of infrastructural citizenship by analyzing their role in providing emergency water infrastructure following the Flint Water Crisis. This process has been contradictory: the actions of these organizations have served as a lifeline in the face of state-enacted infrastructural violence, but also incorporate new inequalities into the infrastructural citizenship of Flint residents.

Touching Back while Black: Self-Defence and the Politics of Black US Citizenship in Paul Green’s In Abraham’s Bosom

Considering the critical methods of performance studies, critical race studies, and sensorial studies, this article analyses the creation of social identities through the rubric of touch – a tactile sensibility that provides a cultural foundation for the mis perception of bodies as racialized subjects. Touch has been an under-researched and under-utilized methodology for understanding how race works. Specifically attending to the historical period of Jim Crow in the early twentieth century because of its deeply held investments in the politics of separateness, this article examines Paul Green’s 1926 Pulitzer Prize–winning play In Abraham’s Bosom as one of the rare dramas during this period that actually showed Black acts of touching back on the stage. Green challenges his audience to contend with an oppressive Jim Crow racial regime that forced African Americans to establish alternative modes of freedom outside of more traditional expressions of autonomy and citizenship. Reading Green’s work in this way allows for a consideration of the differing strategies at play in the fight toward equality for Black Americans. Taking up tactility, in the context of the United States, as a cultural system used to mark bodies as raced and weaponized to uphold white supremacy, this essay approaches touch as a performative act that is meaningful, effective, and consequential, thereby grappling with the present ways that American society underestimates the social, political, and cultural power that touch wields in our understanding of social identities.

Capturing the Border in Refugee Solidarity Camp Visits and City Tours in Germany: Theorizing Relationality through the Border as Horizon in Refugee/Migrant Solidarity Activism as Citizenship Politics

Abstract This article explores the idea of the border as a connective space using the concepts of ‘border’s capture’, ‘borderizations’, and ‘border as horizon’ to highlight ‘practices of relationality’ where borders ‘run the risk of themselves being captured’. This article discusses refugee/migrant solidarity activism as citizenship politics through two examples from Germany across different snapshots in time, illustrating bordering through the camp and the dispersal of borders throughout the city. This article shows why ‘border’s capture’ is central to solidarity mobilizing as citizenship politics, exploring how borders, while integral to violent orderings, are also productive of relations across them in ways that transgress physical and ontological borders of status and belonging. This article argues for conceptualizing the border as horizon to highlight relationality and shows through the two examples why doing so matters politically in terms of how we relate to those identified as ‘outsiders’.

Policing the Pueblo: Vagrancy and Indigenous Citizenship in Oaxaca, 1848–1876

Abstract This article explores the politics of citizenship in Zapotec communities in nineteenth-century Oaxaca, Mexico. Several studies discuss how Indigenous peoples were incorporated into the Mexican nation-state during this period, but few have examined how state law and Indigenous customs meshed to produce modern Mexican citizenship. This study examines the construction of Mexican citizenship through Zapotec people’s experiences with vagrancy laws. For Indigenous peoples, two forms of citizenship existed: a republican citizenship that was reserved for all adult males and upheld by Mexican law, and an unwritten Indigenous citizenship that included both adult males and females. Based on close readings of criminal records, government reports, and correspondence between state officials and local Zapotec authorities in the Tlacolula Valley, this article demonstrates that, unlike Mexican citizenship, membership in Indigenous communities, which the author calls “Indigenous citizenship,” rested on members’ payment of state taxes and provision of financial and labor contributions for the pueblo (community). Those who refused to pay their state taxes or rejected the gendered customs of their pueblo were punished by the community: females were punished by the patriarchs of the family while males were punished through state institutions. As the state’s repressive institutions expanded throughout the course of the nineteenth century, Indigenous leaders found more recourse to punish males who failed to live “honorably” as members of Indigenous communities. Considering the interplay between Mexican and Indigenous citizenship, this article explores how Zapotec communities utilized vagrancy laws, in particular, to police and criminalize males who threatened Indigenous social life by behaving in dishonorable ways.

