Contemporary Citizenship Research Articles

Ethics of Commodified (Golden) Citizenship

The concept of citizenship has changed dramatically since the term was first used in ancient Greece. Recent citizenship debates have focused on the implications of commodified citizenship and growth of the “golden visa” market as these new schemes raise ethical and constitutional concerns. Paid-for citizenship schemes undermine the traditional notion of citizenship often marked by solidarity, rights and duties. Paid-for citizenship contradicts contemporary citizenship’s essential principle of equality. Therefore, the core challenge for Turkey and other countries offering paid-for citizenship is the unethical implications of distinguishing refugee/immigrant populations by financial capability in acquiring citizenship. While Turkey does not grant full-fledged refugee status to nonEuropean people and limit duration of their stay in Turkey, Citizenship by Investment programmes offer the rich people –including non-Europeansan opportunity to acquire Turkish citizenship. So, the new citizenship programme in Turkey is paving the way for discrimination based on the socioeconomic status of individuals. What’s more, this actually tends to push the citizenship concept into a narrow understanding despite the expansion of the modern citizenship concept towards more inclusive rights reaching beyond the boundaries of nation states. Taking this into account, this paper aims to illustrate the discrepancies between paid- for citizenship and refugee policies by highlighting the ethical questions arising from citizenship by investment programmes in Turkey.

Equality in Immigration Law: An Impossible Quest?

Abstract The aim of this article is to discuss why the principle of equality and non-discrimination, although foundational to international human rights law, remains an unfulfilled promise in the context of immigration. Nationality is now widely considered as a suspect ground of discrimination, yet contemporary immigration and citizenship laws increasingly use meritocratic criteria to distinguish among migrants. Although framed in universal terms, these criteria create differences of treatment among migrants based on their income, level of education and economic worth. However, from a legal perspective such differences of treatment rarely amount to prohibited discrimination. Looking at the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, this article argues that the normative content of the equality and non-discrimination principle fails to challenge such differences of treatment. Moreover, the proportionality test is used as a judicial restraint mechanism which prevents the effective enforcement of the equality requirement by international and domestic courts in the context of immigration.

Mass Media and the postmodern urban experience. From <em>Metropolis</em> to <em>Blade Runner</em>; from cinema to virtual reality

Since their inception in the XIX Century, mass media have been crucial in shaping the image of the urban environment on our collective subconscious. In the early 20th Century, newspapers and magazines bustled with exacerbated but fascinating images of the city of the future, which appeared as hyperbolic portrayals of the perception that the contemporary citizen had of his own effervescing modern environment. Cinema soon joined this process, as a privileged, mechanical eye that could record, analyse and reinvent the accelerated modern city and its evolution. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) epitomized the powers of the new medium, providing the viewers with a window that allowed them to see this Lacanian Other come alive, somehow encapsulating their own experience of the new urban reality. Over half a century later films such as Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) took the torch as fictional future representations of postmodern space that provided the postmodern citizen with a suitably hyper-real substitute of reality. Three decades after that, the videogames and virtual reality experiences based on those very films promise to break the final barrier, allowing us to cross to the other side of the membrane, and freely move through that which is, literally, an augmented reality.

News satire engagement as a transgressive space for genre work

News satire plays with the political in ways that transgress journalistic as well as social and moral boundaries. But the ways in which audiences in different contexts engage with news satire are under-researched, despite the implications of the genre’s role for contemporary citizenship. This article asks how Swedish young adult audiences construct and negotiate news satire’s inherent transgressions, spanning across the ‘serious’ and ‘silly’. Based on interview and focus group data, the analysis shows how sustained news satire engagement entails genre work that aids the development of ‘transgression skills’. This process is stimulating, constructed as part of a complex and emotionally authentic mode of political communication, within a context where journalistic certainty has dominated. By achieving transgression skills, audiences are symbolically put on the same level as political elites and develop abilities to shift perspectives; thereby experiencing a deeper engagement with, and understanding of, political issues and performance.

