Definition Of Citizenship Research Articles

The Civic Education of Ignacio Bonillas: Revising Ambient Notions of Citizenship in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands

This article details the experiences of Ignacio Bonillas, one of the first Mexican students to graduate from Arizona’s territorial schools and explicates how those experiences impacted his perceptions of U.S. and Mexican citizenship. Bonillas’s story illustrates how definitions of citizenship in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands were permeable and dynamic before the era of Americanization and encourages teachers and students to interrogate the ways restrictive notions of citizenship are reproduced in public schools. This article goes on to argue for inviting students to access local archives and create case studies of figures whose experiences challenge the Americanized histories of their region.

Poetry and the expectation of the border

This essay explores a set of poetic texts—the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT); Amy Sara Carroll's “The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto”; and Claudia Rankine and John Lucas's video poem “Zidane” and the version of that poem included in Rankine's book Citizen—against the backdrop of recent United States Customs and Border Protection investment in autonomous surveillance towers, the development of the “100 mile” expanded border region, and 2022 practices by Republican governors to relocate migrants to the U.S. to Democrat states. I argue for the existence in the poetry of what I term “the expectation of the border”: the moment when we name the border not as a graspable and unchangeable line in physical space and legal jurisdiction, but as a conceptual reckoning with definitions of community, including but not limited to citizenship status. Drawing on citizenship theorist Engin Isin's argument that “poetic articulation” especially “captures the essence of the political,” this study suggests poetry as a specialized intervention in border politics and definitions of citizenship, including the conditions of the “hostile environment”.

Strengthening National Citizenship in The Early Republic Years: De-Naturalization (1923-1938)

Bir gruba aidiyetin sembolleri olan etnisite, dil, kültür ve inanç gibi bağlarla inşa edilmiş milli veya etnik kimlik algısı, aynı zamanda vatandaşlık duygusunun modern dönemlerdeki yeni sınırlarını milliyetçi ve seküler fikirler ile çizmekteydi. Toplumların daha politik ve ekonomik referanslar ile ayrışmaya başladığı ve yeniden örgütlenmesine yol açan Aydınlanma Çağı, Sanayi İnkılabı ve Fransız İhtilali gibi gelişmeler millet tanımına yeni yorumlar kazandırmıştır. Çağdaş, düşünsel ve ideolojik referansların etkisiyle millet olmanın yeni yapay sınırları ulusal topraklar ile millileştirilmiş edebiyat, tarih, kültür ve hukuk ile bunları özümsemiş yeni vatandaş tipi tanımlanmaktaydı. Milliyetçilik, vatandaşlığın tanımında gün geçtikçe daha geçerli bir yorum haline gelmekteydi. Avrupa’nın diğer ülkelerinden farklı bir tarihselliği olan Osmanlı’da, vatandaşlığın tarifi din temelli olup hem karmaşık hem de heterojen bir karakteristiği resmetmekteydi. Vatandaşlığın, Cumhuriyet döneminde el alınışı ise laik ve çağdaş bir Türklük tanımlanması şeklinde olmuştur. Yeni kurumsal anlayışı ve ideolojik vasıfları ile Cumhuriyet ideolojisinde, Kemalist milliyetçilerinin temel düşünce evrenini, yapılan inkılâplar inşa etmekteydi. Haliyle, millî vatandaşlığın çerçevesini de bu gelişmeler oluşturmaktaydı. Bu süre zarfında yeni ulusal karakterli vatandaşlık tanımına uymayanların veya uymak istemeyenleri çeşitli siyasi, kültürel, bürokratik ve hukuki süreçler beklemekteydi. Bu çalışmada, erken Cumhuriyet yıllarında uygulanan yeni vatandaşlık rejimine uymayan kişilerin vatandaşlıktan çıkarılma süreçleri sebepleriyle ele alınmıştır.

