Cultural Citizenship

This paper seeks to give a sense of the diversity of work that falls within the boundaries of 'cultural citizenship'– a term it locates as emerging from the problematisation of traditional citizenship models by issues of identity and mediation. This paper outlines three distinct strands of cultural citizenship theory, which respectively emphasise multiculturalism, the politics of cultural texts, and dialogical communication. Subsequently, this paper conducts a brief analysis and critique of these strands, enabled by an interrogation of the ways in which they each define and deploy the term 'culture'. It is argued that for cultural citizenship to develop a more coherent terminological 'face', a balance must be struck between a commitment to specificity, and the appeal of abstracted re-imaginings of civil society.     

Gendered Citizenship

This paper considers the manner in which citizenship, rather than being a gender neutral concept, is in fact highly gendered in ways that are detrimental for women and often leads to their exclusion – both theoretically and practically – from the category of citizen. Traditional definitions of the concept of citizenship are outlined before moving on to highlight feminist critiques that have sought not only to reveal the masculine bias inherent in these traditional conceptions but also to rethink the concept of citizenship in ways that can accommodate women as well as men. Finally, the paper concludes with a consideration of the way in which processes of globalisation and the resulting changes in the role of the nation state – traditionally seen as the key site in relation to citizen rights and duties – requires the rethinking of citizenship, paying particular attention to the consequences that these social changes have for women.     

Utilizing The Wire to Teach about Justice-Oriented Citizenship

“Charm City: Down to The Wire?” is the title of an elective class developed by Sarah Taylor, a teacher at a private school in Baltimore. In the class, students explore their city and social justice issues from a framework that correlates to Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) concept of justice-oriented citizenship. Not only do students analyze problems depicted so vividly in the television series The Wire, they investigate and problem-solve to create possible solutions for enduring problems that afflict their city. This study considers the connection of class activities to justice-oriented citizenship and how the course can be replicated in other communities.     

Books and Citizenship

This article takes up the question of world history teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge by reporting on two separate but related projects. In the first, we briefly discuss an empirical investigation one of the authors conducted into the ways that pre- and in-service world history teachers think about, organize, and make meaning of separate and discrete world historical events, first for themselves and then for their students. It demonstrates the value of world history teachers making multiple connections among world historical events from the biggest to the smallest ones to construct dynamic and coherent pictures of the past for themselves and their students. In the second project, we discuss our innovative history lab, a course designed to help undergraduates enrolled in a world history course “see” the pedagogical moves their world history instructors make. We designed this pedagogical history lab to foster future teachers’ understandings of the content knowledge needed to teach world history while they are learning world history as students.     

Training for Citizenship

Schools throughout the United States provide instruction on democracy, voting, and major institutions of government, but often excluded from the curriculum is a central reality of our political system: the role of money in elections. This article provides background information and pedagogical strategies to help teachers foster productive discussions on this issue. First, we summarize recent increases in U.S. election spending and five schools of thought on how to address this trend. Then we present various classroom discussion and assessment strategies for supporting students’ learning about our current campaign finance system and its potential alternatives. These processes can facilitate students’ development of important civic knowledge and skills and also fulfill a variety of state and national standards.     

Citizenship and postmodernity

Citizenship has to be taught in the UK as a new strand in the school curriculum. This citizenship initiative is intended to replace a general feeling of political apathy among the young, yet the initiative itself is leading to concern about what citizenship is and how it can be taught. Citizenship teaching may fail if there is too great a dissonance between the sincerity of citizenship and postmodern scepticism. Hermeneutical philosophy can provide an antidote to doubt and connect the various levels of meaning in our lives: the personal, the local and the global. Citizenship with a global component can succeed by enabling us to compare ourselves with countries where postmodern doubt is not prevalent, as shown in a collaborative project with the Department for International Development.     

Governability and Women's Citizenship

SUMMARY

The fragility of Latin American democracies places the subject of gendered citizenship as an important issue in the context of a most needed democratic governability. This article first develops a proposed nexus between democratic governability and gender equality and assumes the need to place women within a universe of citizenship, as an inherently inclusive democratic perspective would require. We emphasize what we see as women's citizenship deficit according to a traditional definition of the political. The second part of the article analyzes the insertion of Mexican women in the construction of citizenship on the basis of empirical material drawn from the second National Survey on Political Culture and Practice of Citizenship. We then present some conclusions, with an eye on what Victoria Camps has called the public virtues, such as solidarity, responsibility and tolerance, as democratic values of the first order and as characteristics of a gendered citizenship within new political spaces. We believe the fragile democracies of Latin America and the important quality of democratic governability can be strengthened if a new form of gendered citizenship, more inclusive of women's concerns and practices, is recognized and nurtured.     

