Spaces of Immigrant Advocacy and Liberal Democratic Citizenship

‘Refugee Protest Camp Vienna’: making citizens through locations of the protest movement

“…) In this way, collective action can construct new political spaces at different sites and scales. In their analysis of workers' centres that provide spaces that serve, protect and welcome immigrants, Leitner and Strunk (2014) discuss how immigrants and their allies contest exclusionary, and promote welcoming policies in the United States. They deploy the concept of 'insurgent citizenship' to theorize these actions which create new political spaces that exceed the national territorial logic with a focus on civic action: 'public forums create new political spaces for deliberation, which are crucial in the formulation of new values and the development of new criteria for citizenship and belonging' (354).…”

Using courts to build states: The competing spaces of citizenship in transitional justice programmes

“…For example, Painter and Philo (1995) argue that it is through the demarcation of 'insiders' and 'outsiders' that liberal citizenship asserts its right to rule (see also Isin, 2002;Isin & Turner, 2007). One of the key messages of this work has been that forms of exclusion take many forms, from the securitisation of borders and tightening of immigration controls (Leitner & Strunk, 2014;Sparke, 2006), to socially and culturally inscribed mechanisms of exclusion based on gender (Goldring, 2001), class (Pykett, 2009), sexuality (Binnie & Valentine, 1999;Hubbard, 2013), age (Jeffrey, 2010), disability (Valentine & Skelton, 2007), race (Kofman, 1995) or intersections of these lines of identity (Preston, Kobayashi, & Man, 2006). The co-presence of so many strands of potential exclusion has led scholars to rely upon a distinction between de jure and de facto citizenship to highlight the distinction between the conferment of citizenship rights and the possibility of practicing or accessing such rights (see, for example, Valentine & Skelton, 2007).…”

“…This expectation of civic collective action has been a feature of international intervention in developmental and post-conflict environments (Mohan, 2002), and not least in BiH (Belloni, 2001). As a second interpretation Bakira's actions could be understood as a form of activist citizenship, a more radical form of insurgent practice that seeks to transform the existing political system and enact new forms of rights (Holston, 2008;Isin, 2009;Leitner & Strunk, 2014). Such actions may not be directed solely against the state, but instead confront the multiple scales e from the city to international organisations e from which perceived injustices stem (Miraftab & Wills, 2005;Ong, 2007;Painter, 2002Painter, , 2008.…”

Welcoming Refugees and the Cultural Wealth of Cities: Intersections of Urban Development and Refugee Humanitarianism

“…One prevalent way of explaining the passage of accommodative policies invokes the political ideology and values of local actors, which lead them to support immigrants’ mobilizations for rights and welfare (Ramakrishnan and Wong, ; Chavez and Provine, ; Brown, ; Leitner and Strunk, ; Steil and Vasi, ). Steil and Vasi (: 1143), for example, argue that the fate of pro‐immigrant local ordinances depends on the preexistence of ‘[s]ympathetic political elites [who] are well positioned to build support among native‐born elites for pro‐immigrant policies and to overcome skepticism among native‐born voters’.…”