Peter Nyers

Abject Cosmopolitanism: the politics of protection in the anti-deportation movement

The securitisation of migration in Western states has resulted in an array of restrictive laws and policies that raise important questions about the relationship between protection and the political. New technologies of control (such as detention) and strategies of exclusion (such as deportation) are rapidly undermining—indeed, effectively criminalising—national cultures of asylum. This article critically analyses how these measures are being contested and countered by the anti-deportation activism of undocumented non-citizen people in Canada. How are these campaigns re-casting the question of ‘protection’ in the face of deportation efforts by the Canadian state? This is a significant issue because the capacity to decide upon matters of inclusion and exclusion is a key element of sovereign power. In the case of asylum seekers, the ability to decide who will and will not be provided with protection is interpreted in this paper as a focal point where the state (re)founds its claim to monopolise the political. Consequently, disputes over who has the authority to protect, who will be protected, and under what terms and conditions, can reveal new problematisations as well as new ways of thinking and acting politically. Employing the conceptual framework of abject cosmopolitanism, this article seeks to understand how these campaigns are, and are not, reformulating the terms of political community, identity and practice.

The accidental citizen: acts of sovereignty and (un)making citizenship

Abstract How are citizens and foreigners made and unmade? This article addresses this question by taking Paul Virilios recent theorizing on the accident as its point of departure. Virilio rethinks the received wisdom that says that the accident is solely that which is unexpected and contingent. According to Virilio, the invention or production of any technology is simultaneously also the production of its accident. To invent the train, he says, is to invent derailment; to invent aircraft is to invent the air crash. Technologies, therefore, can be assessed on the basis of the accidents they produce. In this article, I shift the focus of theories of the accident to the topic of citizenship. What is the primary accident of technologies of citizenship? What exclusions are enabled when the ‘accident’ is employed as a political category? These questions are addressed through an analysis of the discourse on ‘accidental citizenship’ in the United States. Accidental citizenship is a pejorative way of describing the ‘birthright’ citizenship of individuals who were born on US territory to non-citizen parents. I argue with reference to the case of the so-called ‘second American Taliban’ (Yaser Esam Hamdi) that the discourse of ‘accidental citizenship’ is being employed as a strategy for making and unmaking American citizenship. Accidental citizenship involves discursive technologies that enable an exceptional logic to be applied to legally normalized subjects, with the effect of excluding those who are included. Consequently, by focusing on the figure of the ‘accidental citizen’ in post-9/11 United States we can better understand the acts of sovereignty by which citizens and foreigners, friends and enemies are made and unmade.

Introduction: Why Citizenship Studies

This issue marks the tenth anniversary of Citizenship Studies. To commemorate this milestone, we have invited some of the most prominent scholars in the field to contribute to this special anniversary issue. We want to take this occasion to take stock of the last decade of citizenship studies as well as identify important themes for future research. When Citizenship Studies was launched in 1997, the journal sought to establish a new agenda for the study of citizenship. In its “Aims and Scope” the journal announced its intention to “focus on debates that move beyond conventional notions of citizenship, and treat citizenship as a strategic concept that is central in the analysis of identity, participation, empowerment, human rights and the public interest”. Citizenship Studies approached the topic of citizenship from perspectives that were not confined by the categories of a state-centric politics, but saw citizenship as something that should be “analysed in the context of contemporary processes involving globalisation, theories of international relations, changes to the state and political communities, multiculturalism, gender, indigenous peoples and national reconciliation, equity, social and public policy, welfare, and the reorganisation of public management”. The aim of the new journal was to broaden the debate on the meaning, significance, and practices of citizenship. The rationale was simple: “as a theoretically basic concept, citizenship provides new tools for formulating problems and providing practical analysis and advice in these fields”. Given this mandate, the journal has sought to publish papers that “provide links between theory, institutions such as markets and religions, and the analysis of substantive issues”. Ten years ago Citizenship Studies was a participant in changes already taking place with how citizenship was theorized. A decade later, the journal has clearly given substantive shape to changes and developments in study of citizenship. Our aim in this special anniversary issue is to critically reflect on some of the major issues and debates that have emerged over the last decade as well as to point out some of the new challenges ahead. After publishing ten volumes, 37 issues, 247 articles, and a dozen special theme issues, we feel that the time is right for such an undertaking. The challenge, as always, is to think critically and constructively about citizenship. Over the past decade, Citizenship Studies has been host to some fundamental debates regarding who is a citizen (and who is not); what is citizenship (and what it might become); the contexts

Introduction: What's left of citizenship?

Citizenship is at once one of the most celebrated and most problematic of political concepts. Celebrated, because citizenship is said to be the political identity that embodies modern claims to liberty, equality, rights, autonomy, self-determination, individualism, and human agency. Whenever and wherever this occurs, it always stands as a remarkable historical achievement. And yet, citizenship remains problematic precisely because its accomplishments are almost always realized in a highly unequal—indeed, exclusionary—fashion. Citizenship, as Rob Walker (2002, p. 20) points out, ‘is one of our major practices of drawing lines, of including and excluding those who are or are not political agents in a political community’. Prejudices, chauvinisms, inequalities, and hierarchies internal to societies have excluded individuals and groups from full citizenship status on the basis of race, gender, caste, sexual orientation, religion, region, and other factors. Moreover, while citizenship is credited for being the political category that brings people together within a political community, citizenship also serves an exclusionary function, dividing up the world’s population into smaller subpopulations that can then be managed and governed by states (Hindess, 2000; see his article in this issue). From a global justice or global welfare perspective, this means that the accident of the place of one’s birth has profound implications on the availability of adequate food, health care, education, and life opportunities (Shachar, 2003). To be sure, the social and political rights associated with T.H. Marshall’s (1950) classic account of citizenship speaks very little to the realities faced by growing numbers of the world’s population. Tens of millions of international refugees, internally displaced persons, indigenous peoples, residents of occupied territories, and people living in areas under emergency rule continue to see their citizenship rights suspended, withheld, or simply disregarded. The result, as Brysk and Shafir (2004) have argued, has been the emergence of a ‘citizenship gap’ that is creating dramatic differences in the rights and benefits of citizenship across the globe. Given these ongoing pressures and new inequalities, the present capacity of citizenship to hold—let alone monopolize—our imagination about what qualifies as an authentic form of political subjectivity has emerged as a key political