Actualization of Political Citizenship Through State Defense Education in The Youth Generations

Actualization of Political Citizenship Through State Defense Education in The Youth Generations

On (national) citizenship and (de)politicised nations: Everyday discourses about the Catalan secessionist movement

This paper examines the Catalan independentist movement understood as a paradigmatic case of secessionist politics in a European context. Drawing on recent rhetorical-psychological studies on citizenship and nationhood, we explore how constructions of citizenship and national identity interweave to shape, warrant, and contest opposing arguments about Catalan independence and Spanish sovereignty. We conducted a discursive-rhetorical analysis of thirty open-ended interviews and one focus group with Catalan residents that held different positions towards independence. The analysis shows that arguments for independence construct secession demands as a citizenship right that, in turn, assumes different versions of the Catalan national community. Arguments against independence reify the Spanish national identity by constructing it as a political community where all citizens have the same rights. Both argumentative poles position “the nation” as a core element in political citizenship discourses. Specifically, we argue that a diversity of citizenship formulations stressing democratic rights, practices, and political traditions, rhetorically work both to support and to challenge otherwise explicitly ethnic, cultural, and civic understandings of nationhood. The article advances a historically situated approach of citizenship and national categories attending to their specific rhetorical mobilisations in current independentist conflicts.

Politik Kewargaan: Melacak Perjuangan Kelompok Penghayat Kerohanian di Kota Malang dalam Mendapatkan Hak sebagai Warga Negara

This research aims to explain how spiritual groups in Malang City struggle to obtain their rights as citizens. This research is important to carry out as a benchmark for the obligations that the government should give in the form of rights as citizens to marginalized groups, in this case spiritual believers in Malang City, Malang City. By borrowing the theoretical framework of citizenship politics from Kristian Stokke, which divides citizenship into four dimensions, namely citizenship as legal status, citizenship as rights, citizenship as membership, and citizenship as participation. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods by collecting data through literature study, document study, interviews and observation. The results of this research show that spiritual groups in Malang City have made various efforts as a form of struggle to obtain various rights, namely membership rights, legal status as an organization or community, civil rights, social rights, political rights and participation rights. The findings of this study show that groups of religious believers in Malang City have proven to be very proactive and take initiative towards government institutions in various fields such as administration, education and the social sphere.

SEMANTICS OF RACE AND NATION IN CONTEMPORARY FRANCE

For centuries France has lauded a republican tradition that defines national belonging in terms of civic and legal parity. Within this conception of nationhood, race and ethnicity are seen as extraneous and inconsequential in extending the French citizenship to non-nationals. However, a historical survey of the politics of citizenship both within France and in the overseas departments yields a more complex narrative, where race and racialization have been problematically tethered to the practices and the politics of national belonging and the extension of the French civic parity. In the context of the recent presidential race, defined by the remarkable rise and appeal of the far-right, critical discussions around race and the racial politics of nation and national belonging have gained renewed currency, as several candidates mobilized longstanding themes of immigration and the anti-social impact of non-European ethnic settlement on meanings of Frenchness and the French national identity. This study seeks to analyze the recent electoral debates in light of the ongoing critical discussion around race and immigration in France. The prominence of immigration as a rallying point in electoral campaigning is viewed as a rather older development that can be traced back to at least the public discourse surrounding North African settlement in the 1980s and 1990s. An essential feature of this discourse is that it rearticulates and encodes “race” in more subtle, politically correct cultural idioms, notably “nation” and “endangered national French identity.”

The concepts of explicature, impliciture and the Coserian invariant/variant distinction in Spanish legal utterances

AbstractThis paper addresses the encoding and recovery of an implicit adjectival gender modifier in the statements on political citizenship in most Hispanic American constitutions before female suffrage was instituted. The modifier, which was intended to exclude women, was straightforwardly recovered because citizenship was at the time an exclusive right of men. Eventually, however, linguistic-legal indeterminacy arose when some judges and legislators manipulated a language-system fact, i.e., the dual meaning of masculine gender (marked and unmarked), to argue that the constitutional norm for citizenship included women. The modifier is analyzed in reference to the concepts ofexplicatureandimpliciture,which trace the distinction between explicit and implicit content in ways compatible with my analysis. Neither of the two concepts comprehensively accounts for the encoding and recovery of the modifier. The integral linguistic model of Eugenio Coseriu does so.

