Willem Schinkel

Neoliberal communitarian citizenship: Current trends towards ‘earned citizenship’ in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands

As Western European nation-states adapt to the challenges posed to the nation-state by globalization and immigration, adjusting citizenship criteria for immigrants has been one of the responses to these developments. This article compares the current changes in citizenship policies of three Western European states: the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. The main concern of the article is to shed light on the emerging development of a form of neoliberal communitarian citizenship that involves an increased emphasis on the need to earn one’s citizenship. While many have signalled a shift towards neoliberal citizenship, this study assesses to what extent such a shift is characterized by a contractual view that sees citizenship no longer primarily as a prima facie right but as a prized possession that is to be earned and can be lost if not properly cultivated. At the same time, the study analyses the content of citizenship criteria to see how the nation-state in these three countries is sacralized by an emphasis on the national community. These two trends of earned citizenship are conceptualized in the study as neoliberal communitarianism. L’ajustement des critères d’accès des immigrants au statut de citoyen constitue l’une des stratégies d’adaptation des États nations aux défis posés par la globalisation et par l’accroissement des flux migratoires. Le présent article propose une analyse comparée des politiques d’acquisition de la citoyenneté dans trois sociétés européennes occidentales: le Royaume-Uni, la France et les Pays-Bas. Notre préoccupation principale consiste à éclairer l’émergence d’une forme néolibérale de citoyenneté communautariste, qui insiste de plus en plus sur l’idée que la citoyenneté doit « se gagner ». Alors que d’autres auteurs ont déjà relevé le déplacement vers une telle conception néolibérale de la citoyenneté, nous proposons d’examiner le degré selon lequel un tel déplacement se caractérise par une vision contractualisée de la citoyenneté, qui ne conçoit plus la citoyenneté comme un droit fondamental, mais plutôt comme un objet de valeur qui doit être gagné et qui peut être perdu s’il n’est pas correctement utilisé. Parallèlement, nous analysons les critères d’accès à la citoyenneté, de manière à illustrer comment, dans ces trois pays, l’Etat nation est sacralisé par l’accent mis sur la communauté nationale. Nous désignons ces deux dimensions de la citoyenneté contractuelle sous le concept de communautarisme néolibéral. Según las sociedades de Europa Occidental se adaptan a los desafíos que la globalización y la inmigración plantean a los estados-nación, el ajuste de los criterios de ciudadanía para los inmigrantes ha sido una de las respuestas a estos cambios. En este artículo, se comparan los cambios en las políticas de ciudadanía en tres estados de Europa Occidental: Reino Unido, Francia y Holanda. El principal objetivo es arrojar luz sobre el emergente desarrollo de una forma de ciudadanía comunitaria neo-liberal que implica un énfasis creciente en la necesidad de ganarse la propia ciudadanía. Mientras muchos señalan un cambio hacia una ciudadanía neo-liberal, aquí se investiga hasta qué punto este cambio se caracteriza por una visión contractual que ya no ve la ciudadanía principalmente como un derecho sino como una posesión con precio que tiene que ser ganada y puede ser perdida si no es cultiva adecuadamente. Al mismo tiempo, se analiza el contenido de los criterios de ciudadanía para ver cómo se sacraliza el estado-nación en estos tres países a través de un énfasis en la comunidad nacional. Aquí se conceptualizan estas dos tendencias hacia la ciudadanía ganada como comunitarismo neo-liberal.

The virtualization of citizenship

This article illustrates the difference between formal citizenship and moral citizenship, and traces the shift in focus from formal to moral citizenship in Dutch national and local policy. The mixing of ‘citizenship’ with ‘integration’ has given rise to what can be termed a virtualization of citizenship. When ‘integration’ becomes ‘citizenship’, the citizenship status of those persons that are formal citizens but supposedly lack ‘integration’ both shifts from an actual to a virtual possession, and also becomes defined as a ‘virtue’. The moralization of citizenship is largely state-initiated and is accompanied by a neoliberal focus on ‘individual responsibility’. Thus the state, whose position is endangered in times of globalization, finds a new functional potential in securing the in- and exclusion of ‘society’ through the pronunciation of moral citizenship in paternalist policies.

Professionalism as Symbolic Capital. Materials for a Bourdieusian Theory of Professionalism.

Pierre Bourdieu has given a brief but fierce critique of the concept of “profession” that calls for a more reflexive analysis of the professions and in fact suggests not using the concept at all. In this contribution, we explicate the gist of that critique and argue it is possible to analyze it in a Bourdieusian fashion. We regard professionalism as a form of symbolic capital, the substance of which is constantly at stake in power-driven contexts, both internally and externally. Professional fields are embedded in objective relations with other fields in what Bourdieu describes as a general field of power. Within each professional field, the legitimate substance of what it means to act in a “professional way” is constantly at stake. In turn, across various professional fields, within what Bourdieu describes as a larger field of power, the very idea or “formal content” of “professionalism” is subject to struggle and (re)negotiation. This power-centered view emphasizes professionalism is a scarce symbolic resource, an object of a process of consecration and a source of legitimate forms of acting and interpreting. It thereby de-essentializes talk of professions and professionalization.

The imagination of ‘society’ in measurements of immigrant integration

Abstract My aim in this contribution is to clarify in which way social scientific measurements of immigrant integration operate as a form of ‘social imagination’, that is, of the routinized and professionalized visualization of social life. Through such measurements, images of ‘society’ are produced that feed into larger social imaginaries. My discussion takes as an example Dutch discourse and research on integration. Crucial to the constitution of society in the Netherlands and many other Western European countries is what I call a culturist discourse that has many similarities to racism. This discourse demarcates the boundaries of society by rendering objectively observable the non-integrated who are considered to reside ‘outside society’. The image of society thereby produced is that of a morally cleansed realm: social problems are relegated to the domain ‘outside society’, consisting of persons in need of integration.

