Social Citizenship Research Articles

The Road Less Travelled: Exploring the Planning and Preparation for a Critical Social Justice Module by the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa

This qualitative study aimed to explore the journey of planning and preparation for the implementation of a Critical Social Justice and Citizenship (CSJ) module at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Despite political democracy in South Africa, racial, sexist, gender, and cultural pathological issues persist. The CSJ module addresses these challenges by focusing on gender-based violence, racism, gender inequality, classism, and other forms of discrimination. The study adopted an interpretive paradigm and a narrative inquiry approach to investigate the experiences of the planning team and the tutors involved in the CSJ module. Data were generated through observations of workshops, which were presented via photo narratives and individual interviews. The analysis was performed using thematic and content analysis methods. A theoretical framework for the study was based on “Education for Liberation,” which encompasses human rights, inclusion, and education for social justice. The experiences of the planning team and the tutors highlighted both the challenges and the successes encountered during the planning and preparation phases. The identified themes included the importance of collaborative efforts, the need for ongoing support and training, and the evolving understanding of social justice issues by the tutors. Recommendations for future implementation include improving support structures for tutors, continuous professional development, and improving module content based on feedback and experiences. This study contributes to scholarship by providing a detailed account of the development of a social justice-oriented educational module in a higher education context. The study also offers information on the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary approach in the development of educational interventions aimed at promoting social justice. Keywords: Social Justice, Gender-based violence, Inequality, Classism, Workshops

Regional Social Capital and Non-GAAP Earnings Disclosure

We investigate whether regional social capital is associated with a company’s discretionary disclosures of non-GAAP earnings. The US county level social capital is used to capture the informal supervisory instrument of regional social capital. The two dimensions of social capital, dense networks and strong norms in regions with high social capital, cause reciprocity, integrity, and organizational citizenship. Using a panel of US companies, we find that companies located in regions with high social capital (1) are more likely to disclose non-GAAP earnings, and (2) their non-GAAP earnings disclosures have higher quality. These findings are robust to controlling for demographic features, substitute proxies for regional social capital, and using two-stage least squares and propensity score matching approaches. Furthermore, we implement a mediator analysis and show that companies in high social capital regions have lower costs of equity capital because they are more likely to disclose non-GAAP earnings, and their disclosures are of higher quality. Overall, the findings indicate that the informal institutional factor of regional social capital is associated with the crucial voluntary disclosure tool of managers’ non-GAAP earnings.

Race-ing Masculinity

Studies about representations of Latinidad in US and European media have identified stereotypes like criminalization and hypersexualization. Furthermore, it has been argued that comedy operates as a double-edged sword in exposing racism, as humor can be deployed to simultaneously mask/justify and show/denounce racial discrimination and monolithic representations of Latinidad. Using a feminist intersectional perspective that foregrounds constructions of masculinities and racialization/migration as exclusionary factors, this essay discusses how RTVE Playz, the digital platform of the Spanish public television aimed at young audiences, represents Latinidad in its series Riders (2021). Situated within the dynamics of racialization in Spain, Riders stands out as an example of dark humor that both complicates and reinforces stereotypes. Through a close reading of the series, we assess its response to current social, political and cultural citizenship challenges.

Devolution and Social Citizenship: The Case of the Basic Income Pilot for Care Leavers in Wales

Devolution and Social Citizenship: The Case of the Basic Income Pilot for Care Leavers in Wales

Investigating EFL Students' Civic Consciousness

Civic consciousness serves as a pivotal impetus for societal advancement and development, embodying individuals' cognition, attitudes, and sense of responsibility across social, political, economic, and cultural domains. Contemporary college students, as the forthcoming leaders of society, constitute a vital segment of Chinese citizenship and play crucial roles as participants and stewards in national political development and social construction. Their civic consciousness directly impacts the construction of material, spiritual, and political civilization within China. Educating EFL students on civic consciousness is instrumental in fostering accurate ideological concepts, empowering them to fulfill their duties as social citizens, igniting creativity and intellectual curiosity, enhancing comprehensive cultural literacy and cross-cultural communication awareness, nurturing critical thinking skills, and enabling students to internalize civic virtues as their behavioral norms through natural infiltration, thereby establishing a foundation for their future roles as global citizens and contributing to sustainable development. However, the civic consciousness of EFL students is confronted with significant challenges due to the interplay of international and domestic factors. Notable issues include a deficient awareness of the rule of law and an inadequate understanding of rights. This study initiates with the concept and significance of civic consciousness, elucidating its definition, connotation, and importance within college education. Through questionnaire surveys and interviews, the current state of civic consciousness among students in ZYU(Zhejiang Yuexiu University) is analyzed, identifying prevailing problems and challenges. Subsequently, effective countermeasures within the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning are proposed to address these concerns.