Worldmaking from the margins: interactions between domestic and international ordering in mid-20th-century India

This article investigates the contribution of decolonising states to the nascent international order emerging after the end of World War II. More precisely, it investigates the Indian contribution to the emerging international human rights regime, focussing on two key contributions: the advocacy for a strong supranational authority endowed with substantial enforcement mechanisms for the realisation of human rights and the equally strong defence of a bifurcation of civil-political and socio-economic rights into two treaties. Both contributions have been largely ignored within International Relations – and where they have been acknowledged, they have been subsumed into either narratives of liberal progress (as in the case of human rights enforcement) or Cold War rivalry (as in the case of a separation of the two Human Rights Covenants). In contrast, this paper seeks to shed light on the agency of Indian diplomats and politicians. It shows how their positions were neither simply replications of pre-existing scripts nor bare executions of superpower preferences. Instead, they were responses to the challenges of becoming a post-colonial state in a still overwhelmingly imperial world. Two challenges stood out: the definition of citizenship in light of internal diversity and a widely dispersed diaspora and the challenge of development against the backdrop of highly unequal global economic relations. In this article, I trace the movement of key protagonists between the Constituent Assembly and the United Nations to show how they were engaged in a project of postcolonial worldmaking, which required the simultaneous transformation of domestic and international order.

The speaking citizen: language requirements and linguistic neoliberal colonialisms

ABSTRACT This article concerns contemporary common-sense politics around language, integration, and citizenship that pervade Western European countries, where language is at the basis of a new model of citizenship – jus linguarum. I situate jus linguarum as the product of two seemingly different logics: the logics of neoliberalism and the logics (and legacies) of colonialism. I argue that jus linguarum obscures the fact that ‘national language’ is a historically constructed category with roots in imperialism, and allows for the disappearance of other categories, such as whiteness and middle-classness. The chapter shows how a form of ‘provincialised national languages’ arise from the tensions between the inevitability of multilingualism in today’s global world, on the one hand, and the insistence of one-nation-one-language, on the other. The analysis of jus linguarum developed in this paper forces a new understanding of citizenship where regimes of seeing and regimes of hearing combine in definitions of citizenship and citizens, through intersecting inequalities of language, race, and class.

Zorunlu Suriyeli Göçü Bağlamında Türkiye’de Yurttaşlığı Yeniden Düşünmek

Ulus-devlet anlayışı ekseninde mevcut yurttaşlık tanımı zorunlu göçlerin neden olduğu göçmen (öteki) gerçekliğini kapsamaktan ve kavramaktan uzak bir görünüm arz etmektedir. Türkiye’de ulus devlet anlayışının gelişim süreci dikkate alındığında, etnisist ve devleti kutsayan bir yurttaşlık algısının eğitim aracılığıyla inşa edilmesi nedeniyle çoğulcu ve kapsayıcı olmaktan uzak bir yurttaşlık söz konusudur. Bu bağlamda okul, söz konusu yurttaşlık algısının inşasında, seküler ve milliyetçi kaygılarla beslenen ve merkeziyetçi bir anlayışla denetlenebilen bir ulus kimliğin pekişmesinde işlevsel konumda yer almıştır. Bu nedenle, zorunlu Suriyeli göçü sonucu göçmenlerin yurttaşlığa entegrasyonuna dair taleplere cevap verme konusunda yetersiz kalınmakla birlikte, ulus devlet anlayışının hukuksal çerçevesi ve milliyetçi motivasyonu göçmenlerin ötekileştirilmesine ve kriminalleştirilmesine zemin hazırlamaktadır. Öyle ki, göçmenlerin yerleşikler tarafından dışlanması, göçmenlerin kendi içlerine dönerek sarsılmışların dayanışması bağlamında, kamusal temastan uzaklaşmasına, iletişimi kendileriyle benzer mağduriyetlere maruz kalan kitlelerle sınırlamalarına, yerel dile yönelik öğrenme isteklerinin azalmasına ve ihtiyaçlarını kayıt dışı ya da gayri meşru yollar aracılığıyla karşılamaya yönelmektedirler. Zorunlu göç sonucu göçmenler ve yerleşikler arasında yaşanan karşılıklı hoşnutsuzlukların çözümüne dair daha somut adımların atılabilmesi için “öteki”nin haklarına yönelik hassasiyeti kapsayan bir “dünya yurttaşlığı” anlayışına gereklilik söz konusudur. Bu çerçevede, iletişim, dinleme ve sorgulama hususları işlevselleştirilerek, yurttaşlığın yeniden düşünülmesi, görmezden gelinen tüm insani değerlerin görünür kılınması açısından önemlidir. Bu sayede göç etmek zorunda kalan göçmenlerin yerleşiklerle kurdukları toplumsal temas bağlamında, göçmenlerin tutunmalarına ve tanınmalarına zemin sağlayacak ahlaki olgunluğun ve sorumluluk duygusunun karşılıklı olarak pekişmesi muhtemel görünmektedir. Bununla birlikte farklılıkların indirgenmediği bir düzlemde, iletişim özgürlüğünün kamusal alanda katılımı ve etkileşimi tetikleyerek, kimlik temelli toplumsal açmazlara yönelik bir çözüm arayışına kapı aralanmaktadır.