Citizenship on the margins: Citizenship,social work and social action

Drawing on a critical synthesis of the two main citizenship traditions, so as to construct citizenship as both a status and a practice, linked through the notion of human agency, the article explores citizenship's exclusionary and inclusionary sides within both a national and international framework. Within a national framework, the implications of citizenship's ‘false universalism’ are explored as the basis for a recasting of citizenship in a way that addresses the tension between universalism and particularity or difference. Within an international framework, a human rights perspective is introduced as a means of challenging citizenship's exclusion of nation state outsiders, most notably immigrants and asylum-seekers. This approach draws upon a multi-tiered conceptualisation of citizenship stretching from the local through to the global.

Some implications for social work practice and policy are then discussed in relation to support for active citizenship in deprived communities and anti-poverty action in which poor people themselves have a voice. This includes a brief consideration of political exclusion; the potential of self-help groups and community social work and development work; and user-involvement. The article concludes that citizenship offers social work a framework that embraces anti-poverty work, principles of partnership and anti-discriminatory practice and an inclusionary stance.     

The Increasing Political Power of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel: From Passive Citizenship to Active Citizenship

The immigrants in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) followed a different pattern of political growth than other immigrant groups. Their increased power began on the national level and moved down to the local level, rather than from the periphery toward the centre – the pattern followed by the Oriental Jewish immigrants. We can trace three stages in the development of their political power.
The first stage was during the 1992 elections when the immigrants attempted to organize their own list. Though they failed, the results of the election strengthened them because they were given credit for the left's victory, giving them a sense of political effectiveness.
The second stage came during the 1996 elections. It was a defining moment for the former Soviet immigrants' political power. In this stage external factors and internal factors reinforced each other. The change in the electoral system made it possible for the immigrants to vote for their community on the one hand and for a national figure on the other, thus resolving their identity dilemma.
The local elections in 1998 marked the third stage in their political strength. They found the immigrant community better organized, with an improved understanding of its local interests, the capacity to put forward a strong local leadership, and a stronger link between the immigrant political centre and the local level.     

Citizenship Beyond Borders: A Cross‐National Study of Dual Citizenship*

As global integration increases, the implications for state boundaries and citizens’ identity grow more significant. Some scholars suggest that the recognition of dual citizenship reveals the extent to which cross‐national immigration requires states to formally recognize a multiplicity of national identities through dual citizenship ( Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer 2002 ; Castles and Davidson 2000 ; Falk 1994 ). We propose that scholars need to additionally consider citizenship identity as a source of national assimilation of the international community and postnational citizenship in world culture ( Brubaker 1992a ; Faist 2004 ; Soysal 1994 ; Turner 2001 ). We use logistic regression to evaluate this argument by examining factors that lead states to enact legislation recognizing dual citizenship. The resulting analysis suggests that the recognition of dual citizenship reflects national, ex‐colonial, and postnational cultural identities rather than the presence of cross‐national immigration.     

Who Claims Dual Citizenship? The Limits of Postnationalism,the Possibilities of Transnationalism,and the Persistence of Traditional Citizenship1

The dynamics of globalization, especially international migration, challenge traditional frameworks of citizenship and prompted scholars to develop new models of membership: transnationalism and postnationalism. All three‐the traditional, transnational and postnational‐explicitly or implicitly address the controversial topic of dual citizenship, or multiple membership. Lack of statistical data, however, has made it difficult to adjudicate between these models or to undertake a broad empirical assessment of dual citizenship, either over time or between people from different countries and socioeconomic backgrounds. This article outlines the testable implications of traditional, transnational and post‐national frameworks and evaluates these hypotheses using a unique statistical data source that asked respondents to report multiple citizenship, the 1981, 1991 and 1996 20% Canadian census samples. The data offer little evidence that immigrants adopt a strict postnational view of citizenship, but they reveal the possibilities of transnationalism and the continued relevance of traditional frameworks. Over time, we observe a rapid increase in the aggreate level of reported dual citizenship from 1981 to 1996. We also find that those with higher human capital, rather than the economically marginalized, are more likely to embrace dual citizenship. After controlling for individual attributes, important contextual or group effects nonetheless remain: self‐reports of dual citizenship vary significantly by birthplace and are higher if an immigrant lives in Quebec. Since naturalization levels seem to rise in tandem with reports of dual citizenship, this research suggests a certain paradox: while multiple belonging