Heel Holland spoort op

Citizens investigating crimes themselves is a growing trend, because of democratization of information (e.g. social media), tools (e.g. apps) and knowledge (e.g. explanimations on YouTube). More and more citizens do their own research as modern Sherlocks. The police has to handle these trends in line with participant wishes and the law, but does not yet have concrete tools to do so. This article explores how the police participate in contemporary citizen criminal investigations, including the difficulties and benefits experienced. The obtained insights of the presented research serve as guidance, which can help police officers understand how to participate with citizens who have started, or want to start, a criminal investigation. The presented model explains how police can use it to better guide and stimulate, but also stop or protect citizens in their investigative activities. An app with professional guidance was piloted in four police units to participate with citizens that do their own research and learn from expectations and experiences. Citizens need guidance, but more importantly expect a certain degree of reciprocity in collaborating with police in criminal investigations.

Digital Identity and Distributed Ledger Technology: Paving the Way to a Neo-Feudal Brave New World?

While the digital layer of social interaction continues to evolve, the recently proclaimed hopes in the development of digital identity could be both naif and dangerous. Rather than just asking ourselves how we could digitize existing features of identity management, and corresponding financial transactions on a community or state level, we submit that truly useful and innovative digital identities need to be accompanied by some significant rethinking of the essential basics behind the organization of the world. Once digital technologies leave the realm of purely on-line or deeply local projects, the confrontation with the world of citizenship’s biases and the random distribution of rights and duties precisely on the presumption of the lack of any choice and absolute pre-emption of any disagreement comes into a direct conflict with all the benefits Distributed Ledger Technology purports to enable. Some proponents of Distributed Ledger Technology-based identity systems envisage ‘cloud communities’ with truly ‘self-sovereign’ individuals picking and choosing which communities they belong to. We rather see a clear risk that when implemented at the global scale, digital identity systems could be deeply harmful, reinforcing and amplifying the most repugnant aspects of contemporary citizenship. In this contribution we present a categorization of existing digital identity systems from a governance perspective, and discuss it on basis of three corresponding case studies which allow us to infer opportunities and limitations of Distributed Ledger Technology based identity. Subsequently, we put our findings in the context of existing preconditions of citizenship law, and conclude with a suggestion of a combination of several tests which we propose to avoid the plunge into a neo-feudal ‘brave new world’. We would like to draw attention to the perspective that applying digital identity without rethinking the totalitarian assumptions behind the citizenship status will result in perfecting the current inequitable system, which is a move away from striving towards justice and a more dignified future of humanity. We see the danger that those might be provided with plenty of opportunities who already do not lack such under current governance structures, while less privileged individuals will witness their already weak position becoming increasingly worse.

Communication, Socialization and Citizenship: Theoretical-Conceptual Bases to Understand the Expression of Contemporary Citizen Politics

This text reflects theoretically and conceptually on the contemporary political expression of citizenship - which we have also named as emergent, given its recent appearance and its novel forms and contents - from three perspectives of analysis: that of science and political philosophy, from the approach of inclusive citizenship around the binomial citizenship-rights; that of relational sociology that makes it possible to think of citizen's political action practices as practices of individual-individual relationship; and communication as an expression, from which political expression is conceptualized as a communicative phenomenon and its levels of analysis are delineated. The result implies recognizing these practices as a possible revitalization/re-foundation of democracy, under the guarantor of human rights.

Caged Bodies and Women’s Citizenship in (Post-) Colonial Jordan: An Analysis of Civic Studies Textbooks

This paper focuses on female political socialisation in postcolonial Jordan, exploring the role of religion and patriarchy in shaping women’s citizenship identity and the manner in which school civic and national studies curriculum portrays women’s rights and their citizenship status. Based on the analysis, there are three types of social class citizens, one for the rulers, one for men, and one for women. Further, the findings suggest that the emphasis in these school textbooks is on loyalty to the monarchy and attachment to the nation. Women’s rights as citizens remain overwhelmed by patriarchy, religion, and by contradictory state policies and laws, partially drawn from the universal principles of citizenship. Theoretically, this study adds another facet to the understanding of the complex forces which contribute to the formation of contemporary citizenship identity in the nation-state system. Postcolonial states, in particular, are interesting cases due to the impact of their colonial heritage, tradition, and their attempts to advance partial modernisation amenable with universal human rights.

Animal welfare: A human right?