Avatars of colonial and liberal violences: the revelatory character of COVID-19 governance in Colombia

This article analyses the institutionalised injustices faced by Indigenous populations and other ‘others’ in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that the government’s responses are rooted in a liberal philosophy that has historically sustained biases and inequalities through an exclusionary definition of citizenship. To analyse these issues, the article first concentrates on the broader epistemic assumptions of liberal citizenship and the ways in which they are connected to historical legacies in Colombia. Despite liberal claims of equality for all, the biases that emerge from these notions of citizenship lead towards political disempowerment, silencing, erasure and abandonment. Consequently, Indigenous peoples in Colombia have experienced institutionalised biases such as the prioritisation of particular forms of participation, the exclusion of populations from rights, and the elevation of plans of development that aim to erase other ways of being. These biases were further reinforced by the governmental responses to the pandemic. Hence, the article analyses the inequalities that have been exacerbated as a result of COVID-19 policies, showing their scope and depth, and establishing a discussion about injustices that might affect populations beyond the current context of Colombia.

Soundscapes of the Nation: Silenced Others and Animal Languagesin Haw and Oko

Kemal Varol’s 2014 novel Haw is an account of the multiple facets of the war between the Turkish army, Kurdish guerrilla and other underground organizations during the 1990s in eastern Turkey, recounted by a dog. İdris Baluken’s Oko (2019) is the story of its eponymous dog protagonist Oko’s journey as he finds himself involved in a group fighting to prevent another dog massacre from happening again. By looking at two contemporary novels that address the Kurdish issue in Turkey from the perspective of dogs, this paper aims to explore the implications of the biopolitical reach of the sovereign state and its impact on the definition of citizenship. Taking this shared symbol as a point of departure, this paper investigates nation-building processes in Turkey and how the definition of citizenship is contingent on the voices and languages that are silenced. What is the relation between language and belonging? To what language does one belong? What possibilities of resistance does the language of the non-human animal contain in its encounter with the violence of the sovereign power?

제국의 시민권: 2020년과 19세기 영국문학 연구

This essay examines recent scholarship on imperialism and citizenship in nineteenth-century British literature. Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement of 2020, events that prompted worldwide discussions on citizenship rights and racial (in)justice, this essay interrogates the relative scarcity of scholarship on citizenship in the subfield of nineteenth-century British literature. Drawing on the postcolonial insight of the North American journal Victorian Studies’s widely-discussed special issue for Spring 2020 titled “Undisciplining Victorian Studies,” this essay argues that studies on nineteenth-century citizenship requires an interdisciplinary approach connecting the achievements of diverse disciplines encompassing history, political science, sociology, and more. In the nineteenth century, the British people understood themselves as “British subjects” rather than citizens, which was not yet a concept fully legally embraced though the definition of citizenship was being actively developed in other contexts. Historically, discussions of British national citizenship focused on suffrage, which inevitably emphasized class as the central question. This essay proposes that gender and race deserve more scholarly attention, especially through an expanded understanding of a British imperial citizenship that can encompass more kinds of social belonging beyond the right to vote. The essay concludes by raising the the question of academic citizenship in order to highlight the importance of the inclusion and participation of scholars from both formerly colonized parts of the world and outside the British Empire.

