In search of disability rights: citizenship and Turkish disability organizations

Criticizing modern citizenship’s emphasis on the ‘nation’ as a homogeneous body of citizens, recent citizenship conceptions draw attention to diverse group identities and their differentiated rights‐claims. By way of scrutinizing different disability organizations, this paper analyzes the struggles by people with disabilities in Turkey and examines whether these could be perceived as claims to new forms of citizenship. It argues that due to the institutional, political, cultural and historical specificities of Turkey, most non‐governmental organizations maintain relations of patronage with state actors. Far from initiating a rights‐based discourse, their activities cannot be perceived within recent citizenship frameworks. Yet, parallel to Turkey’s accession process to the EU and technological developments, alternative forms of organizing started emerging at the virtual level. These are the harbingers of a relatively more rights‐based discourse.     

NATION-STATES CONFRONT THE GLOBAL: Discourses of Indigenous Rights in Fiji and Tanzania

How do global issue constructions serve as resources for actors engaged in domestic political contention, and what does the appropriation of global ideas by domestic actors imply about the spread of global culture? To contribute to knowledge about conflict‐based diffusion of global ideas, we examine the histories of global constructions of indigenous rights and national debates about indigenous rights in Fiji and Tanzania. While global models of indigenous rights emphasize self‐determination for nondominant, culturally distinct groups at risk from the nation‐state, advocates for indigenization policies in Fiji and Tanzania have argued for state policies to entrench political and economic rights for majority or near‐majority groups that were well integrated into the nation‐state. Although transnationally connected indigenous rights organizations have a greater presence in Tanzania than in Fiji, actors in Fiji remain more engaged with changes in international indigenous rights discourse than their counterparts in Tanzania. This difference reflects variations in the leverage global culture offered in the two cases because of its externality to national political debates. In Fiji, actors appropriated global culture as a means to internationalize a domestic dispute, while in Tanzania the impetus for indigenization came from global economic pressures. Our findings imply that conflict‐based diffusion concentrates agency with respect to the use of global legal discourses in domestic actors rather than the globally connected actors and experts who carry global culture in consensus‐based diffusion.     

Migration,Diaspora and Citizenship: A Qualitative Study of the Perceptions of Pakistani Nationals towards the Political Rights of Pakistani Dual Citizens

The dual citizenship has been the subject of intense political debate in Pakistan barring the elected representatives, in parliament, the provincial assemblies and the presidency, from holding dual nationality. The perceptions that holding a foreign citizenship challenges the undiluted loyalty to country further engender question mark over their political participation in country’s affairs. A qualitative study has been carried out in the city of Rawalpindi to explore the stance of Pakistani nationals on such exclusion of Pakistani dual citizens from mainstream politics of Pakistan asking should the individual’s association to the state be an exclusive one? In this paper, in‐depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 40 male and female respondents (22 Pakistani citizens, 18 Pakistani dual citizens) and 6 constitutional experts. The results indicate distrust among Pakistani citizens when considering dual citizens’ right of representation in general elections of Pakistan, stemming from a mistrust of their “split loyalties”.     

Transnational regimes of labor and statelessness: Intersections of citizenship regimes and local norms in East and Southeast Asia

This article offers a review of the literature on transnational labor regimes and statelessness to pursue further theorization from East and Southeast Asian contexts. The main focus is on how local norms (local sense of belonging, local moral code, and local hierarchies) are entangled with national‐level citizenship regimes to legitimate the discrimination of certain people to be statelessness and secure low‐wage migrant workers for the new global labor regime. First, traditional literature on citizenship and statelessness was reviewed; binary theoretical frameworks (including citizens/excluding non‐citizens) based on political recognition were indicated as the main limitations. Second, recent theories arguing for an intersection between national citizenship regimes and a new global labor regime were reviewed. Third, recent theories that illuminate the importance of local contexts in determining citizens' rights were reviewed based on formal exclusion and informal inclusion as well as formal inclusion and informal exclusion. Finally, it was concluded that further theorization is needed on how citizenship regimes and local norms intersect to produce statelessness, securing low‐wage migrant workers for the global labor regime through the global assemblages approach. Through the paper, East and Southeast Asia were illuminated as potentially fruitful research sites for further theorization on the topic.     