The modern-day Western consumers will need to accept purchasing their foodstuffs from the typically chain organised supermarkets relying on the main supply chains of food, which are produced within the mass production paradigm of contemporary agriculture. There will be some exceptions from this main rule, but for the contemporary Western citizen, these exceptions will not suffice to secure subsistence on a standalone basis. To an increasing number of Western consumers, animal welfare aspects connected to modern farming practices are concerning, and increasingly being viewed as systematic mistreatment of animals. For those adhering to a Christian morality, the question arises as to whether consuming animal-based food produced under the modern agricultural paradigm may be in violation of their scripturally based stewardship obligations under the covenant with God in creation. Further, if in violation of their moral obligations, the question becomes whether the acceptance of modern animal husbandry practices as in reality, the sole source of animal-based foodstuffs for physical subsistence will also be a violation of the consumers’ right to religious expression and observance as guaranteed under United Nations (UN)’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These questions are elaborated on in this article, and briefly contrasted against the observance of religiously oriented rules connected to foodstuffs under the Islamic and Judaic paradigms. A system for marking animal-based foodstuffs according to Christian-ethical norm alignment is suggested.

Insecurities of Expulsion

Abstract This article examines citizenship formations and political practices in relation to racialized and gendered postcolonial insecurities for the “Asian community” in contemporary Uganda. After disaggregating the notion of Asian community, it examines (1) how formalistic, liberal, and legal-juridical conceptions of citizenship and political practice are ineffective analytics in the context of Africanization efforts and racialized expulsion in Uganda; and (2) the tendency to erase people of South Asian descent from the study of normative state-society relations and political engagement via civil society in mainstream scholarship. It argues for a productive synthesis of Indian and African postcolonial theories of democratic agency and political practice by analyzing the possibilities and limitations of Partha Chatterjee's notion of “political society” relative to local community governance and the cultural politics of informal citizenship practices in contemporary Uganda. Contemporary citizenship formations are richly textured practices that can be both democratic and antidemocratic in nature, often characterized by disavowal of liberal, legal-juridical forms of citizenship. Finally, by closely examining domains of gender-based activism and coalition building within and across racialized communities, this essay explores the possibilities for popular politics and democratic, inclusionary multiracial and gendered citizenship in the post-Asian-expulsion context of Uganda.

The Issue of ‘Radical Otherness’ in Contemporary Theories of Democracy and Citizenship Education

This article examines the concept of ‘radical otherness’ from the perspectives of John Rawls’ political liberalism and Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism, and studies the relevance of these approaches to contemporary citizenship education. In this context, the notion of ‘radical otherness’ refers to such ethical, political or religious doctrines that are incompatible with the basic principles of liberal democracy and thus present a potential challenge to democratic institutions. The article suggests that despite its recent popularity in political philosophy and theory of education, Mouffe's agonistic pluralism faces difficulties in providing an adequate response to the issue of accommodating radical others in contemporary democratic societies. As a rejoinder to the Mouffean approach to political education, the paper develops a view of citizenship education based on Rawls’ concept of reasonableness, and the democratic principles associated with it. It is argued in the paper that these principles—reciprocity and the burdens of judgment—are constituent elements of the symbolic space required by democratic politics. The article further suggests, however, that to properly address the issue of radical otherness in contemporary democracies, the limitations of the Rawlsian approach must also be recognised. Accordingly, Rawls’ theory needs to be complemented with a more critical understanding of the economic, social and political processes and mechanisms that currently create structural injustice and social and political inequality in contemporary democracies.

Tenuous belonging: diversity, power, and identity in the U.S. Southwest

ABSTRACT Discrimination among social groups is an integral feature of contemporary immigration and citizenship policies, often reflecting historical trajectories of inclusion and exclusion produced by nation-building over time. This comparative historical study of the contentious incorporation of Arizona and New Mexico captures the legacies of racial hierarchy and the ways membership and identity are shaped by the intersection of race, language, and class. When the U.S. forcibly subsumed Arizona and New Mexico during the Mexican-American War, these territories vexed federal officials because their large Spanish-speaking populations of Mexican descent conflicted with dominant conceptions immigrant rights, and they present competing nativist and pluralistic policy responses to undocumented immigrants and Latino residents. This article tackles the question of why two U.S. states that share much in common – a border with each other and with Mexico, nearly identical geography and historical birth as members of the U.S., and large Latino and immigrant populations – diverged in the worlds they created for diverse ethnic and racial groups including immigrants. We find that the development of two distinct racial regimes in the American Southwest were profoundly shaped by the distribution of group power and distinct claims to national belonging.

ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ ТЕОРЕТИЧНИХ ТА МЕТОДОЛОГІЧНИХ ПРИЙОМІВ ВИВЧЕННЯ РАДЯНСЬКОЇ ДОБИ В ІСТОРІЇ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ГРЕКО-КАТОЛИЦЬКОЇ ЦЕРКВИ

The evolution of contemporary humanitarian science takes place under the influence of a wide range of processes that affect the human consciousness, stirring up interest in it in the knowledge of a new, in understanding its past. Recent events that filled the Ukrainian society, actualized the demands of the people to history in their local and global dimensions. Being under the constant influence of the mass media, who often submit a limited interpretation of the facts, a contemporary Ukrainian citizen has a desire for a creative study of the experiences of past generations. The hybrid Russian-Ukrainian War convincingly emphasized that knowledge of its own history is an integral part of the national security of the state, which can be built by anyone who considers Ukraine as their homeland, identifies with it a story of its kind. In studying the history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the Soviet era, historical science enjoys both generally accepted and special methodological principles that emerged during the second half of the twentieth century. in the environment of both Ukrainian scientific emigration and post-Soviet era. It clearly reflects the historical background of the period and its impact on the functioning of scientific institutions, the formation of scientific research areas, etc. Among the key issues was the study of the historiographical description of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the UGCC, the Greek Catholic underground, the dissident movement in its environment. It was in the environment of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic emigration that the themes of such studies were born, which later only entered the western historiography, and hence the contemporary historical thought. Each of them contained some emotional coverage of the problem, and somewhere with elements of the archaic approach to highlighting the complex issues of the history of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism. However, in our opinion, this is perhaps the best way to understand the essence of the liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church and the repression against its episcopate, monasticism, clergy, etc. The article also focuses on the special terminology that should be used in the study of Ukrainian Greek Catholicism in the Soviet era. In particular, terms such as „unbreakable”, „Catacomb Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church”, „catacomb period of the UGCC”, „the history of the elimination of the UGCC” are highlighted and interpreted.

Ocio y gastronomía, las nuevas estrategias de gentrificación. El caso de Lisboa

El ocio y el aprovechamiento del tiempo libre se han convertido recientemente en algunas de las actividades más importantes del nuevo modo de vida de los ciudadanos contemporáneos, al igual que la promoción de estas actividades se ha utilizado como una estrategia de las administraciones públicas locales para renovar espacios urbanos. En este artículo se reflexiona en torno al consumo del ocio gastronómico como herramienta principal de renovación y recuperación de los espacios urbanos y, por consiguiente, como un medio para la gentrificación y la generación de distinciones sociales. Se presentan algunos estudios de caso, haciendo énfasis en el proceso de recuperación de Bairro Alto y de la zona de Las Docas en Lisboa, y se concluye con unas posibles lecciones sobre los procesos de gentrificación actuales.

Pathways to news sharing: Issue frame perceptions and the likelihood of sharing

Online news sharing has become an important process through which contemporary citizens experience news.News sharing is not only a behavioral outcome of news consumption but also an essential form of political engagement that reshapes the online information environment. This study offers empirical evidence regarding important article perceptions that drive online news sharing. Specifically, we examine how issue frame perceptions shape user-directed dissemination of news information. Using an online survey that exposes respondents to multiple news articles on a given public issue, this study found that perceptions of issue frame believability, bias, importance and influence significantly affected audience intention to share a news article. However, perceiving an issue frame to be believable is not sufficient for readers to forward that article. Moreover, these frame perceptions are formed through the lens of one's political ideology. The relationship between issue frame perceptions and the likelihood of sharing is more pronounced for value-based frames and among partisans. Implications for online political participation and news exposure are discussed.

Rudy Ricciotti: “Architecture in the State of Panic Survival”

Rudy Ricciotti has become world-famous thanks to his projects related to transitional zones: first of all, they are bridges and cultural centers with transparent lace facades blending in the urban environment and letting this environment inside the buildings. In the works by this poetic master, the city interior is gradually and unnoticeably flowing into the interior of the building, and the bridges link the fragments of the city like interior doors.A contemporary citizen living in the man-made environment perceives the urban space beyond their apartment or office as a relatively natural environment, which is not subject to full human control. There can be snow, rain, not fully domesticated animals, birds and plants in the city space… The works by Ricciotti blur the boundary between a totally artificial environment of the building interior and a city interior, which is only partially artificial.Probably, as the city environment becomes more controlled by man and the longing for naturalness grows, the discoveries made by Rudy Ricciotti will gain more vital importance and demand in our urbanizing world.