Sociological discourse of the relational: the cases of Bourdieu & Latour

Pierre Bourdieus approach to sociology has been so widely recognized as being innovative that his innovations can be said to have been academically incorporated to the degree of having-been-innovative. On the other hand, the more recent work of Bruno Latour seems to offer a fresh innovative impetus to sociology. Over against Bourdieus relational sociology, Latours relationist sociology overcomes the subject-object dichotomy, and abandons the notions of ‘society’ and ‘the social’. In this contribution, a comparison is made between the ideas of Bourdieu and Latour on the question of what sociology should look like, specifically focusing on their respective ideas on what can be called the relational. A Latourian critique of Bourdieu is provided, as well as a Bourdieusian analysis of Latourian sociology. Rather than ending up with two different ‘paradigms’, an attempt is made on the basis of Foucaults archaeology of discourse to view Bourdieusian and Latourian sociology as distinct positions within a discourse on the relational.

Professional capital contested: A bourdieusian analysis of conflicts between professionals and managers

Although Bourdieu paid scant attention to (and in fact discredited) the notion of professionalism, his social theory is well-equipped to understand the evolution of professional work. Professionalism can be conceived as a set of symbolic resources that (re)produce an occupational order, favoring expertise and craftsmanship. In neo-liberal economies this order is contested and professional powers are distrusted; professional work is seen as closed-off and conservative. Managers have become important vehicles for rationalizing and innovating production, and improving “value for money.” In fact, managerial “fields” are created, and conflicts between managerial and professional fields are well documented. These conflicts are ironic, as new classes of managers seek classic strategies of professionalization as well as classic forms of professional capital for securing managerial positions. They form professional associations, for instance, and invest in schooling, credentials and work codes. This paper explores conflicts between professionals and managers as “contests over symbolic capital.” We argue that professional capital is appropriated by managers in order to distinguish “new” from “old” professional work in larger economized fields of power.

'Illegal Aliens' and the State, or: Bare Bodies vs the Zombie

This article focuses on the opposite poles of what Agamben, following Schmitt, calls the state of exception: the irregular migrant as homo sacer and the sovereign state. It takes the practice of detaining ‘illegal immigrants’ as a starting point for reflection on two central features of debates about globalization: (1) the declining relevance of space and (2) the declining relevance of nation-states. The author argues that both may be taking place, but they are being countered by states adapting themselves to the condition of globalization. By turning itself from welfare state into penal state, the state seeks new ways of defining itself in a globalizing world. This involves the detention centre for ‘illegal immigrants’ as a space of exception. The author uses three notions in order to capture the nature of the space occupied by the detention centre, which escapes traditional social scientific notions of space. Ranging from the more ‘formal’ characteristics of the spaces in question to their full political substance, they are Augé’s notion of the non-place, Foucault’s notion of the heterotopia and Agamben’s notion of the camp. The author argues that the global is networked through localities, and that the exceptional space of the detention centre for ‘illegal aliens’ is a political node in the global network. The incarceration of irregular immigrants as homines sacri is part of a response to the global by means of an absolute relevance of the local: the detention centre, which is at once the model of binding locality and the site of a space ‘outside’ regular social space.

The will to violence

Many social scientific accounts of interpersonal violence hold a few basic premises that are in this article contested as being one-sided. The explanation of violence dissolves the intrinsic character of the phenomenon and replaces the singular aspects of violence by a social-scientific explanatory ground. This explanatory social science is in this article called determinism. Supplementing determinism is a formalism of violence, which focuses on the aesthetics of violence and which, in so doing, retains the possibility of violence occurring for no reason other than itself. This kind of violence will be called autotelic violence. Cultural signs seem to justify the idea that violence can be a self-referential act, due to a will to violence.

Women from the catacombs of the city: gender notions in Dutch culturist discourse

The current discourse on minorities in the Netherlands has two striking features: (1) it has been narrowed down to Muslim immigrants with Moroccan or Turkish backgrounds; (2) it focuses largely on gender-related issues. In this article, we suggest that there has been a historical switch in the focus of discourse on immigrants from structural factors such as employment and crime rates to cultural factors related mainly to the Islamic background of the immigrants concerned. We argue that currently the focus on gender-issues and integration in practice has the dual effects of excluding the minorities in question and of discursively counteracting the emancipation of Muslim women. Both points become apparent when reviewing the practical effects of the institutionalization of the gendered discourse on integration in policy efforts currently being undertaken. These effects are a negation of the autonomy of Muslim women and a form of ‘new racism’ that bears all the characteristics of Orientalism.

Prepression: The actuarial archive and new technologies of security

This article argues, on the basis of a discussion of current Dutch databases, that we are witnessing what can be called prepression. This combination of prevention and repression entails the archiving of risky individuals and their selection for ‘early intervention’. Such databases can be seen in light of their work of social imagination: they visualize the constitutive outside of ‘society’, and in so doing function as part of a governing imaginary. Crucial in contemporary prepression is the archive, which is interpreted not as a recording but also as a recoding of the past, that is, as an ordering principle in the fields of law and order, social work and health. The cases on the basis of which this article develops a preliminary sketch of a theory of prepression are drawn from recent developments concerning actuarial archiving systems in the Netherlands.