Theorizing and Analyzing Citizenship in Multicultural Societies

I argue that sociologists have directed insufficient attention to the study of citizenship. When citizenship is studied, sociologists tend to concentrate on just one facet: rights. I elaborate four conceptual facets of citizenship. I link two—citizenship as rights and belonging—to theoretical elaborations of multiculturalism. Considering multiculturalism as a state discourse and set of policies, rather than a political or normative theory, I outline linkages between multiculturalism and two additional facets of citizenship: legal status and participation. Over the last 15 years, the idea of multiculturalism has come under withering criticism, especially in Europe, in part because it is claimed that multiculturalism undermines common citizenship. Yet countries with more multicultural policies and a stronger discourse of pluralism and recognition are places where immigrants are more likely to become citizens, more trusting of political institutions, and more attached to the national identity. There is also little evidence that multicultural policies fuel majority backlash, and some modest evidence that such policies enlarge conceptions of inclusive membership. By studying claims‐making and the equality of immigrant‐origin groups, we see that the participatory aspect of citizenship needs to take center stage in future work in political sociology, social theory, social movements, immigration, and race/ethnicity.     

Transcending the majority rights and minority protection dichotomy through multicultural reflective citizenship in the African Great Lakes region

In this paper, the author examines how colonial racist policies and western‐bound post‐colonial educational practices have contributed to the recurring ethnic conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa. After defining democracy and reflective citizenship within the African context, she discusses how teachers’ roles should be redefined and pedagogy revamped within a multicultural perspective in order to prepare students to become reflective citizens who are empowered to reframe interethnic relations in the region beyond the pervasive majority rights and minority protection discourse.     

Transnational status and cosmopolitanism: are dual citizens and foreign residents cosmopolitan vanguards?

Empirically growing transnationalism and normatively demanded cosmopolitanism may be closely connected when considered as different elements of new forms of citizenship beyond the single nation‐state. Do individuals with either full (dual citizenship) or partial (foreign resident) transnational status exhibit more cosmopolitanism than mono citizens? This article decodes the multidimensional character of cosmopolitanism using major democratic theories – liberalism, republicanism, and communitarianism. Multivariate regression analyses of data from a survey among mono citizens, dual citizens and foreign residents in Switzerland reveal that a transnational status is associated with cosmopolitanism in a differentiated way. Dual citizens and especially foreign residents are more likely than mono citizens to exhibit liberal cosmopolitanism; but only dual citizens having full political rights and opportunities in two countries are more likely to exhibit republican cosmopolitanism and only foreign residents excluded from the political community of residence are more likely to exhibit communitarian cosmopolitanism. Each of them can thus be considered as vanguards in specific ways. Our study furthermore demonstrates the added value of disaggregating both cosmopolitanism and transnationalism.     

Citizenship and inequality in a global age

Although the notion of national citizenship has long held the promise of equal membership, it has proved less useful in a world of circulating cultures, people, and loyalties through money, media, and migration. The increasing mobility of capital and people across national borders compels us to conceptualize welfare and inequality at the global level. Although the enforcement of citizen rights remains within the purview of the nation‐state, the source of these rights can no longer be firmly placed within the national framework. From cosmopolitan imaginations to postnational research, contemporary configurations of citizenship trace their legitimacy to global discourses that increasingly challenge the national order of citizenship. Yet current transformations in citizenship also point to the possibility of new inequalities, particularly, when nation‐states are increasingly able to modulate the rights they make available to immigrants, and differentiate among refugees, professionals, and investors among many other categories of people.     