Remaking North American Sovereignty: State Transformation in the 1860s

Although tightly focused on a short time span of just a decade, this provocative collection of essays makes bold and refreshingly innovative claims about the historical nature of sovereignty, the nation-state, and modern political identity in North America. Readers of HAHR will be familiar with the calls to include Mexico and Latin America in a continental and hemispheric framework for the historiography of the Age of Revolution and state formation. However, this volume refocuses on the political crises, civil wars (or lack thereof in Canada), and new social contracts emerging in the 1860s by reconfiguring perspectives away from the Atlantic and toward the interior and Pacific landscapes that dominated the North American continent. As the dean of nineteenth-century US history, Steven Hahn, writes in the collection's first essay, “an ‘inside out’ and ‘southside north’ perspective may also allow us to see . . . patterns of development most important to nineteenth-century American capitalism” (p. 33).Perhaps more than those for other edited volumes of essays, the introduction for Remaking North American Sovereignty also takes on the weighty theoretical and historical questions: What is sovereignty? What is the state? What is the nation? Frank Towers importantly presents his working definitions of these concepts, which are more familiarly debated in scholarship on the Age of Revolution and less so in scholarship on the mid to late nineteenth century. This volume, then, asks “how . . . did new understandings of national identity and new definitions of citizenship come to pass in the 1860s and 70s, and in what ways did these transformations . . . cross political boundaries?” (p. 13). The introduction alone gives much food for thought about adopting a more capacious temporal and spatial understanding of modern state formation.The editors neatly divide the book into three sections, titled “Making Nations,” “Indigenous Polities,” and “The Complications of the Market.” Part 1 includes work by scholars Steven Hahn, Andrew Smith, Pablo Mijangos y González, and Robert Bonner. Collectively, these essays tackle this seminal decade “from the inside out,” exploring the overlapping influences and synchronous actions of Mexican, Canadian, and US national consolidation projects amid civil wars, regional conflict, and, in the case of Canada's Confederation, efforts to maintain ties to the “mother country.” As Mijangos y González importantly points out, these “parallel trajectories. . . . responded to global trends and above all to regional dynamics that explain the simultaneous nature” of national consolidation (p. 75).Containing the work of Jane Dinwoodie, Ryan Hall, and Marcela Terrazas y Basante, part 2 focuses on Indigenous states. These authors build on recent efforts by scholars of Native North America to insert into the existing, teleological national histories of Canada, Mexico, and the US Native polities the powerful Great Plains nations, who “imagined territory as a permeable space with porous borders that permitted mobility, and as a source of resources to be appropriated” (p. 153). Highlighting the dynamic political and economic forces emanating out of the vast interior plains, these essays seek to elevate Indigenous actions and calculations to the diplomatic level, thus answering a call made most forcefully by historian Brian DeLay.Focusing on the expansion of capitalism and its role in modern state formation, the final section includes prominent scholars who have pioneered on this topic: Christopher Clark, Mary P. Ryan, and Benjamin H. Johnson. Each essay focuses closely on the ways that the local conditions on the ground—whether the “family farms” identified by Clark, the local municipalities such as San Francisco detailed by Ryan, or the borderland communities of northwest Mexico analyzed by Johnson—shifted in response to the momentous progress of political and economic consolidation (p. 195).The other refreshing aspect of this volume is its provocative conclusion (not always included in such edited works) prodding the reader to fully embrace a continental perspective both spatially and temporally. Indeed, one can push this further (as some have) to take a more hemispheric perspective, revealing the tug of Latin America on its Northern neighbors. Returning to Steven Hahn is instructive: “looking further to the inside and the south, we may even see that it was in the great Mexican Revolution—mostly ignored by scholars of the United States—that the long nineteenth century first gave way to the twentieth” (p. 33).