Analysis of the Influence of the Idea of a Closed Electoral System on Citizen Political Participation

The choice of an electoral system is fundamentally more of a political process and considerations of political advantage are almost always a factor in the choice of an electoral system. Furthermore, the electoral system itself is divided into two, namely an open proportional system and a closed proportional system. With an open proportional system, citizens can specifically choose their parties and candidates for the legislature. Meanwhile, in a closed proportional system, citizens can only vote for a party, later the party leader has the right to determine the party's legislative candidates. The author describes that a closed proportional electoral system has advantages and disadvantages. This system has the advantage that applying a closed proportional system can later reduce the campaign budget, so there is no need to waste too much money. However, on the other hand, this system has drawbacks, namely that this system receives a lot of rejection from citizens who feel that this system is unfair and can open up a wide space for party leaders to commit all acts of fraud. Basically whichever system is chosen will have a tendency towards one of these two goals. A closed electoral system affects the political participation of citizens. The reason is, this idea has reaped a lot of rejection by citizens because they feel that this system will open the door to fraud for party rulers and later candidates for legislative members can be more inclined to their party leaders and not to citizens, because they feel that those who elect them are party leaders.

초등 도덕과에서의 시민성 함양을 위한 통일교육

Objectives The purpose of this study is to derive the direction of unification education for the cultivation of citizenship in the elementary moral education based on Kant's view on perpetual peace.
 Methods By analyzing the literature related to unification education in elementary moral education, as well as Kant's literature on perpetual peace, this study reveals that Kant's discussion centered on the issue of ‘the unity of politics and morality’ is related to the cultivation of a moral citizen, and suggests a way to escape from the problem that unification education is not free from political circumstances. Next, the difficulty of unification education in the elementary moral education is analyzed based on the above discussion, an alternative approach is presented, and the direction of unification education is suggested.
 Results Kant's discussion shows that when the problem of morality is overlooked in the problem of real politics, it always results in a ‘political citizen’ or ‘political moralist’. Moral education needs to deal with the issue of unification based on the universal value of ‘peace’, and should focus on the formation of ‘moral citizens’ who aim for perpetual peace. In particular, if unification education is to be done through teaching, it needs to be done in a way that fits the nature of instruction.
 Conclusions Unification education through elementary moral education needs to aim for universal values such as perpetual peace, and when aiming for that, it is possible to teach that is free from the problem of indoctrination and that can cause a change in thinking.

Hollanda'da Göçmenler ve Vatandaşlık Eğitimi

The Netherlands is a significant example of citizenship education for other countries because of its distinctive citizenship politics based on immigration, and sexuality politics. This critical review focuses citizenship education curriculum in the Netherlands and highlights an understanding of how politically constructed educational objectives might endanger or support social cohesion and the integration of immigrants. This review, which is based on relevant literature, concentrates on secondary-level citizenship education because that level places the most emphasis on teaching civic principles based on citizenship policies, which have an emphasis on sexuality politics, Dutch nationality, and the assimilation of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society. The critical review of the current practices shows that there are two reasons for the failure to teach civic values to immigrant children and to create a harmonious relationship between locals and immigrants: 1) There is an inadequate explanation of how sexuality politics is connected to Dutch nationality in the school curriculum. 2) The political structure does not acknowledge that immigrant youth have a positive perception of understanding that sexuality politics is a component of Dutch nationality because of their political interests. Given the arguments, this discussion suggests that citizenship education curricula should give enough coverage to terms and concepts that are used to teach civic values and should have boundaries between politics and civic values to support the inclusion of immigrant communities.

