Indigenous citizenship, shared fate, and non-ideal circumstances

Abstract

This paper discusses the notion of 'citizenship as shared fate' as a potentially inclusive and real-world responsive way of understanding Indigenous citizenship in a non-ideal world. The paper draws on Melissa Williams' work on 'citizenship as shared fate,' and assesses some of the benefits and drawbacks of using this notion to understand citizenship in Indigenous and modern state contexts. In particular, the paper focuses on the challenges that existing nonideal circumstances-past and enduring injustices and unequal power relations-bring to the understanding of 'citizenship as shared fate', and the normative constraints for realizing such citizenship in our contemporary world. By developing this notion in light of Indigenous claims for justice, the paper proposes three side constraints to the notion of 'citizenship as shared fate,' including its openness to different views of history, the role of history in shaping the future, and acknowledging-and countering-prevailing power relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The paper concludes by looking at some of the implications of the reconceptualized notion of 'citizenship as shared fate' for the shaping of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in the Nordic/Sápmi context.

A synthesis on active citizenship in European nature conservation: social and environmental impacts, democratic tensions, and governance implications

“…For procedural justice, it has been shown how certain societal groups are less represented or less successful as active citizens. This can concern groups with a lower socioeconomic status or ethnic minorities such as Roma in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, and Hungary (Kronenberg et al 2020) or the Indigenous Sámi people in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, who sometimes struggle with non-equal power relations in governance processes (Vitikainen 2021). Regarding distributive justice, socioeconomic as well as spatial differences come up as a consequence of active citizenship.…”

Spectrums of belonging

“…These citizenships are, to an extent, interdependent of each other, though in general not valued to the same extent. 185 Consider for example how in some postcolonial societies, Indigenous peoples are simultaneously citizens of modern states and Indigenous nations. The former type of citizenship, however, is often viewed as secondary or additional to the latter.…”

“…The former type of citizenship, however, is often viewed as secondary or additional to the latter. 186 The current hegemony of national citizenship has been challenged by scholars who have been working on the development of the EU in the 1990s, arguing for the emergence of a post-nationalist era in citizenship and migration studies. 187 However, the nation-state 'has reasserted its position through the development of managed migration systems, the retreat from multiculturalism and the revival of neo-assimilationist agendas'.…”