Globalised citizenship and the perceived legitimacy of immigration control: narratives and acts of resistance in immigration detention

AbstractThis article considers the legitimacy deficits of immigration control in the eyes of unwanted migrants. We explore the consequences of globalisation-related changes in the institution of citizenship for the perceived legitimacy and operation of immigration control. The study is based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews in 2018 with 35 migrants in the Detention Centre Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We find that immigration detainees use both denationalised and transnational/cosmopolitan definitions of citizenship and belonging to contest the legitimacy of restrictive admission requirements and, to a lesser extent, the authority of states to stipulate and implement admission requirements. Based on these narratives, immigration detainees engage in forms of resistance that are meant to diminish the likelihood of deportation (‘instrumental resistance’) and in forms of resistance that are unlikely to change the outcome of the deportation procedure yet do make immigration control more costly for states (‘expressive resistance’). The narratives and strategies of resistance seem correlated with length of stay: settled migrants seem more inclined to use denationalised repertoires and instrumental resistance. Our analysis confirms the need for migration scholars to pay more attention to changing social norms regarding the perceived legitimacy of immigration control for the operation and outcomes of immigration control. The results are therefore relevant for our thinking about the future of migration governance in the context of globalisation-related changes in the institution of citizenship.

Gendered nationalism and constitutionalism

Abstract Modern constitutions play, to a larger or lesser extent, several simultaneous political functions, including the definition of a rights-based political order, the organization of state powers, and the crafting of the nation. Feminist analysis of constitutional law has so far primarily focused on the denial or limitation of an equal rights status to women since the inception of constitutions. More recently, it has also challenged the gender composition of state institutions as well as the gendered implications of the various forms of government and power structures. In times of worldwide expanding nationalism, serious reflection on the many ways in which nationalism has always been, and still is, a gendered enterprise is called for. Relying on the categories identified in the work of Yuval-Davis, this article distinguishes between nationalist ideologies that focus on the definition of citizenship in specific states and territories (the “Staatnation”), those that place an emphasis on specific cultures or religions (the “Kulturnation”), and those that are constructed around the specific origin of the people and its continuation into the future (the “Volknation”). This article also shows, relying on the example of several contemporary constitutional struggles across the world, how these three dimensions of nationalism often continue to deny equal constitutional citizenship to women and sexual minorities.

To deport or to ‘adopt’? The Israeli dilemma in dealing with children of non-Jewish undocumented migrants

This article analyses the unprecedented decision taken by the Israeli state in 2005 to legalize the status of non-Jewish undocumented migrants’ children. In explaining how the plight of culturally assimilated non-Jewish children succeeded in penetrating the hermetic ethno-religious definition of citizenship in Israel, the article focuses on the subtle yet critical influence of kinship on modern state-making and the affective fashioning of national belonging. By insisting on treating culturally assimilated non-Jewish children as Others, Israel increasingly ran the risk of unveiling the feeble construction of the Jewish nation in terms of kinship as ‘one big family’. The Israeli media increasingly began to question the refusal of the state to recognize children who were evidently ‘Israelis in every way’. Such a development, as some Israeli politicians undoubtedly realized, could have potentially been more detrimental to the mythological foundations of the Jewish state than the ‘adoption’ of a few hundred non-Jewish children.

Migration regimes and the governance of citizenship: a comparison between legal categories of migration in China and in the European Union

This paper aims at providing a general picture of how the citizenship migration nexus currently unfolds in China and in the European Union (EU). Although China is a nation state and the EU is a supranational entity, both entities are characterised by internal and external politico-legal borders delineating two self-contained migration areas. Drawing on a definition of citizenship which transcends its usual national connotation, this paper will review and compare how different migration categories available to individuals on the move (citizens and non-citizens) come with differential accesses to citizenship rights within the two contexts. The comparison will show that in spite of different approaches towards irregular migration, welfare and humanitarian issues, current categories of migration within these two migration regimes converge in the way in which they grant differential access to citizenship rights based on the (assumed) economic worth of individuals on the move. The final part of this paper reflects upon the lessons that each system could draw from the other and postulates such convergence as an indicator of the correlation between the granting of citizenship rights and neoliberal imperatives in the governance of migration worldwide.

Cidades-santuário e o Direito à Cidade: Repensando pertencimento a partir das cidades

Resumo Em tempos de criminalização da migração, o espaço urbano (re)produz uma miríade de estratégias e mecanismos de controle que nega aos imigrantes, enquanto não cidadãos, a possibilidade de pertencimento e participação nas cidades modernas. A partir do diálogo com os escritos de Henri Lefebvre sobre o direito à cidade, argumento, porém, que o urbano traz em si possibilidades de construção de formas alternativas de pertencimento que desafiam os processos de exclusão que lhes são impostos. Através do movimento de cidades-santuário, este artigo ilustra como as cidades abrigam processos que desafiam a criminalização da migração e os limites impostos pela definição tradicional de cidadania.

Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

Associative Solidarity, Relational Goods, and Autonomy for Refugees: What Does it Mean to Stand in Solidarity with Refugees?

Mussolini and Marinetti: Performing Citizenship in Fascist Italy

Mussolini and MarinettiPerforming Citizenship in Fascist Italy Shadow Zimmerman (bio) Close your eyes and imagine, if you will, Benito Mussolini, the infamous “first dictator.” Picture him emphatically placed above an audience, speaking from a pedestal, striking an iconic pose—his arm struck forcefully out, his hand closed in a fist or perhaps thrusting a fascist salute, his barrel chest reverberating the echoes of his impassioned speech, his strong jaw lifted toweringly above all onlookers. This, Mussolini’s public persona, was the “new Italian” citizen incarnate. Now, figuratively open your eyes, step back, and realize that you are not staring at Mussolini the orator himself, but rather at one of millions of postcards of his likeness—postcards purposefully hung around the homes of countless Italians. This act was one of many layers of Italy’s communal performance of “new Italian” citizenship during the Fascist regime. However, Italy’s final act of performed citizenship before the onset of its Republican era—the public display and mutilation of Mussolini’s corpse—was its most iconic and, perhaps, its most definitive. Comparing the iconography of these two actions, specifically the positioning of Mussolini’s body in each (strong and tall in postcards and photographs versus dangling from a service station in the end), serves to demonstrate the complete reversal of Italy’s performed citizenship from the beginning to the end of Mussolini’s Fascist regime. The fledgling authoritarian government of Italy embraced Futurism because the artistic form meticulously defined, policed, and performed citizenship in both an artistic and sociopolitical sense—and Futurism’s leader, Filippo Marinetti, did so according to a strict hierarchy. In defining and exploring the etymology of the term “avant-garde,” Hans Magnus Enzensberger explains, “Every guard is a collective. . . . First [End Page 42] the group, and only then the individual, whose decisions are of no consequence in the undertakings of the guard, unless he be its leader. For every guard is most rigorously divided into the one who issues the commands and passwords of the day and the many who receive them, pass them on, and obey them.”1 As Enzensberger clarifies, the forms of the historical avant-garde mimic the structure of authoritarian forms of government—membership is strictly curated and guided by an individual with power. Benito Mussolini in particular harnessed the potency of the avant-garde by aligning himself with Filippo Marinetti and the Futurists, and he embraced the Futurist ideology, rhetoric, and definitions of citizenship accordingly. Mussolini carefully crafted his image through specific iconographic management— much in the way Marinetti curated the public perception of Futurism through membership control and advertising—and the Italian populace embraced that image during the first half of his reign, as evidenced by contemporaneous postcard collections. I’m particularly fascinated by the revelations these postcards offer regarding Italy’s performance of citizenship during Mussolini’s Fascist regime. In this essay, I explore the icono-graphic evolution of Italy’s communal performance of citizenship. After explaining Futurism’s foundations in themes of citizenship, I detail the iconography of Mussolini’s performed citizenship, the “new Italian,” replete with Marinetti’s apparent influence. With this guide, I chronicle the iconographic evolution of Italy’s performance of citizenship, defined by the populace’s approbation or disapprobation of Mussolini’s model, drawing from the aforementioned postcards and the public desecration of Mussolini’s corpse as case studies. As Mussolini’s performed iconography as leader and paragon of “the New Italian” was directly inspired by the forms of Futurism and the art of Marinetti, it’s crucial that we detail the relationship between the two and define the importance of citizenship to the forms of the historical avant-garde, especially Futurism. The earliest political usage of the term “avant-garde” is accredited to Henri de Saint-Simon, a French political theorist and early Socialist thinker, writing at the cusp of the nineteenth century. In his essay On Social Organization, Saint-Simon presents a utopia in which humanity “marches” toward “the well-being and happiness of all mankind”; he writes that “in this great undertaking the artists, the men of imagination will open the march: they will take the Golden Age from the past and offer...

