Citizenship Practices Research Articles

Making Rights and Realities: How Australian Human Rights Make Gender, Alcohol and Other Drugs

ABSTRACT Australia is unique among Western nations in that it does not have a national bill of rights; in lieu, rights protections have proceeded in a piecemeal fashion, with some jurisdictions developing their own systems for rights protection. These systems involve parliaments ‘scrutinising’ proposed new laws for their compatibility with rights. These processes are sometimes theorised as constitutive, capable of bringing various material-discursive effects into being. For instance, whilst problems such as family and sexualised violence are said to pre-exist legislative and policy practices designed to combat them, alternative approaches can draw our attention to the way these phenomena are made in and through such processes themselves. Drawing on work from Moya Lloyd (“(Women’s) Human Rights: Paradoxes and Possibilities.” Review of International Studies 33 (1): 91–103) and Karen Zivi (Zivi, K. 2019. “Human Dignity and Human Rights: Lessons from the Fight for Marriage Equality in the United State”s.” In Critical Perspectives on Human Rights, edited by B. Schippers, 103–119. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, Zivi, K. 2012. Making Rights Claims: A Practice of Democratic Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) on human rights as constituting norms, rules, conventions, and worlds, Law’s (Law, J. 2011. “Collateral Realities.” In The Politics of Knowledge, edited by F. Rubio, and P. Baert, 156–178. London: Routledge) work on collateral realities, and interviews (N = 30) conducted with key stakeholders involved in Australian rights scrutiny processes, we explore how articulations about human rights might shape connections between alcohol, other drugs, gender and social problems. Using a case-based approach, we focus on three accounts that generate relations between alcohol, drugs, gender, and bodies, and consider the possible implications for affected populations.

Citizenship among University Students: Perceptions of BS Students

Citizenship is a vital aspect of higher education around the World. Universities are expected to cater to the need for citizenship education to provide skilled and responsible management for the development of a nation. However, there is too scarce research to make any claim about the views of university graduates concerning citizenship. Consequently, it was considered quite imperative to conduct a study to examine knowledge and practices of citizenship among university students. This study was carried out with an objective; to explore the attributes of good citizenship among university students; a questionnaire and a sample of 1500 BS students from 15 private/public universities in Pakistan. The analysis (i.e. mean, percentage and chi-square) exposed the findings that students were significantly in support of building up courtesy/morality, social responsibility, accountability/critical thinking and patriotism. They have urged to contribute to society and provide services for human well beings; they were moderate, trustworthy and avoided discrimination. The majority of students honor property rights’ and race, have firm faith in the welfare of their motherland, possess good moral conduct and respect the authority of rules. Institutions of higher education may consider it mandatory to establish citizenship as a crucial discipline and try to facilitate it by operating entire consistent resources

Citizenship in the age of populism

ABSTRACT The tension between citizenship and democracy is well documented in the literature on citizenship. The paper revisits it through the lens of populism. It engages with the critics and proponents of the phenomenon and it argues that the juxtaposition that they all stage between the people and the citizens does not just intensify the tension between the exclusionary politics of citizenship and democracy’s universalising aspirations, but it also threatens to restrict the appeal of citizenship to mainstream liberal theory. The paper concludes by suggesting that the kind of affectivity, which democratic mobilisations draw on, and that one associates with the ‘people’, is often missing from citizenship practices – and this further undermines the connection between citizenship and democracy.

Dualism’s dilemmas: citizenship and migration in contemporary eSwatini

ABSTRACT One of the main characteristics of ‘Swatiness’ has been embracing lived dualisms in all aspects of life, including the much-debated cultural dualism of traditionalism and modernity which, although not unique to eSwatini, is more emphasised in this small southern African kingdom. This article discusses examples from research on eSwatini citizens living in South Africa and foreign-born residents of eSwatini, to show how exclusionary singular forms of bureaucratic identification via national identity cards are endangering the flexibility and creativity which are distinctive of Swati socio-cultural life. These bureaucratic forms run counter the inclusive, relational and negotiated dimensions of older conceptions and practices of citizenship and belonging.