Monitoring ecological change inUKwoodlands and rivers: An exploration of the relational geographies of citizen science

The adoption of citizen science methodologies by environmental organisations and ecologists entrusts the task of collecting ecological data to non‐experts operating at a local scale. This presents individuals and communities with opportunities to monitor ecological change and contribute to local environmental management. Little is known about why volunteers choose to participate in burgeoning contemporary citizen science research initiatives. The aim of this paper is thus to explore volunteer motivation for involvement in two environmental citizen science initiatives, based in the United Kingdom. It contributes to understandings of the socio‐geographical influences that act on participation in environmental citizen science. It is proposed within this paper that affective connections with local geographies provide a conceptual framework for understanding citizen science motivations. The paper discusses the main themes emerging from site‐based, in‐depth interviews with 22 citizen science participants in variousUKlocations. The study revealed that early affective bonds formed with ecological spaces endured throughout life courses, while citizen science participation offered a way of remaining connected to local environments. The paper reflects on the endurance of affective environmental bonds and their manifestation within the expressed motivations for citizen science participation, which emerged as fulfilling a compulsion to observe ecological surroundings, a desire to participate in environmental research and a commitment to protecting local environments. The paper proposes that citizen science participation offers a framework to connect to and protect local and global affinity spaces, while assisting in monitoring global environmental change.

Frame Reflection Lab: a Playful Method for Frame Reflection on Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that asks for inclusive reflection on how people frame the field. To unravel how we can facilitate such reflection, this study evaluates the Frame Reflection Lab (FRL). Building upon playfulness design principles, the FRL comprises a workshop with video-narratives and co-creative group exercises. We studied how the FRL facilitated frame reflection by organizing workshops with various student groups. Analysis of 12 group conversations and 158 mini-exit surveys yielded patterns in first-order reflection (problem analysis and solution finding in reflection on the development of synthetic biology as a field) as well as patterns in second-order reflection (reflection on values and assumptions underlying the first-order reflection). Also patterns in participants’ (re)framing of synthetic biology could be induced; participants’ viewpoints converged to some extent, yet with openness to individual viewpoint differences. Although the FRL method fortified the reflection processes of participants, the narratives and the workshop’s flexible format could inhibit the reflection too. Therefore, we advise designers of future frame reflection methods to apply stronger conversational facilitation and narratives of slightly mysterious yet identifiable narrators, in case e.g. video-narratives are created and used to scaffold the reflection process. Nevertheless, we argue that the use of a playful frame reflection method like the FRL could function well as (1) a step to precede more application-specific deliberation or decision-making on synthetic biology and as (2) a method for the collection of contemporary citizen viewpoints plus rationales underlying these, for the further (societally) responsible development of the emerging field.

‘Felons are also our family’: citizenship and solidarity in the undocumented youth movement in the United States

ABSTRACTThe undocumented youth movement began in the United States in the mid-2000s. Drawing on qualitative research with undocumented young organisers in California, this article explores how relationships between undocumented youth, the wider undocumented population, and legal citizens have been understood in narratives of citizenship in the movement over time. It is argued that, paradoxically, the movement’s retreat from prioritising a pathway to legal citizenship for the most ‘eligible’, made visible historic and contemporary ties to the United States and its peoples that are obscured in hegemonic narratives of contemporary citizenship. In becoming more inclusive of the wider undocumented population, positions of solidarity with marginalised US citizens have also emerged. In the context of attacks on some racialised and other marginalised social groups during Trump’s presidency, such solidarity is even more vital.

The Levellers, political literacy and contemporary Citizenship education in England

This article analyses the concept of political literacy (as introduced in the 1998 Crick Report) in relation to Citizenship in the English National Curriculum. It argues that political literacy has not been sufficiently emphasised or facilitated within this foundation subject and that the concept is particularly important for students at a time of considerable political and social conflict in England (and elsewhere). The authors state that engagement with the ideas and practices of the Levellers (a political group writing and agitating at the time of the Civil Wars) could enable students and teachers to explore political literacy (especially the implications of social media) by looking at a political group that utilised mass pamphleteering as a form of political communication. The article will also investigate the context of Citizenship within the English National Curriculum and some of the philosophical concerns around Citizenship education. It contains a section placing the Levellers in their contemporary and historiographical contexts.