Sumptuary Laws, Gender, and Public Dressing in Early Modern Genoa

Abstract This article explores sumptuary legislation and its enforcement in early modern Genoa. Whereas the sumptuary laws from other early modern Italian city-states partitioned society by social rank, profession, or citizenship, the laws in effect in late sixteenth-century Genoa divided the population only into men and women. Genoa therefore represents a key site for exploring gender difference through dress and adornment. Adopting a gendered, sociological, and material culture framework, this article demonstrates how sumptuary laws informed understandings of gender and gendered practices of dressing. It takes as its point of departure a ledger of sumptuary denouncements for the year 1594, and examines how Genoa’s citizens adhered to, or transgressed the gendered expectations set out by the city’s legislative structures. It argues that while prescriptions for idealized masculine and feminine comportment coloured the content and wording of the law, in daily life a spectrum of gendered identities could be enacted through clothing. This article thus advances discourse on the impact of sumptuary laws on understandings of gender in early modern Italy, and the ways in which masculine and feminine identifications were negotiated through and in dialogue with clothing.

Social Citizenship And Urban Community Participation

Jakarta City as a representation of major city in Indonesia with the highest positive patients infected with covid 19. Various attempts were made by the central and regional governments to break the spread of pandemic covid 19, one of which was to impose Large Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB). However, efforts to overcome government efforts do not seem to be balanced with public awareness to be involved in implementing regulations and to be part of efforts to cope with the spread pandemic covid 19 and recovery. Based on these facts, this study tries to identify the presence or absence of citizenship, the types of citizenship that exist in the people of DKI Jakarta and what efforts can be made to activate citizenship in Jakarta. In the PSBB situation the research method is carried out using a mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) using a questionnaire and in-depth interviews through digital media. The results showed that the type of citizenship that exists in the people of DKI Jakarta at the moment is passive citizenship. However, the results of this study also indicate the potential for community participation that show great potential to build or strengthen social solidarity and capital. It is therefore important to encourage the transformation of activation from passive citizenship into active citizenship including institutional strengthening, so that citizens not only have citizenship rights, but at the same must be obliged to engage in various efforts to overcome the pandemic and recovery after the pandemic occurred.

The origins of youth social citizenship in Europe: religion, trade unions and income support for young people

Abstract This article is concerned with the development of young people’s access to income support in Europe. This access can be either ‘familialized’, where young people are seen as children, which leads low level of welfare generosity, or ‘individualized’, where they are seen as adults, with higher level of welfare generosity. I argue that two main factors can explain such cross-national variation. First, religion (and Protestantism is particular) is the main driver explaining the development of individualization, as opposed to familialization, through long-lasting institutional effects. Secondly, as outsiders on the labour market, the better represented young people are in trade unions, the more likely they are to access individualized generous social benefits. To test this argument, I rely on a multimethod research design: initially proceeding with time-series cross-sectional regressions across 18 countries, from 2001 to 2018, before turning to comparative historical case studies of youth social citizenship development in France, the UK and Sweden.

The commodification of poverty in the Global South: The emergence of a social policy market (São Paulo, Brazil)

Focusing on the implementation of social policies in São Paulo (Brazil) during the 2000s, this article critically examines the commodification of poverty. The article explores the impact of the introduction of market logics and privatization as shaped in respect to social protection in a context where the informalization of labour is growing. The text begins with a discussion of social citizenship in Brazil and its transformation over time. Thereafter, the article unpacks the ‘commodification processes’ of social policies during the 2000s to unfold how this influences the organization of a competitive and social labour market outsourced especially to NGOs and associations. The creation of indicators of productivity and ‘social participation’ as well as the introduction of measures to incentivize entrepreneurship, the article suggests, become entries into accessing social rights. The ways in which social workers and beneficiaries experience processes of financialization and monetarization of social aid, the article shows, indicate changing understandings of social citizenship and its implications for the poor.

Sensing the Environmental Inequality of PM2.5 Exposure Using Fine-Scale Measurements of Social Strata and Citizenship Identity