The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States by Derrick R. Spires

Reviewed by: The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States by Derrick R. Spires DeLisa D. Hawkes Derrick R. Spires. The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2019. 352 pp. $49.95. Mary Helen Washington began her 1997 address to the American Studies Association asking the pivotal question: What happens when scholars put African American studies at the center of American studies? Literary historians can extend this question by asking: What happens when scholars stop approaching works written by African American authors as always in response to the discrimination and violence enacted by white Americans? What happens when we finally understand Black print culture as independent from white establishments and the ideologies that created them? Derrick R. Spires demonstrates in The Practice of Citizenship (winner of numerous prizes, including the MLA Prize for a First Book) that early Black writers have always been at the forefront of directing rather than merely responding to the conversation concerning the concept of citizenship in the United States. Early Black writers theorized not only what citizenship meant but also what actions it entailed as they demonstrated the practice of citizenship in their daily lives. Early in his Introduction, Spires establishes the importance of attending to both collective and individually written works as part of the "collaborative, multimedia, polygeneric cultural and intellectual process" of understanding "citizenship (and blackness itself) as a self-reflexive, dialectical process of becoming" (3). Spires invites readers engaged in fields such as literature, history, and political science to understand the work of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Black writers as arguing for more than mere recognition by the white legal establishment; instead, relying on texts produced by Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, the Black state conventions, William J. Wilson, James McCune Smith, and Frances E. W. Harper, Spires argues that Black writers theorized and practiced five interrelated themes of citizenship in their political work. These themes include neighborliness, participatory politics and circulation, economic citizenship, critique, and revolution. "From the perspective of black theorizing," writes Spires, "states do not make citizens—active and involved individuals and collectives create citizens" (16). Thus, Spires places early Black theorists at the center of US citizenship studies. Early Black print culture proved vital to creating and illustrating citizenship's actual practice rather than its mere idea. In the first chapter, Spires examines neighborliness—or "the ability of fellow citizens to engage each other on terms of mutual responsibility and good faith through 'real sensibility'"—as a citizenship practice in Jones and Allen's 1794 Narrative of the Proceedings of Black People (27). A text more commonly understood as written in response to Matthew Carey's A Short Account of the Malignant Fever, Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia (1793), which focused on the elite and depicted Black Philadelphians in a negative light, Jones and Allen's Narrative, Spires argues, corrects the horrific racial and economic assumptions about Black people's "real sensibility," or ability to achieve civic republic citizenship through depictions of neighborliness occurring between ordinary "poor black" women and men (35). Jones and Allen's Narrative achieves a racially and economically inclusive depiction of citizenship [End Page 239] through neighborliness by restaging scenes from Carey's Account. As Spires puts it: "Narrative interrogates late eighteenth-century theories about the ethical relation between citizens by thinking about the kinds of relations the good citizen should actively produce rather than the inverse, how to produce or identify the good citizen" (36). In other words, Jones and Allen are less concerned with what white Americans claim citizenship to be and are more concerned with what actual civic republic and fellow citizenship look like—in other words, less with the talk and more with the walk. This perspective challenges the very capitalistic nature of citizenship and serves as the basis for the other themes that Spires examines in the later chapters. While neighborliness makes participatory civic engagement an everyday practice that anyone can exercise, participatory politics and circulation counters "arguments that black people were … irredeemably inferior or too dependent on waged and manual labor to warrant full citizenship" (29). Spires examines the Black...

Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico by Vanessa Freije

Reviewed by: Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico by Vanessa Freije Stephen D. Morris Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico. By Vanessa Freije. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020, p. 286, $27.95. In Citizens of Scandal, Vanessa Freije explores how Mexico City's print media shaped the narratives and the changing political landscape during the period stretching from the 1960s through the 1980s: a turbulent and critical period in Mexico's political and democratic development. Freije accomplishes this by focusing on a series of "citizen scandals:" the mediated spectacles that through a variety of interpretations contributed to the "meaning-making practice of urban citizenship" (p. 3). The scandals examined in the book include: the embezzlement scheme in agrarian lending institutions in the early 1960s and the government censorship of Los hijos de Sánchez, the controversial book about urban poverty (chapter 1); the scandalous rumors in Nezahualcóyotl in 1974 that vaccines were sterilizing children (chapter 2); the debates surrounding the discoveries of huge oil reserves under López Portillo to the eventual denunciation (and jailing) of Pemex director Jorge Díaz Serrano (chapter 3); the Rio Tula murders and the explosive case of "El Negro" Durazo, Mexico City´s corrupt and murderous police chief during the López Portillo (federal) and Carlos Hank Gonzalez (Mexico City) administrations in 1982 (chapter 4); the 1985 earthquake, with particular attention on the collapsed sweatshops (chapter 5); the coverage and narratives surrounding electoral fraud against the PAN in the 1986 state elections in Chihuahua (Chapter 6); and briefly, the publication of the book Un asesino en la presidencia? in 1987 that accused the PRI´s presidential candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, of involvement in the killing of a young servant as a child and its subsequent relationship to the denunciation and jailing of the leader of the oil workers union, Joaquín "La Quina" Hernández Galicia (epilogue). Throughout, Freije leverages the concept of "mediated citizenship" as the process by which urban Mexicans developed their perspectives and understandings of the political system through everyday interactions with the mass media. For students of Mexican history and Mexican journalism in particular, the account provides an in-depth look at the evolution of modern Mexican media. Discussion centers on the major institutional actors (Excelsior, Unomasuno, La Jornada and other Mexico City newspapers), particularly the rise of the news weekly Proceso in the wake of the government´s forcing out the editors of Excelsior; major personalities and opinionmakers like Manuel Buendia, Heberto Castillo, Agular Camin, Carlos Monsivais, Elena Poniatowska; and the influence of radio, television, flyers, comics and political cartoons, and urban graffiti. [End Page 234] Interwoven throughout the analysis is the dynamic and evolving relationship between the state and the media that parallels the democratic changes taking place during these years. Through various methods, the Mexican state had long controlled and censored the Mexican press. Debates and coverage during the scandals, however, effectively pushed the limits on what was permitted, ever so slightly forcing open the political system. At times, coverage simply escaped government controls. Following the 1985 earthquake, for example, media revealed deep-seated corruption and a state incapable of responding to the destruction and providing basic human services. Here, as in other examples, the government felt threatened by what it saw as uncontrolled organizations and demands from below, demands that they saw as being pursued outside the scope (and controls) of the government and the party´s (PRI) corporatist structures. Thanks largely to the narrative of Carlos Monsivais, the public came to see the experience as an illustration of the ability of civil society and the people to surpass and assume the role of the state. The mediated traumatic event proved critical to the rise of civil society organizations and gains by political opposition, putting Mexico on the road to greater political opening. Part of this dynamic involved the way the government sought to shape the narrative and counter those produced by journalists and opposition politicians. Under such circumstances, the government employed its allies within the media, offering an elite and cosmopolitan perspective, as in the reaction to the widespread rumors...

Review: Branding Brazil: Transforming Citizenship on Screen, by Leslie L. Marsh

Review: <i>Branding Brazil: Transforming Citizenship on Screen</i>, by Leslie L. Marsh

Constructing the places of young people in public space: Conflict, belonging and identity.

Building on the growing discursive approach to people-place relations, we examine how young people negotiate people-place tensions and relations, and how they establish their everyday sense of place in contemporary public spaces. Facilitated by the use of Collaborative Spatial Mapping, analysis of focus group data from 51 young people focuses on three aspects of participants' talk about the places that make up their everyday lives: appropriation of micro-geographical spaces, the construction of autobiographical insideness and the mobilization of shared socio-spatial histories. Our analysis illustrates young people's responses to a broader problematic of being 'troublesome' in public spaces, demonstrating how they construct a deep-rooted attachment to, and sense of themselves as located members within, such spaces. We argue that place appropriation and autobiographical insideness are important concepts for understanding the practice of citizenship by young people, and how such practice is embedded in wider political processes of spatial conflict and exclusion.

Precarious reproductive citizenship: gaps in employment protections for pregnant precarious status migrants in Canada

ABSTRACT Understandings of citizenship have increasingly come to include the recognition of family care and reproduction as practices of citizenship and a recognition that migrants who are not citizens nonetheless engage in many practices of citizenship within their host state and rely on their host state for the fulfilment of basic human rights. This paper conceptualizes this intersection of immigration and reproduction as precarious reproductive citizenship, arguing that gaps in entitlements for pregnant precarious status migrants constitute reproductive injustice and present an important challenge for how we understand citizenship and human rights. This conceptualization is illustrated through interviews with women concerning their experiences of pregnancy and new motherhood while having precarious immigration status living in Montreal, Canada. It highlights three employment-related policies: employment discrimination protections, maternity and parental leave, and childcare. In each case, immigration status (directly or indirectly) acts as a barrier to accessing protections and programs meant to support gender equity and overall family thriving.

