Enacting children's citizenship: developing understandings of how children enact themselves as citizens through actions and acts of citizenship

Children have an unsettled relationship with the status of citizenship, being given some rights, responsibilities and opportunities for participation, and being denied others. Yet if citizenship is conceived of as a practice, children can be firmly seen as citizens in the sense that they are social actors, negotiating and contributing to relationships of social interdependence. This article develops understandings of children’s agency in citizenship and some of the different ways in which children’s actions enact them as interdependent citizens. It presents one aspect of the understanding of citizenship generated from research by six groups of marginalised children, aged 5-13, in Wales and France. Synthesising the research groups’ descriptions of activities they associated with the component parts of citizenship with citizenship theory, these children can be seen to engage in actions of citizenship that include making rules of social existence, furthering social good and exercising freedoms to achieve their own rights. Their activities also transgress the boundaries of existing balances of rights, responsibilities and statuses, through their (mis)behaviour, in ways that can be interpreted as Acts of citizenship. In children’s everyday activities, however, the distinction between actions and Acts of citizenship can at times be blurred. This is because recognizing aspects of children’s practices as citizenship is a challenge to dominant definitions of citizenship, and claims a new status for children. Exploring children’s citizenship in these ways has potential for widening understandings of participation and appreciating broader aspects of children’s agency in citizenship

The Future of Citizenship

A discussion of what constitutes identity and citizenship is timely and welcome. The linkage of citizenship to history and the association of citizenship with rights and responsibilities are appropriate. Nonetheless, we have concerns with some aspects of the discussion on citizenship

Being an Activist:Feminist Citizenship Through Transformations of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Citizenship Regimes

The Yugoslav wars of succession have had a great impact on how feminism in the region has been researched and written about. A lot of significant research has addressed relation of feminism to (anti-) nationalism and peace-building processes, whereas the transformations of citizenship, caused by the multiple changes of the former Yugoslav citizenship regimes, were mainly out of focus. This paper will attempt to connect relevant investigations in feminist citizenship, its meaning and scope, with the alterations of citizenship regimes in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states. The assumption is that one could differentiate between three different citizenship regimes – the first framed by the socialist self-management state, the second by the nation-building processes and violent disintegration of the former state, and the last one by post-socialist, post-conflict transitional circumstances – which had also a strong impact on the uneven development of gender regimes in Yugoslavia and its successor states. Feminist citizenship is understood as a paradigm of activist citizenship which contests and challenges the meanings of citizenship itself. It will be argued that feminist citizenship has to be seen as both an effect of deep changes in citizenship regimes, but also as a constant challenge to their sedimentation. The paper will thus seek to offer an alternative reading of history of feminism in Yugoslavia and its successor states, relying mainly on the concepts of activist citizenship and citizenship regimes. It will also show that with the changes in citizenship regime the frames of interpretation change as well, changing the meaning of feminism as a political force

Citizens without nations

To broach the question of whether citizenship could exist without (or beyond) community, this paper discusses genealogies of citizenship as membership that binds an individual to the community of birth (of the self or a parent). It is birthright as fraternity that blurs the boundary between citizenship and nationality. After briefly discussing recent critical studies on birthright citizenship (whether it is civic or ethnic or blood or soil) by Ayelet Shachar and Jacqueline Stevens, the paper discusses three critical genealogies of the relationship between birthright and citizenship by Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. Although each provides a critical perspective into the question, Weber reduces citizenship to fraternity with nation and Arendt reduces citizenship to fraternity with the state. It is Foucault who illustrates racialization of fraternity as the connection between citizenship and nationality. Yet, since Foucault limits his genealogical investigations to the 18th and 19th centuries, a genealogy of fraternity of what he calls an immense biblical and Greek tradition remains for Derrida to articulate as a question of citizenship

Citizenship after orientalism: Ottoman citizenship

About the book: A keen analysis of the social, political and economic determinants of Turkish politics with an exploration of the different dimensions of the republican model of Turkish citizenship, providing the reader with a comprehensive account of Turkish modernity and democracy. At the beginning of a new millennium, Turkey finds itself at a critical juncture in its democratic evolution. This momentous event has been precipitated by its desire to enter into the European Union and the recent financial crisis it has faced, both of which have fuelled the need for the creation of a strong, democratic Turkey. Consisting of a collection of innovative and influential essays by leading scholars, this book gives the reader an historical and sociological understanding of Turkey and adds a new dimension to the ongoing discussion surrounding global citizenship and global identity

Creating “S”itizenship, Denying Citizenship: A Hmong Man’s Journey through High School

This article explores the perspective of a Hmong student’s experience in high school in the context of patriotism and citizenship. Growing up and receiving Citizenship Awards, he noticed the contrast with the Citizenship Room at his high school. Citizenship was given through these awards and is taken away in the Citizenship Room. This article critiques the author’s nostalgia for high school as he takes on a different perspective and asks himself “How did being Asian affect my experience?” and “Would I still have nostalgia for high school if the Citizenship Room was constantly part of my experience?

