Political geography: Where’s citizenship?

Abstract

Citizenship is a contested subject in political geography, as a quick review of the literature suggests considerable differences in the way it is conceptualized and its importance is understood. This report reviews debates on the salience of citizenship in the context of broad social, political, and economic changes. Rather than attempting to assign a relative importance to citizenship as status as compared to citizenship as membership, it focuses on the continual rearticulation of the relationships and sites through which citizenship is constructed.

Territoriality and migration in a divided society: Lay theories of citizenship and place in Northern Ireland.

“…Building upon critical approaches to citizenship in other disciplines (e.g., Isin & Neilsen, 2008;Kymlicka & Norman, 1994;Lister, 2003;Staeheli, 2011) discursive approaches in social psychology have notably focused on the role of citizenship in exclusionary talk and practices occurring in particular places: at the boundaries of nations; in controversies concerning social rights within and between local…”

Circulations and the Entanglements of Citizenship Formation

“…That collective is commonly assumed to be a state, but it need not be. Indeed, in many formulations and in some circumstances, citizenship is held to operate outwith the state, either as in some calls for cosmopolitan or global citizenship or in some civic formulations of citizenship in which civil society and communities stand as the collectivity (Staeheli 2011). This is not to say that the state is irrelevant, but rather that citizenship is forged, developed, experienced, and practiced in sites and institutions beyond those defined or contained by the state.…”

Dreaming the ordinary

“…ii Although see Isin and Woods (1999), Kofman (2003) and Staeheli (2010) for reviews. iii It is for this reason that much of the discussion about law and legality is centred on the US system.…”