Covid-19 and Urban Migrants in the Horn of Africa: Lived Citizenship and Everyday Humanitarianism

This article focuses on the everyday humanitarianism of migrant communities in three cities in the Horn of Africa: Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and Khartoum. It is framed around the concept of lived citizenship, defined as a means to secure wellbeing through everyday acts and practices. Based on an analysis of comparative interview data among Eritrean and Ethiopian migrant communities in each city, the article argues that the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted lived citizenship practices to different degrees, linked to previous forms of precarity, and the means and networks of coping with those. Disruptions of transnational support networks resulted in a turn towards local networks and everyday practices of solidarity. These forms of everyday humanitarianism range from spontaneous to more organised forms, united by a perceived lack of involvement by international humanitarian actors and the local state. The article raises important questions in relation to transnational humanitarian action in a global crisis.

Fungible Citizenship

Fungible Citizenship

Negotiating the Kin-State Citizenship: The Case of Croats from Herzegovina

AbstractThis article explores how the meanings individuals ascribed to kin-state citizenship change in the long term. Previous research has looked at the real-time acquisition of citizenship and established three dimensions of meanings individuals ascribe to citizenship: identity, instrumental, and legitimacy. Building on the case of Croats from Herzegovina (BiH), who acquired citizenship back in the 1990s, the article demonstrates how meanings individuals ascribe to citizenship change over time across each dimension—subject to the perception of inclusion into the kin-state, type and the extent of opportunities kin-states provide, as well as the routinization of citizenship practices. By disaggregating each dimension further, the article extends the understanding of kin-state citizenship and shows how individuals respond to the policy implementation’s overall dynamics by aligning the meanings they ascribe to citizenship. Therefore, future work should look more closely at the interplay between state policy dynamics and its impact on individuals.

Digital citizenship in Asia: A critical introduction

This paper situates the theory and practice of digital citizenship in general and Asia in particular. It surveys four extant thematic clusters: (1) the democratizing potential of information and communication technologies; (2) the role of digital citizenship education; (3) the power structures of technology in shaping citizen participation, and; (4) the digital emancipation of marginalized groups and communities. It highlights a new fifth cluster—digital citizenship as a contextual practice dependent on local contexts and histories—as a framework to situate the articles in this Special Issue.

Citizenship Practices in Syria Before the Arab Uprisings: The Legacy of ‘Concentric’ Citizenship

ABSTRACT By focusing on the two Assads’ periods (1971-2011), this study traces the evolution of the nature of the relationship between the state and its citizen(s) in Syria to explain the sources and complex dynamics of the protracted conflict. It aims to promote new approaches to peace and reconstruction in Syria through thinking about the origins of the conflict by analyzing the fragile foundations of citizenship as practice. In doing so, it unveils the relationship among citizenship practice, ethnoreligious identity, political economy, and allegiance to the regime in the country from the 1970s onwards. The study identifies ‘concentric’ citizenship’ in Syria, an approach to citizenship that has been toxic to social cohesion & democracy and calls for attention in the Middle East to focus on citizenship debates to complement, challenge, and advance democratization studies.

Contextualizing Current Events and Asian Pacific American Experiences for A More Inclusive Political Science Curriculum

Our current political situation and the demographic realities of our country require Political Science educators to be more intentional about integrating Asian Pacific American (APA) histories and experiences in the Political Science curriculum. By including the multifaceted ways in which APAs have and continue to participate in American civil society and practice citizenship in our democracy, we can help to combat persistent stereotypes and mis/disinformation that have had dangerous consequences for this community throughout American history and in the present moment.

Living at the edge of the capital city of Mongolia: capturing the socio-spatial aspects of Ger residents’ lived citizenship

ABSTRACT Based on extensive ethnographic research into internal rural–urban migration dynamics and circumstances in Mongolia, this article discusses lived citizenship practices in the ger areas situated in the country’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Inspired by findings showing how newly-migrated residents conduct their citizenship individually as well as collectively in peri-urban and informal settlement environments, the study explores the socio-spatial aspects at stake in ger residents’ lived citizenship when residing at the edge of the capital city. We aim to identify the role of social work and public administration in the provision of resources and support, and we rely on a conceptual and analytical framework that captures the ‘matterscape, mindscape and powerscape’ of meaning-making processes in terms of symbolic boundaries and opportunities. The paper calls for a meaningful role for social work and public administration to support internally migrated residents, as they face numerous challenges and uncertainties.