Immigrant citizenship status in Europe: the role of individual characteristics and national policies

The acquisition of citizenship status in the new country of residence may depend on (1) the individual immigrant’s characteristics, (2) the structural characteristics of both the origin and the destination countries and (3) institutional factors in the destination country including policy factors, specifically the national citizenship policies. Although almost all European countries have shifted from a ‘nationalist’ to a more ‘multiculturalist’ citizenship policy, thus formally liberalising the access to citizenship rights, in Europe the opportunities for obtaining citizenship status in the new country of residence are still quite limited for many immigrants and their descendants. In addition, the conditions under which immigrants become naturalised citizens vary widely between countries. Indeed, there are many differences in policies on the right to citizenship in terms of the residence requirements for naturalisation, citizenship by birth, acceptance of dual citizenship and language requirements. The aim of this paper is to examine, through a logistic regression model with cluster-robust standard errors, the effect of both individuallevel characteristics and measures of national citizenship policies on the likelihood of citizenship status amongst young and adult immigrants living in six European countries, i.e. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, using data from the Immigrant Citizens Survey (ICS). The results show a considerable effect of individual characteristics on citizenship status. However, the effect of policy factors is also important. In particular, a lower residence requirement for naturalisation and a more inclusive environment favour immigrants becoming citizens of the new country of residence

Supranational citizenship-building and the UN: What can we learn from the European experience?

[From the introduction] The word “supranational citizenship” or “UN citizenship” is not yet part of the United Nations’ usual vocabulary. The use of the “citizenship” concept in UN discourse is quasi-exclusively limited to the national context, a definition of citizenship bounded by state borders (Delcourt, 2006: 187). Must we therefore conclude that the UN is not “making citizenship” at all? Given that the notions of “supranational” or “UN citizenship” are absent from the United Nations’ official discourse, the answer seems obviously to be YES. Yet, consideration of the European experience demonstrates that this response may be too hasty. The example of the EU, and some work on European citizenship, suggest another answer to this question. The aim of the present paper is to show that, just as the European Union was making citizenship well before the Maastricht Treaty mentioned European citizenship, the United Nations system is a supranational framework that is beginning to engage a process of citizenisation. Based on a large and dynamic conception of citizenship, defined as a double relation - between citizens and between citizens and a political entity - characterized by rights, access to institutions and belonging to a community (Jenson and Phillips, 1996; Wiener 1998; Bellamy, 2005; Auvachez, 2006), this paper proceeds in two steps. First, it demonstrates how the European experience provides a significant precedent to deal with the issue of citizenisation in a supranational context, both empirically and theoretically. Then, it sheds light on the emergence of elements of a UN citizenship regime often neglected by mainstream theories of supranational citizenship

“I Am Undocumented and a New Yorker”: Affirmative City Citizenship and New York City’s IDNYC Program

The power to confer legal citizenship status is possessed solely by the federal government. Yet the courts and legal theorists have demonstrated that citizenship encompasses factors beyond legal status, including rights, inclusion, and political participation. As a result, even legal citizens can face barriers to citizenship, broadly understood, due to factors including their race, class, gender, or disability. Given this multidimensionality, the city, as the place where residents carry out the tasks of their daily lives, is a critical space for promoting elements of citizenship. This Note argues that recent city municipal identification-card programs have created a new form of citizenship for their residents. This citizenship, which this Note terms “Affirmative City Citizenship,” is significant for both marginalized populations generally, as well as undocumented immigrant city residents who, because of their noncitizen legal status, face additional hurdles to city life. Utilizing “IDNYC”—New York City’s municipal identification-card program—as a case study, this Note examines the strengths and limitations of Affirmative City Citizenship as a means for supporting undocumented immigrant city residents. It concludes that while Affirmative City Citizenship is a powerful tool for confronting barriers to citizenship, its success with the immigrant population relies in part on the city’s adoption of other proimmigrant policies that more directly conflict with federal law. Accordingly, it recommends that cities seeking to protect their undocumented immigrant city residents adopt both types of policies