Exposure to PM2.5 pollution poses substantial health risks, with the precise quantification of exposure being fundamental to understanding the environmental inequalities therein. However, the absence of high-resolution spatiotemporal ambient population data, coupled with an insufficiency of attribute data, impedes a comprehension of the environmental inequality of exposure risks at a fine scale. Within the purview of a conceptual framework that interlinks social strata and citizenship identity with environmental inequality, this study examines the environmental inequality of PM2.5 exposure with a focus on the city of Xi’an. Quantitative metrics of the social strata and citizenship identities of the ambient population are derived from housing price data and mobile phone big data. The fine-scale estimation of PM2.5 concentrations is predicated on the kriging interpolation method and refined by leveraging an advanced dataset. Employing geographically weighted regression models, we examine the environmental inequality pattern at a fine spatial scale. The key findings are threefold: (1) the manifestation of environmental inequality in PM2.5 exposure is pronounced among individuals of varying social strata and citizenship identities within our study area, Xi’an; (2) nonlocal residents situated in the northwestern precincts of Xi’an are subject to the most pronounced PM2.5 exposure; and (3) an elevated socioeconomic status is identified as an attenuating factor, capable of averting the deleterious impacts of PM2.5 exposure among nonlocal residents. These findings proffer substantial practical implications for the orchestration of air pollution mitigation strategies and urban planning initiatives. They suggest that addressing the wellbeing of the marginalized underprivileged cohorts, who are environmentally and politically segregated under the extant urban planning policies in China, is of critical importance.

Liberalism’s Difficult Relationship with the Welfare State

This paper makes two related points. First, as liberals have started to realize that the welfare state is unable to deliver on egalitarian theories of justice, they have increasingly tried to dissociate their theories from the welfare state. Second, dissociating from the welfare state type of thinking is difficult for some liberal egalitarian theories such as John Rawls's theory of justice as his theory shares some of the same underlying thinking as found in the welfare state. For example, Rawls's understanding of universal citizenship and the difference principle resembles some of the aspects of the welfare state on how social equality and citizenship are tied to productivity and society as a venture of mutual cooperation. Consequently, liberals are caught in a difficult relationship where they can only partially move beyond the welfare state. Because of this affinity liberals should move beyond a Rawlsian framework, as Rawls's theory is difficult to completely dissociate from the welfare state.

Youth, Associational Life and Civic Engagement in Northern Cameroon: Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ways in which youths in Northern Cameroon have been able to access social citizenship. Tracing the nature of this access over an extended period – from the early 1990s to the mid-2020s – I underline the importance of youth civic engagement through associational life. Associational life is a hidden or covert way of engaging in politics, and leads to a reinvention of their interaction with hegemonic power, as they are not positioning themselves as moral stakeholders in their community. Drawing on a case study involving the members of the Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada, with longitudinal ethnographic data combined with interviews, the article articulates changes and continuities in civic engagement, based on learning by doing through discursive practices (in street parliaments), physical practices (amateur football clubs) and associative practices (in non-profit associations).

Las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) como servicios públicos esenciales en Argentina. El rol del Estado en la ampliación de la ciudadanía

In the following article we propose to analyze how the Universal and Compulsory Basic Benefit was originated and developed, a public policy created by the Argentine State to guarantee access to Information and Communication Technologies services, decreed within essential public services. In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, we take this case to study how public policies are formulated, the expansion of political and social citizenship, the regulatory role of the State based on its characteristics and definitions within a certain historical, political and economic context, and the responses that this generates in the market forces and with which the State often comes into contradiction and tension.

Poverty Governance in the Delegated Welfare State: Privatization, Commodification, and the U.S. Health Care Safety Net

Abstract Due to forces of retrenchment and fiscal austerity in the contemporary U.S. welfare state, the federal government has increasingly delegated the funding of public programs to private entities. How does privatization influence the way marginalized populations experience the social safety net? To develop insights on delegated poverty governance, this study examines a longstanding public-private program—Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs)—which comprise a nationwide network of clinics serving over thirty million predominantly low-income patients in medically underserved areas. I conducted a case study drawing on in-depth interviews with patients and staff in a small-town FQHC in the Rust Belt. Unlike other social welfare programs, I found a pronounced absence of stigma associated with the FQHC, largely due to features of the delegated policy design, the blended institutional setting, and strategic organizational decisions. However, low-income patients were also unaware of their rights to treatment when encountering paternalistic enforcement of overdue billing rules, which resulted in delayed or foregone health care. Due to underlying tensions surrounding commodification, I argue that privatization of the safety net may quell the stigma of government programs among the poor while simultaneously disentitling individuals from their rights of social citizenship.

Coalitions of care: Strategies for expanding substantive urban citizenship in U.S cities during the COVID-19 pandemic

In this paper we investigate and analyze the elevation of localized practices of migrant belonging, social inclusion and refuge in U.S. cities during the COVID-19 pandemic using the lens of citizenship rights and evolution as proposed by T.H. Marshall. While Marshall's focus was national, we argue that this framework can be adjusted to analyze practices of substantive urban citizenship. Our study draws on interviews conducted during 2021 with local government officials as well as leaders of local immigrant-serving NGOs in 16 U.S. cities. We analyze the successes and failures of local governments as well as civil society organizations in treating migrants within their jurisdictions as ‘citizens’ who belong regardless of their legal status. We pay particular attention to the inter- and multiscalar practices of local, state, and national politics and policies in responding to the immediate needs of non-citizen migrants. The study concludes that Marshall's model has merit but the order he proposed is switched, so that social citizenship is prioritized. The study also emphasizes the importance of strengthening institutional coalitions, especially with migrant organizations in cities. These diverse and expanded partnerships underscore the expansion of citizenship-like practices in many jurisdictions for migrants during the pandemic.