And then came this number PM2.5: Atmospheric particulate matter, sociotechnical imaginaries, and the politics of air quality data

This article employs the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to examine the broader political ecology of particulate air pollution, especially the connections between novel technoscientific practices of making pollution perceptible and data-driven modes of urban governance. Drawing on ethnographic material from Beijing, a city notorious for its pervasive smog, the article highlights the role of air quality data—such as particulate matter measurements (PM2.5) and air quality indexes (AQI)—not only in informing citizens of the health-threatening air pollution but also in influencing new regimes of visibility and shaping practices of urban citizenship. Through the conceptual lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, the article shows that air quality data, increasingly shared digitally in the form of real-time continuous data streams, are not merely technoscientific indexes, nor are they value-neutral. Rather, their conceptualization is informed by technocractic visions of human-air relations and shaped by digital infrastructures. Learning from Beijing, the article argues that in order to generate an expanded understanding of the life-structuring effects of urban air pollution in the era of data-driven urbanism, political ecology of urban air needs to be considerate of how the numbers, which represent pollution, are conceptualized, amassed, and circulated, as well as what and whom they include or exclude.

Social citizenship competences at the end of primary school: The role of socio-ethnic classroom diversity and teachers’ citizenship beliefs and practices in the classroom climate

ABSTRACT This study aims to explore the interrelatedness of socio-ethnic classroom diversity, teachers’ citizenship beliefs, teacher practices to create a citizenship-fostering classroom climate, and their relationship with social citizenship competences of primary school students in Flanders. Data were gathered from 686 sixth-grade primary school students in 44 classrooms and their 44 teachers. To analyze the data, a multilevel path analysis was conducted for each of the social citizenship components (i.e., skills, knowledge, attitudes, reflections). Results indicate that ethnic classroom diversity is related to teachers’ liberal-critical citizenship beliefs, which in turn are linked to their practices in creating a citizenship-fostering classroom climate. Regarding their role in fostering students’ social citizenship competences, three significant relationships were found. First, more social classroom diversity was positively related to students’ attitudes toward dealing with conflicts. Second, teachers’ conservative citizenship beliefs negatively related to students’ reflections about acting in a socially responsible manner and dealing with differences. Finally, contrary to expectations, students from classrooms with teachers contributing more to a citizenship-fostering climate scored lower on knowledge about acting in a socially responsible manner and dealing with conflicts.

Embodied philanthropy and Sir Captain Tom Moore's “Walk for the NHS”

AbstractRecent decades have witnessed growing popularity in embodied philanthropy, where participants undertake various types of publicly displayed bodily labour in support of their respective causes. The fundraising potential of such efforts reached extraordinary heights during Sir Captain Thomas Moore's “Walk for the National Health Service,” wherein the 99‐year‐old World War II veteran walked laps of his garden to raise funds during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Within less than a month “Captain Tom” raised over £30 million, the highest amount ever by an individual charity walker. To better understand the social and cultural drivers behind Moore's incredible popularity this article applies Julie Robert's theoretical framework of embodied philanthropy, exploring the multivalent semiotic potential that Moore radiated through his age, disability, military adornments, Yorkshire grit, and unfailingly positive, aphoristic style of speaking. During a time of global crisis, this distinct array of bodily affordances enabled Captain Tom to simultaneously serve as an honest broker, teacher, exemplar, rallying figure, and ultimately martyr. Such practices of sacrificial citizenship, however, raise troubling questions, particularly in relation to expectations that fellow citizens should likewise stoically uphold civic‐minded resilience during times of crisis. Furthermore, while the potential benefits can prove extraordinarily impactful, organizations should exercise care in too readily attaching themselves to particular causes, lest they become complicit in contentious agendas or even inadvertently mislead donors.

A conception of practical global citizenship education: locating and situating ‘allosyncracy’

ABSTRACT This paper examines practitioners’ experiences of global citizenship education (GCE) in an international baccalaureate (IB) international school and argues that the school’s enactment of GCE constitutes an allosyncratic response. The author defines allosyncracy as the uniqueness of behaviour and temperament demonstrated by groups and individuals in relation to others of difference. Thinking with Jürgen Habermas and Elliot Eisner, the author elaborates allosyncracy and argues that the delineating and expressive properties of the concept form a useful thread for GCE advancement. This research will be of interest to those seeking to develop modes of global engagement, including global citizenship, cosmopolitan education, and international-mindedness.