Enlightenment Thinkers on Marriage

Two centuries after Montaigne's reflective discussion of marriage in the sixteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers also expressed their views on the issue of marriage. In his Letters to the Persians, Montesquieu expressed his desire for a "marriage of the heart", a contract in which the marriage should be based on the unity of the couple's temperament, and therefore the marriage should be dissolved if the temperament is not compatible. In addition, marriage is a matter of social welfare and interest, so the secular and religious powers should reconcile their handling of marriage matters and avoid conflicts between civil and religious laws as much as possible. Voltaire, on the other hand, fully supported the secularization of marriage and demanded a strict distinction between the content and the form of marriage, contract and sacrament. He claimed that the Church's interference in marriage matters would threaten the secular authority and lead to the disruption of the laws of the state. Secular authority should prevail, and religious law should not undermine civil law. Rousseau, on the other hand, saw good marriage as a necessary condition for the formation of political citizens. Marriage is not a "natural" situation, but rather it is related to the obligations and nature of the state, and thus the marriage relationship is essentially political. Although each of the three Enlightenment thinkers had a distinctive view of marriage, they also showed a striking consensus, especially in linking marriage to society, which was different from the individualistic view of marriage in the Renaissance. The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptions of marriage by Enlightenment thinkers to better understand the changes in the concept of marriage since the Renaissance and the issues of marriage before and after the French Revolution that underlie them.

The Indo-Myanmar Borderlands: Border Trade, Urbanisation and Ethnic Politics in Mizoram, India

Since the 1990s, the Government of India has undertaken several policy initiatives to facilitate cross-border flows. Such initiatives can be read as an effort to transform ‘battlefields into marketplaces’. This paper examines the rise of the border town of Champhai, located on the India-Myanmar border in the state of Mizoram in Northeast India. The formation of a new urban centre in a frontier region based on border trade reveals different dimensions of transition in Northeast India’s borderlands. The paper explores two key themes: how border trade, comprised of legal and illegal flows, has transformed Champhai into Mizoram’s third-largest city, and how increasing trade across the border reorients the interethnic dynamics with strong implications for ethnic and citizenship politics in Mizoram. The paper concludes by highlighting the different aspects discussed in the article that would determine the borderland dynamics in Mizoram.

Women’s Political Citizenship in Tunisia: The May 2018 Municipal Elections and the Gender Gap

The 2018 municipal elections in Tunisia were the first to be held after the 2011 Arab Spring revolution. A new 2017 law required gender parity on electoral lists, even for positions at the top of those lists. However, women were wary of being thrust into the political fray, and many felt they were being tokenized. What is the possibility of a new generation of female politicians emerging in such a context? To uncover the factors and motivations behind the transition from non-participation to participation, I interviewed six women candidates of different political parties and conducted a focus group with eight Tunisian women who professed to be “not interested in politics”. Compulsory gender parity might foster women’s political participation in quantitative terms, but qualitatively, especially with the tokenizing male practice of nominating women candidates and expecting their “docile compliance,” this policy effectively maintains and reinforces gendered stereotypes about political competence. My findings show that women move back and forth across the spectrum from “high participation” to “politically disengaged”. Furthermore, their relationship to political participation is best described as a cyclical process marked by punctual commitments and which can be hindered by internal and external factors or periods of hibernation.

The politics of eviction and citizenship in the Brahmaputra valley, Assam, India

ABSTRACT Floods and erosion have been among the primary factors to induce the displacement of indigenous Axomiya and the Miya communities in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. This trend has been observed since the last quarter of the twentieth century, and more prominently in the first decade of the twenty-first century. These displaced communities encountered eviction as their self-settlement in exclusive zones like forests, embankments or grazing lands were legally appraised as encroachments. Therefore, contested claims over land are a central concern in the governance and bureaucratic milieu of Assam. The eviction drive that was carried out in Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary of Guwahati in 2017 is regarded as one of the most vulnerable evictions of recent times. This article deals with the question of counter-insurgency operations of the State from the narrative of erosion, eviction and indigeneity. This study derives its data and inferences from primary modes of data collection, mainly field study and face-to-face interviews.

Educare, mobilitare, organizzare: linee di lettura del pensiero di Bhimrao Ramji “Babasaheb” Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is well known as one among the protagonists of India’s political history in the 20th century, as he played a major role in the struggle against the caste system, and in designing a pluralist and egalitarian democracy. Ambedkar’s intellectual legacy is a crucial tool for investigating the contradictions of the contemporary Indian political experience, and as such has much to offer to the international political-philosophical debate. This essay presents the main aspects of Ambedkar’s thought, focusing on themes such as his non-majoritarian conception of democracy, the tension between universality and difference in political citizenship, social and political equality, as well as his reflection on religious identity. Ambedkar’s intellectual profile will also be assessed in light of the ongoing debate on the status of a non-derivative Indian political thought.

Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship

Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship