Lived Citizenship Research Articles

Ambient citizenship and noise in the service economy: young people and the everyday politics of work

ABSTRACT This paper explores the informal citizenship practices of young service workers, and develops concepts of lived citizenship, ambient citizenship and political ‘noise’ into an analysis of the everyday politics of service labour. Drawing on interviews with young people working in retail, hospitality and call centres the paper examines the embodied interactions and relations of mutual reciprocity through which they experience and contest the power relations and gender inequalities of low-wage precarious work. The paper suggests ways of conceptualising the citizenship practices of young workers beyond the limited formal protections offered by the state, instead developing an analysis of the informal relationalities and political ‘noise’ of the service labour process.

Thinking citizenship through lived experiences of highly skilled migrants in Budapest

This study aims to understand and explain the concept of citizenship by analyzing the lived experiences of highly skilled migrants reflecting on their everyday transnational lives in the urban setting of Budapest. Based on the discourse analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted in Budapest in the Fall of 2022, the study thinks through lived citizenship experiences to understand how and why these experiences matter for the formation of subjective citizenship understanding. This study suggests that the concept of lived citizenship embodies a complex narrative of everyday socio-economic, socio-cultural, and emotional experiences that go beyond what the legal status depicts. Citizenship experiences of highly skilled migrants present a process of negotiating cultural and moral cosmopolitanism with constructive patriotism in everyday lives in the urban context. The study advances the thinking on the foundation, manifestations, and operationalization of lived citizenship as experiences of belonging and coexistence, presenting a unique contribution to the production of knowledge on highly skilled migration in Hungary. This article proposes that citizenship entails a complex relational dimension and includes a life-long learning process with continual meaning-making through life experiences that transcends the consequences of the legal status within a given nation-state.

Playful Citizens: How Children Develop and Integrate News-Related Practices in Their Daily Lives

ABSTRACT This paper studies children’s (aged 8–12) news-related practices and subsequent acts of lived citizenship in formal and informal social contexts. While children in this age group are increasingly exposed to various types of news that shape their understanding of the world, little is understood about their interactions with news. We employ the concept of “news-related practices’ to analyze how news is integrated into or excluded from their daily routines. Based on longitudinal participant observations of children (N = 256) at four afterschool care locations and five primary schools in the Netherlands in combination with semi-structured interviews with teachers (N = 9), we find that children employ a wide range of playful news-related practices that allow for light-hearted explorations of news and create opportunities for acts of lived citizenship. Play allows children to explore societal issues with peers and form moral opinions. However, conceptualizations of news as serious’ hindered primary school teachers” recognition of playful news-related practices. Following these findings, we argue that the acknowledgement of such practices as an effective tool for civic education, may support children in their development of news practices and foster their first steps into becoming informed citizens.

Enabling spaces for (varied) co-existence.

For people in homelessness, access to social services may appear difficult and alienating, which often contributes to poor health and a risk of accelerated marginalization. Historically, day centres for people in homelessness have been characterized by an emphasis on providing refuge and momentary restitution, accommodating urgent basic needs. In this article, we present a case study of the design of a new day centre in Denmark that aspires to move beyond the historical place-for-being. Rather, the new day centre is to be a place-for-being-and-becoming, focusing on bridging the varied needs of people in homelessness with easy access to social services at the day centre. This article explores the creation of new behaviour settings along with the challenges and considerations in designing enabling spaces for people in societally marginalized positions, concurrently offering and supporting a sense of inclusion, the possibility to develop one's agency and experience of lived citizenship. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century'.

The materiality of lived citizenship: mobilising against infrastructural neglect in Egypt’s Nile Delta

ABSTRACT In September 2012, the village of al-Tahseen in the Nile Delta governorate of al-Daqahliyyah launched a civil disobedience movement, announcing ‘administrative independence’ from the local municipal government. The leaders of the village movement cited decades of state neglect in providing basic infrastructural services, primarily a three-kilometre road from the village to the closest regional road. Community members held the government accountable for the harmful consequences of the absence of a viable road, including numerous accidents and deaths. This demand for infrastructure is at the heart of this article. Through a lived citizenship framework, this article argues that people’s everyday interactions and engagements with the state, as well as their understanding of their place as citizens in return, emerge from their engagements, constructions, and demands for infrastructure provision. The article equally sheds light on a case study of rural mobilisation, when most scholarly productions of Egypt’s 25 January 2011 Revolution and its reverberations have focused on urban-based mobilisation experiences.

Blir du ensam, lille vän?

The lonely ones? Citizenship ideals in Swedish early childhood education policy. The aim of this article is to discuss the democratic function of education by exploring and comparing the citizenship ideals expressed in Swedish early childhood education policy in 1987 and 2018. The study shows that citizenship that was previously foremost emphasizing the horizontal relationship within a community has shifted towards an emphasis on the vertical relationship between the individual and the state. The ideal has thus shifted from a lived citizenship emphasizing community and belonging to citizenship as an individual status based on ownership of rights. The article concludes that the empowerment of children regarding their formal rights in a context characterized by increased focus on individual learning and freedom may contribute to reducing other aspects of democracy such as community, belonging and care, therefore significantly altering the societal task of education.

Examining narratives of Swedish care-leaving bureaucracy from a lived citizenship perspective: framing the problem in political terms

ABSTRACT The transition to young adulthood is a complex process for all young people, but especially those leaving care who are at high risk of social exclusion. The adverse living conditions of young care leavers have been well documented in recent decades and constitute an established point of departure in the political discourse on care leavers, as well as within the international field of leaving care research. This article builds on twelve in-depth interviews with young people aged 17–24 from a Swedish research project on youth transitioning from out-of-home care and their paths to housing, work and education. From the perspectives of care leavers, the processes governing transitions are characterised by rigid managerialism and social administration that fails to address the extensive needs regarding housing, income, education and health as experienced by this group. The article explores leaving care from a lived citizenship perspective, arguing that the lack of responsiveness from the social services, as well as the lack of meaningful long-term interventions capable of addressing the material, psychological, emotional, relational and educational needs of young people leaving care, places this group on the margins of citizenship, unsupported and insufficiently prepared to enter the many trials of emerging adulthood.

Between citizens and sit-inners: the 2017 Kamour sit-in and disidentification in Tunisia’s south

ABSTRACT This paper considers the 2017 Kamour sit-in as an example of lived citizenship. Composed of young men from the marginalized south of Tunisia, the Kamour sit-inners mobilized in pursuit of employment, regional development, transparency within the oil and gas sector and a life of dignity. To draw attention to their cause, the sit-inners disrupted the region’s hydrocarbon infrastructure through a series of roadblocks and sit-ins, culminating in turning off the pumping valve at the remote Kamour oil pumping facility. Throughout, the sit-inners framed their demands and actions in relation to Tunisian citizenship. The paper explores how a citizen subjectivity was constructed in conjuncture with the experience of living and protesting in Tunisia’s marginalized south. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s notion of subjectivization, and the attendant concept of disidentification, I argue for the Kamour sit-in as a site where sit-inners creatively disordered the content and meaning of Tunisian citizenship, reimagining a citizen subjectivity grounded in the lived experience of Tunisia’s south.

The Imider protest camp: resistance by repossession and lived citizenship at the global margins of Moroccan society

ABSTRACT This article delves into the eight-year protest camp of Imider (2011–2019), analyzing important shifts both in forms of resistance as well as in political subjectivity within Morocco’s protest landscape. The camp was the place/space where a historical struggle against one of the largest silver mines in Africa converged and new lived practices, relationships and subjectivities materialized. We explore the intricate connections between lived citizenship and what we term ‘resistance by repossession’. We aim to understand how meanings of citizenship are (re)made from below as a response to accumulation by dispossession and driven by the intimate ties between marginalized communities and land. In this process, activists deliberately crossed the boundaries and affinities of the nation-state in search of meanings and alliances elsewhere, highlighting the more complex spatialities of lived citizenship and resistance from the margins.

Syrian ‘brokers of care’ and lived citizenship in Istanbul

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a group of refugee actors it refers to as ‘brokers of care’, who embody an array of skills, competencies, and acquired expertise that make them strategically positioned in their communities to be conduits of care and resources for others. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Istanbul in 2019, the article concentrates on the life story of one Syrian refugee, Iman, to demonstrate that while brokers of care are themselves refugees who live with all the economic precarities and political vulnerabilities that come with this fragile social position, they, nevertheless, play an essential role in the daily flow of life in the city. They mediate, linguistically and culturally, between different actors and institutions. Most importantly, the article argues, through these activities, Syrian brokers of care live out citizenship as an embodied experience while also facilitating the enactment of lived citizenship for others in their communities in Istanbul.

Understanding the impact on children’s citizenship of participating in community-based action research

ABSTRACT This paper explores the lived experience of citizenship of working-class girls from a marginalised ex-mining town in northern England engaged as community researchers in participatory action research. The research aimed to better understand the relationships within their local community. Qualitative methods were used to examine the girls’ experience of the research and its impact on their sense of community, which is discussed using the lens of ‘lived citizenship’ (Kallio et al. 2020). We conclude that children’s experience of participatory research approaches can be understood as subjective or lived citizenship. This contributes to understanding how they perceived their acts of citizenship, particularly in relation to others in their community. Supporting the international literature on subjectivity in citizenship studies and the critical appreciation of intersectionality in in participatory research, this paper demonstrates how such involvement can lead to positive subjective outcomes in groups experiencing marginalisation, such as working-class girls.

What affective rupture does. Disrupting affective citizenship in migrant solidarity

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to show how emotions and citizenship are inextricably intertwined in the analysis of migrant solidarity. It does so by highlighting the ‘disrupting’ dimensions of emotions as processes that redefine the very criteria by which one is included or excluded, close or distant, intimate or foreign, in every situation. The essay draws on ethnographic research with Italian citizens doing solidarity work for and with migrants in Florence and Turin. Solidarity practices and the emotions that constitute them are important for the production of lived citizenship, which happens on a daily basis. By discussing results that emerged through qualitative methods, the essay has the aim to investigate the role of affective ruptures in migrant solidarity networks, and how they may be emotional and reflexive turning points that transform the ethical-political attitudes.

Is something rotten in the state of Denmark? Austerity measures from a child and youth perspective

Inspired by Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies and the lived citizenship approach, this article examines austerity in Denmark from the perspectives of 39 disabled children and young people. The article investigates austerity as a phenomenon encompassing symbolic, material, and affective dimensions. It sheds light on financial cutbacks and their consequences, and points to a more general development in political ideas of welfare. Following the financial crisis, policies aimed at economic growth and productivity, coupled with austerity measures, have created a domino effect. The combination of cutbacks and the political portrayal of disabled people as a “cost problem” legitimises the deterioration of the group’s living conditions and access to public services and assistance. Due to austerity measures, disabled children and young people have increasingly come to experience their relationships with local governments as exhausting and stressful for themselves and their parents, which causes them to develop feelings of guilt and shame.

Being, Becoming and Belonging in Constructing Children’s Lived Citizenship with Contact Persons and Contact Families

The article discusses children’s citizenship by linking the dimensions of being, becoming and belonging to the concept of lived citizenship in the context of contact person and contact family interventions. Drawing on empirical research from Finland and Sweden, the article elaborates on how to identify if, and if so, how, children’s lived citizenship is constructed in contact person and contact family interventions and to what extent these constructions leave room for children’s perspectives. The results of the study indicate that contact person and contact family interventions contribute to the construction of children’s citizenship in various ways that include the perspectives on children and childhood of being, becoming and belonging. However, children’s active participation often seems to be governed by adults. Thus, giving greater attention to children’s intergenerational connections, i.e., adults’ roles in forming children’s citizenship, is needed.

Groundwork for Democracy? Community Abeyance and Lived Citizenship in Hong Kong

Studies on Hong Kong’s contentious politics have focused primarily on the high tides of mobilization. Scant attention is paid to what became of the intense mobilizations following their decline. This article spotlights the “abeyance” politics of community activism, in which activists sought to make territorial communities an arena of social and political participation in quieter times after mass mobilizations. Drawing on the concept of abeyance from political sociology, we argue that community activism served as “abeyance structures” after the mass mobilizations in the early 2010s, a major protest cycle preceding the 2019 anti-extradition movement. Based on mixed methods and original data, we argue that these abeyance structures not only allowed activists to maintain their political engagement but also gave rise to various practices of “lived citizenship” in territorial communities. These practices produced a changing sense of political subjectivity among citizens, establishing a more grounded notion of democracy that emphasizes their participation in local affairs and social entitlements. Our findings aim to enrich the literature on movement abeyance and provide a nuanced understanding of political activism in Hong Kong beyond street politics.

Enacting and contesting citizenship in Algeria beyond the Hirak:The strategic uses of exit, voice and loyalty

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the place of citizenship in the Hirak protest movement with the view to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the current modes of being citizen in an authoritarian regime in the Arab world. It identifies and analyses the tensions and frictions that generate change and the strategies of the ruling elites and the social movement to articulate and implement their choices. In this perspective, we frame the popular discontent that resulted from the candidature of Bouteflika to a fifth presidential mandate as a case of social mobilization giving a ‘voice’ to new projects of citizenship. We analyse key demands and propositions of this ‘voice’ strategy in relation to the ‘loyalty’ counter-narratives of the regime and its clients. Beyond the attempt at revising civil and political rights, we also link these modes of protesting and being to the experiences of lived citizenship under authoritarianism and how these fuels ‘exit’ strategies discounting formal citizenship.

I am not the info desk for Islam and Arabs: the racialization of Islam and boundaries of citizenship

ABSTRACT By bridging the discussions on critical race and critical citizenship studies, this paper asks how the racialization of Islam shapes the lived citizenship of minorities in the Finnish context. The study focuses on a group of Finnish citizens and residents who have backgrounds in southwest Asia. The 26 people in this group were asked questions about their lived experiences of citizenship and the role of religion in their experiences. The results indicate that regardless of the participants’ religious identifications as Muslims or non-Muslims, their belonging was challenged through the mechanism of racialized gaze that framed them as strangers who do not fit into the epistemic community of whiteness. The study introduces the terms selective secularism and labour of explaining to reflect upon the mechanism through which the racialized gaze operates in everyday encounters. At times, some research participants resisted and contested the racialized gaze.

Youth far-right politics in Finland as a form of lived citizenship

ABSTRACT Geographies of youth have explored multiple modalities of youth political agency, yet privilege apolitical or progressive forms of politics. We propose expanding the scholarship to formal arenas where conservative and reactionary politics are practiced, as these form another significant domain within which youths exercise citizenship. The paper draws on two aspects of the 'lived citizenship' framework developed by Kirsi Kallio and colleagues?: a desire to rescale society to the strictures of nation-state sovereignty and imagined national heritage (spatial aspect), and provocations of despised ‘globalists’ (performative aspect). We analyze these through the former youth wing of Finland’s populist-right party, Perussuomalaiset Nuoret (Finns Youth).

Young people with Tunisian origins living in Italy: a case of transnational lived citizenship?

In recent years, the merging of the lived citizenship approach with the transnational perspective has shed a brighter light on the spatiality of everyday citizenship practices. Starting from this premise, the present study investigates whether and how a group of young people, aged between 22 and 28, with Tunisian parentage residing in the province of Modena (Northern Italy) live their citizenship transnationally. It involves questioning what their citizenship practices are, whether their transnational ties translate into lived citizenship, and what are the sites in which these people live their citizenship. The study draws on 14 in-depth interviews collected between 2020 and 2021, offering fresh insights into the role of transnational bonds in shaping the geographies and the contents of citizenship practices among young people with migrant parents. The findings confirm the heuristic validity of merging the transnational perspective with the lived citizenship approach, especially when inquiring into the practices of citizenship among migrants’ descendants.

Multiculturalism as a negotiated citizenship: voices of second-generation Black Jamaicans

ABSTRACT This study examines the lived experiences of second-generation Black Jamaicans and investigates how they interpret Canadian multiculturalism while navigating racism in their everyday lives. There is no dearth of research on multiculturalism in Canada. However, this article makes a fresh contribution to debates on multiculturalism by exploring how multiculturalism is understood and articulated as a claim-making process by a racialized group under lived citizenship framework. It extends the discussions on multiculturalism from a state-centered analysis to citizenship from below. Drawing from 22 interviews with second-generation Black Jamaicans, this study maintains that citizenship is a dynamic process through which research participants make claims to rights and belonging and negotiate their position vis-à-vis the state and other citizens to put the ideals of multiculturalism into practice.