Discourses about language and literacy education in Portugal: past and present

Abstract This article presents a historical analysis of discourses about language and literacy that have emerged during different periods in the political and cultural history of Portugal. It covers six periods, from the colonial era to the present, and it considers different geopolitical spaces, including the Portuguese mainland, the Atlantic archipelagos, former Portuguese colonies and diasporic spaces created as a result of emigration from Portugal. The article traces three kinds of discursive shift: (1) shifts in discourses in Portuguese society regarding the goals of language and literacy education, along with associated discourses about appropriate language and literacy pedagogies; (2) shifts in discourses about the specific nature and significance of literacy in Portuguese; and (3) shifts in discourses about the value and symbolic power of standardized forms of spoken and written Portuguese. It shows how each historical period has been characterized by distinctive political and ideological currents which have, in turn, shaped and re-shaped ways of thinking about the role of language and literacy education in the definition of citizenship and national identity, in the construction of heritage, in the creation of a “modern” democratic state and, more recently, in the retooling of human resources to create a flexible labour force.

Reeling in Newcomers: Urban Competition around Migrant Reception in Brussels

AbstractThe management of ethnic diversity and its various forms of institutional articulation and implementation are increasingly taking place at the urban level. At the same time, urban scholars consider cities to be battlegrounds where competing groups contest the meaning and articulation of citizenship. In this article, I build on these insights to argue that competition over newcomer reception between different, linguistically divided political coalitions in the city of Brussels are mainly battles over establishing their own definition of citizenship and asserting their political influence. Building on an eighteen‐month ethnographic study in three reception offices (two Dutch‐speaking and one francophone) in Brussels, I analyse the different strategies these offices mobilize to recruit and retain newcomers. I argue that recruitment is a deliberate tool used to influence the political‐cultural demographics of the city and destabilize the linguistic power balance in Brussels. In this way, recruitment becomes a means to attract newcomers to the reception offices in the hope that they will develop a deep connection and loyalty to, and eventually identify politically with, the agency's respective political community. Theoretically, this article develops a perspective that regards the city as a field that becomes constituted in and through the contest between different urban institutions to ‘reel in’ newcomers. In this space, these institutions take up positions for and against each other and assemble strategies to influence the urban populations.

Nas margens do liberalismo: voto, cidadania e constituição no Brasil (1821-1824)

Este artigo analisa alguns matizes da linguagem do liberalismo presentes nos discursos políticos na época da criação do Império do Brasil, entre 1821-1824. Para tal, escolheram-se três atos fundamentais do cotidiano político: o voto, a definição da cidadania e a Constituição. Como fontes, utilizaram-se principalmente periódicos e panfletos. Os objetivos foram identificar os distintos argumentos e percepções que indivíduos da época possuíam sobre a política naquele momento e avaliar até que ponto o novo Império ingressara naquilo que em geral se denomina de política moderna.