Dueling designs: The politics of rescuing dual citizens

This article analyzes the responses to the mass evacuation of approximately 15,000 Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah war of 2006. The Canadian state went to extraordinary lengths to provide for the safety of its citizens, despite the fact that they were living outside the territorial confines of the nation. However, the evacuation was complicated by the fact that many of the people provided security were not just citizens, but dual citizens. The provision of security to these subjects had the paradoxical effect of provoking a controversy about the status of dual citizenship within Canada. If dual citizenship is designed to make sense of the multiple connections and feelings of belonging that exist under conditions of globalization, then these design elements begin to fail once the limit question of security and protection comes into play. This article utilizes Cynthia Webers typology of the design elements of ‘safe citizenship’ – dying, caring, and immersing for ones country – and problematizes them in relation to dual citizenship. Dual citizenship raises a number of challenges for designing safe citizenship: Which country does one die for and in what context? What are the responsibilities of the second country to secure citizens in these cases? Care for which country? How do dual citizens immerse themselves into network society when they are living abroad?

In solitary, in solidarity Detainees, hostages and contesting the anti-policy of detention

This article assesses the challenges to a key anti-policy within anti-terrorism: the detention of terror suspects. It analyses the global response to the 2005 kidnapping of a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq. Particular focus is given to how detainees in the War on Terror emerged as key spokespeople in the attempt to influence the actions of the kidnappers. So-called terror detainees in the UK and Canada made several appeals for mercy and wrote letters establishing their solidarity with the CPT hostages. Drawing on the political theory of Jacques Ranciere, the article analyses examples of detainee or hostage solidarity as acts of political subjectification. Detention is analysed as a site where key political dynamics are enacted. For detainees to articulate a grievance as an equal or enact an international solidarity is a radical political moment that serves to disrupt the routines and normalizations of the anti-policy of detention.

Western interventionism versus East Asian non-interference: competing ‘global’ norms in the Asian century

Abstract As we move further and further into the twentieth century, the Western ‘global governance’ norm of interventionism is being challenged by East Asian norm of non-interference and territorial integrity. The two sets of norms are historically and philosophically rooted and have influential backers. Intriguingly, while the two approaches appear irreconcilable, some countries have lent their support to both sets of norms. As East Asia emerges as a major force in global relations can a way be found for the two sets of contrasting norms to exist side-by-side, perhaps each governing particular regional relations, or is it even possible that a compromise set of ‘global’ norms might be developed?

The Thinking Citizenship Series

It is claimed that although the European debate about social rights has concentrated on the formation of citizenship, American political and social theory has focused almost exclusively on civil liberties and individual rights. The specific characteristics of American history – the Declaration of Independence, slavery, the Civil War, the persistence of the race issue and the civil rights movement – explain this fundamental difference. This article explores some of the exceptions to this claim in the work of sociologists and political scientists such as W.E. DuBois, Talcott Parsons, Morris Janowitz, Rogers Smith and Michael Schudson, but the contrast between individual rights and social rights remains important. The American tradition is explored primarily through the work of Judith N. Shklar whose approach to cruelty, misfortune and inequality represented a major and innovative approach to what we might call the phenomenological foundation of justice and rights. She emphasised the importance of earning a living to the basic American understanding of dignity and responsibility. The article concludes by speculating that the credit crunch and more importantly the endemic character of unemployment and under-employment in the modern economy radically undermine access to rewarding employment for the majority of the population. These economic and social changes – ‘the financialization of capitalism’ – make the defence of social citizenship more rather than less important.

Introduction: Citizenship, migrant activism and the politics of movement

Introduction: Citizenship, Migrant Activism, and the Politics of Movement Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel 1. Securitized migrants and postcolonial (in)difference: The politics of activisms among North African migrants in France Alina Sajed 2: Claiming Rights, Asserting Belonging: Contesting Citizenship in the UK Ruth Grove-White 3. Ungrateful Subjects? Refugee protests and the logic of gratitude Carolina Moulin 4. We are All Foreigners: No Borders as a practical political project Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright 5. Ethnography and Human Rights: The Experience of APDHA with Nigerian Sex Workers in Andalucia Estefania Acien Gonzalez 6. Moments of Solidarity, Migrant Activism and (Non)Citizens at Global Borders: Political Agency at Tanzanian refugee camps, Australian detention centres and European borders Heather Johnson 7. Building a Sanctuary City: Municipal Migrant Rights in the City of Toronto Jean McDonald 8. Taking not waiting: Space, temporality and politics in the City of Sanctuary movement Vicki Squire and Jennifer Bagelman 9: Undocumented Citizens? Shifting grounds of citizenship in Los Angeles Anne McNevin