Disabled People: active or passive citizens - reflections from the Malaysian experience

The concept of citizenship has once again entered centre-stage in the debate among political philosophers, welfare theorists and activists. Marginalised groups, including disabled people around the world, are making a claim for their inclusion, rights and equal opportunities on the basis of citizenship rights. The Malaysian experience of disabled people within a newly-industrialising country draws lessons on how a disadvantaged section of Malaysian society struggle to enhance their rights as citizens of the nation and a share of the nations wealth. While there are difficult challenges, there are also positive indicators for the active citizenship participation of disabled people among fellow Malaysians.     

Citizen Alevi in Turkey: Beyond Confirmation and Denial

Abstract Critics of the current national citizenship models argue that, although it rests on claims to be inclusionary and universal, it can never eliminate exclusionary and particularistic practices when challenged by those identities excluded from the historical trajectory of "nation building." Turkish citizenship has been a form of anomalous amalgamation since its conception. On the one hand, the state insisted on the pre-emptive exclusion of religion and various communal cultural identities from politics, while, on other hand, it promoted a particular religious identity primarily as a means of promoting cultural and social solidarity among its citizens. Contemporary Alevi movements, representing the interests of a large minority in Turkey, provide a new source of energy for the revision of concepts of citizenship. Alevis have suffered from prejudice, and their culture has been arrested and excluded from the nation building process. They were not able to integrate into the form of national identity based on the "secular" principles that the republican state has provided as a means of promoting solidarity among citizens. What Alevis seek is a revised citizenship model in terms of a system of rights assuring the condition of neutrality among culturally diverse individuals.     

Commercially arranged marriage and the negotiation of citizenship rights among Vietnamese marriage migrants in multiracial Singapore

Globalization and increased mobilities have multiplied cross-border transactions not only in the economic sphere but have also a major impact on human relationships of intimacy. This can be seen in the increased volume of differently mediated forms of international marriage, not just straddling ‘east’ and ‘west’, but within Asia and across different ethnicities and nationalities. International marriage raises a host of social issues for countries of origin and destination, including challenges relating to the citizenship status and rights of the marriage migrant. This paper examines the negotiation of citizenship rights in the case of commercially matched marriage migrants – namely Vietnamese women who marry Singaporean men and migrate to Singapore as ‘foreign brides’. While they are folded into the ‘family’ – what is often thought of as the basic building block of the nation in Asian societies – they are not necessarily accorded full incorporation into the ‘nation’ despite Singapore's claims to multiculturalism. This is particularly salient at a point when cross-nationality, cross-ethnicity marriages between Singapore citizens and non-citizens are on the increase, accounting for over a third of marriages registered in Singapore in recent years. Vietnamese women who marry Singaporeans are positioned within the nation-state's citizenship regime as dependents of Singaporean men, having to rely on the legitimacy of the marriage relationship as well as the whims of their husbands in negotiating their rights vis-à-vis the Singapore state. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with 20 Vietnamese women who are commercially matched marriage migrants, the paper first focuses on the vulnerable positions these women find themselves, particularly given difficulties in forging their own support networks as well as weaknesses of the civil society sector in what has been called an ‘illiberal democracy’ characterized by a political culture of ‘non-resistance’. The paper then goes on to examine the way they negotiate rights to residency/citizenship, work and children within webs of asymmetrical power relations within the family and the nation-state. We draw on our findings to show that citizenship is ‘a terrain of struggle’ within a multicultural nation-state shaped by social ideologies of gender, race and class and negotiated on an everyday basis within spheres of family intimacy.     

After Postnational Citizenship: Constructing the Boundaries of Inclusion in Neoliberal Contexts

Profound changes in global exchanges of goods, ideas, and labor in the 20th century required scholars to critically engage with notions of citizenship, belonging and inclusion. Scholars of globalization initially posited the development of a postnational citizenship, wherein rights are attached to individuals as human beings rather than as members of particular nation‐states. This article questions these theories in light of the evolution of neoliberalism in global markets and the worsening problems of the displaced and rightless. We show that, with the prioritization of market participation as a condition of full inclusion, personhood is not sufficient for belonging or claims‐making. We highlight the effects of the new ‘market citizenship’ on both migrant groups and native‐born minorities, whose inclusion is increasingly based on economic success rather than legal citizenship. We consider the literature on the ways that neoliberalism builds upon historical economic inequalities to distribute citizenship rights to those individuals deemed productive within the current economic system. Finally, we demonstrate that the current citizenship regime, while not anchored in the nation‐state, is very different from early formulations of postnational citizenship. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Building alliances: Defending immigrant rights in rural Oregon

Political participation in the rural United States has often been narrowly defined within the confines of electoral politics. Increasingly, participants in rural US social movements have highlighted the shortcomings of democracy defined purely in terms of electoral politics in favour of a more participatory model of politics that focuses on the social and cultural rights of those who are often formally or informally excluded from the liberal definition of citizenship. This article highlights the process of claiming rights as cultural citizens in a political context where there are efforts through the formal political system—usually in the form of ballot referendums at the state or local level—to further limit the rights of specific constituencies such as gay, lesbian and transgendered individuals or immigrants. A second focus of this article is on the dynamics of solidarity and alliance building between different kinds of social movements acting in concert to push for cultural rights and then formal rights for each other's constituencies. The article specifically seeks to illustrate how two organizations that share quite different constituencies and agendas can effectively collaborate in regional and state-wide campaigns in the rural state of Oregon, while also honestly discussing their differences and difficulties in working together.     

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.     

Citizenship of Roma after the split of Czechoslovakia: A social problem to be faced by other multinational states

The division of Czechoslovakia into two independent republics in 1993 has far-reaching implications for the citizenship rights of the Roma and Sinti minority population. During the period of so-called socialism, their situation developed very differently from that of related groups living in Western Europe as their cultural identity was totally destroyed by the paternalism of the communist regime. The fundamental political change in 1989, and the advent of a market economy, affected the Roma population more than other Czech citizens. With the ending of a joint federal nationality many Roma living on Czech territory, being regarded as of Slovak origin, lost their citizenship status totally. To acquire Czech citizenship stringent conditions were applied which they were unwilling or unable to meet. The discriminatory nature of the nationality law in the Czech Republic was criticized by European Union and human rights experts, and some non-governmental organizations have also taken up the case. This paper raises fundamental issues of legally sanctioned exclusion and discusses the implications of citizenship concepts for other post-communist countries.     

"Everyone with Eyes Can See the Problem": Moral Citizens and the Space of Irish Nationhood

This paper examines Ireland's 2004 Constitutional Amendment which removes birthright citizenship from any future Irish‐born children of immigrant parents. I argue that for particular historical reasons, the ability of the state to convince its citizens of the necessity for this Amendment was remarkable and I suggest that it was able to do so by constructing citizenship as a moral regime and foreign‐nationals and their foetuses as ‘suspect patriots.’ I describe how the notion of immorality is laminated upon black bodies — specifically black pregnant women — and how the presence of black migrant workers, refugees and asylees consequently comes to be experienced in Irish national space as transgressive, their political subjecthood constrained by the supposedly legible abjectivity of their bodies. The issue of race remains unenunciated, and yet, as the Minister for Justice stated during the referendum debate, ‘anyone with eyes can see the problem.’ The Irish government's privileging of moral rather than cultural incommensurability is strikingly similar to culturalist rhetorics of exclusion that are often invoked when race is at issue in European public debate on immigration. Configured upon, and therefore experienced as a type of body, immorality becomes an alibi for race and is naturalized as a form of exclusion and as a potential site of state intervention in the form of xenophobic legislation and policymaking. Reading this decision as merely racist however, fails to give voice to the experiences of Irish Citizens who voted for this Amendment. Their struggle to build a “New Ireland” and to accept a multiculturalist framework in the face of neo‐liberal restructuring policies and a European‐wide retreat from the welfare state must be considered as being in dialectical tension with the ideological smearing of immigrants if we are to fully grasp the complex interaction between relations of power and the privileging of difference.     

Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization,the State and The Extra‐Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics1

How should we conceptualize membership, citizenship and political community in a world where migrants and their home states increasingly maintain and cultivate their formal and informal ties? This study analyzes the extra‐territorial conduct of Mexican. politics and the emergence of new migrant membership practices and relations between migrants and home states. Standard globalist, transnationalist or citizenship theories cannot properly contextualize and analyze such practices. I propose that we rethink the concept of membership in a political community not only as a Marshallian status granted by states, but also as an instituted process embedded within four other institutions and processes: home state domestic politics; the home state's relationship to the world system; a semi‐autonomous transnational civil society created in part by migration; and the context of reception of migrants in the United States. A main conclusion is that the state itself plays a key role in creating transnational political action by migrants and new migrant membership practices. The article draws on printed sources and interviews and ethnography done since 1990.     

Associations, Modernity and the Insider-citizens of a Victorian Highwheel Bicycle Club

Abstract  The creation of a club, the recruitment of new members, and the subsequent pursuit of an association's goals by its members present a succession of constitutive acts designed to advance a particular vision of citizenship. That vision may sometimes sit comfortably within the established state order, but quite often the activities of clubs are viewed by the state with suspicion, and may even be deemed subversive. The rights and obligations of an association's members serve as a blueprint for the form of citizenship pursued, and they participate in the genealogy of citizenship through their efforts to construct particular forms of civic society. By requiring a formal act of membership, all associations are to a degree exclusionary, thus bestowing power and influence on club members. Non-members are normally viewed as outsiders or as others , and members who fail to respect a club's constitution may be dropped from the insider-citizenship it represents. The Montreal Bicycle Club (MBC), formed in 1878, presents an illuminating example of how associations engage in acts of citizenship with its codes of conduct and hierarchies. Its members practiced a version of technological citizenship. MBC members asserted rights of use of the road in fierce competition with other road users, exerted political power through the elite Anglo circles of Montreal, and advocated the virtues of modern technology. Their highwheel bicycles were among the most visible modern artifacts on the streets. They were the first citizens to "go out for a spin", and there was a distinctive spatiality to many of their riding activities. They present a category of modern citizens whose purpose was to construct a technologically advanced, but highly structured society according to their masculinist vision.     

Negotiating race and place in the Garifuna Diaspora: Identity formation and transnational grassroots politics in New York City and Honduras

This paper is an exploration of the relations between the politics of identity and the socio‐economic and political processes of the current era of globalization. Using ethnographic material from the transnational grassroots organizations of the Garinagu—an Afro‐Indigenous population living in transnational communities between Central America and the US—I show the multiple ways that they articulate their identity between and among the tropes of “autocthony,” “blackness,” “Hispanic,” “diaspora,” and “nation.” This construction and negotiation of identity is intimately connected to the negotiation of rights vis‐à‐vis nation‐states and international political bodies, where ideologies of race, ethnicity, nation, and citizenship carry with them different implications for rights and belonging. I argue that the complexities of this case point to the uneven processes of globalization, within which the power to define the ideological terrain of economic and political struggles is still profoundly unequal.     

Relocating Civil Society in a Politics of Civic‐Driven Change

Politics is central to development discourse, yet remains peripheral. Over some twenty years, a civil‐society narrative has not fulfilled its potential to ‘bring politics back in’. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking, in policies towards civil society and in the growth‐driven political economy of NGO‐ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a focus on rights, citizenship and leadership that show valuable focused progress. This article examines a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic‐driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of socio‐political processes.