Beyond the nation state: the role of local and pan-national identities in defining post-colonial African citizenship

(En)gendering the political: Citizenship from marginal spaces

“…We need to be open to the orientation, direction and contingency of political acts. This can involve struggles which challenge the boundaries of 'equitable national settlement' (Bird 2016;Shilliam 2016), or that deny integration into the existing rights regimes of 'sedentary' citizenship (Turner 2016), or the precarious encounters found in 'grief activism' (Stierl 2016). Equally, the focus on the everyday, and refusal, means that we can also read collective experiences of music appreciation (Ní Mhurchú 2016), narrative and exile (Beattie 2016) as creating forms of political subjectivity.…”

“…The last article by Bird (2016) equally focuses on decolonial struggles and the lessons this has for our understanding of citizenship. Her article looks at the work of African philosopher 'statesman' as a means of rethinking 'acts' of citizenship in different historical contexts.…”

“…They speak of the marginal not just by giving these experiences a 'voice' (see Spivak 1988;Squire 2015) but by articulating an exploration of marginality through drawing upon subjects and methodologies which are often sidelined (especially in mainstream political science and IR). For example, Ethnography and narration (Stierl 2016), autoreflexivism and storytelling (Beattie 2016), cultural studies (Shilliam 2016), music (Ní Mhurchú 2016), Travellers and Gypsies (Turner 2016), 'Let them Work' (LTW) campaigns (Mayblin 2016), African philosophy (Bird 2016). They reveal innovations in the theorisation and representation of marginality just as they provide interventions into practices of marginalisation.…”

“…Whilst agreeing that an analysis of rights claims is helpful in understanding contestation, this special issue also recognises the different orientation of acts, events and movements which may not always be subsumed by the existing co-ordinates of citizenship that they contest (also see Tyler and Marciniak 2013, 2;Walters 2008). This means exploring what Aoileann Ní Mhurchú refers to as 'Unfamiliar acts of Citizenship' (Ní Mhurchú 2016), ' Acts against Citizenship' (Tyler and Marciniak 2013, 8), as well as acts that are orientated towards different relations and cosmologies (see Bird 2016;Shilliam 2016).…”

“…Equally, the focus on the everyday, and refusal, means that we can also read collective experiences of music appreciation (Ní Mhurchú 2016), narrative and exile (Beattie 2016) as creating forms of political subjectivity. This means attuning ourselves to claims to alternatives forms of politics by exploring the hybridity and ambiguity of political identities and belonging (Ní Mhurchú 2016), global-colonial relations (Shilliam 2016) and decolonial struggles (Bird 2016), the possibility of worker internationalism (Mayblin 2016), keeping alive forms of nomadism (Turner 2016), impossible forms of solidarity and community (Stierl 2016). As individual contributions outline, this is less of a critique of Isin's work on acts but a reassertion of its radical potential to reveal the heterogeneity and (im)possibility of alternative claims to political life.…”