Social studies and citizenship education in Singapore: Towards a progressive orientation

Social studies and citizenship education in Singapore: Towards a progressive orientation

Population curation: The construction of mutual obligation between individual and state in Danish precision medicine.

How do precision medicine initiatives (re)organize relations between individuals and populations? In this article, we investigate how the curation of national genomic populations enacts communities and, in so doing, constructs mutual obligation between individuals and the state. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Danish National Genome Center (DNGC), we show how members of advisory bodies negotiated the inclusion criteria for two different genomic populations: a patient genome population and an envisioned 'Danish' reference genome population. The patient genome population was curated through a politics of inclusion, of as many genomes as possible, whereas the reference genome was to be curated through a politics of exclusion, to include only the genomes of 'ethnic' Danes. These two data populations configure differently the community of 'Danish patients' who might benefit from precision medicine, and thereby prescribe different moral continuities between person, state, and territory. We argue that the DNGC's patient genome population reinforces reciprocal relations of obligations and responsibility between the Danish welfare state and all individuals, while the proposed Danish reference genome population privileges the state's commitment to individuals with biographical-territorial belonging to the nation-state. Drawing on scholarship on social and health citizenship, as well as data solidarity in the Nordics, the discussion shows how population curation in national precision medicine initiatives might both construct and stratify political obligation. Whereas STS scholarship has previously deconstructed the concept of 'population', in the context of the troubling and violent effects of the management of human populations, we point to the importance of population curation as a vehicle for making the individual legible as part of a community to which the state is responsible and for which it is committed to care.

Back to the Future? The Evolution of European Social Citizenship through the Lens of Citations

In the aftermath of the Dano judgment, the scholarship unanimously identified a jurisprudential shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of European citizenship, leading to the refusal of social assistance. Yet, the extent to which the observed shift in the approach of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court) permanently redirected the trajectory of European social citizenship remains understudied. The emphasis placed on contextual causes hints at a possible return to the earlier approach if the political climate becomes more conducive to the development of European social citizenship. This article empirically revisits the Court’s citizenship jurisprudence from a novel perspective, that of citations. The research question seeks to determine if there is a fundamental shift in the reference frame of citizenship judgments and the extent to which the Court’s restrictive approach, observed in the 2010s, persists in recent judgments. All citizenship judgments delivered until October 2023 are examined by combining network and legal analysis. The findings reveal a fundamental and potentially strategic shift in the reference frame of citizenship judgments delivered from 2016 onwards compared to judgments delivered before. Crucially, despite the revival of social Europe in recent years, the Court has not returned to its pre-Dano approach.

Reassessing Soviet industrialization as primitive Soviet accumulation: Social reproduction, collectivization and peasant women's revolts under Stalin

AbstractThis paper adopts a novel Social Reproduction feminist approach to re‐evaluate the Soviet experience of industrialization within the context of global research on primitive accumulation. I analyse the first Five‐Year Plan as a unique process of ‘primitive Soviet accumulation,’ focusing on the Zhenotdel collectivization campaign and the often‐overlooked role of Zhenotdel peasant women delegates [krestyanki delegatki]. The study explores their involvement in peasant women's revolts against collectivization, emphasizing the significance of these events for the Zhenotdel's emancipatory programme in the village. Considering class as a social relation to the conditions of life's reproduction, I demonstrate: (1) how primitive Soviet accumulation reshaped the gendered metabolic relationship between land and labour during the first Five‐Year Plan and (2) yet, the allocation of surplus into the expanded Soviet state apparatus laid the foundation for the distinctive Soviet mother–worker gender contract and social citizenship model.

An Analytical Study of the National Education Policy 2020: Transformation, Issues, and Challenges

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP2020) is embarked upon a vision of transforming the system to meet the needs of 21st century India. Education policies worldwide are increasingly being realigned to economic prosperity, vertical mobility, and social citizenship of the people. One of the fundamental principles of the NEP 2020 is “flexibility so that learners can choose their learning trajectories and programmes, and thereby choose their paths in life according to their talents and interests”. Here, the NEP 2020 shows us the way, as It recommends an interdisciplinary structure of programmes. Integrative thinking is the need of the hour and our education policymakers may very well start with themselves in this journey. There is an urgent need to re-examine our education policies at the regional level to provide an environment where individuals can utilize their education and training to gain employment, improve their living standards, and contribute to the social development of the area. The paper suggested some measures to preserve quality education and promote the transformation of educators towards the changing nature of work.