Contours of Citizenship
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Contours of Citizenship

Women, Diversity and Practices of Citizenship

Esther Ngan-ling Chow, Evangelia Tastsoglou, Margaret Abraham, Margaret Abraham

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eBook - ePub

Contours of Citizenship

Women, Diversity and Practices of Citizenship

Esther Ngan-ling Chow, Evangelia Tastsoglou, Margaret Abraham, Margaret Abraham

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In an increasingly globalized world of collapsing economic borders and extending formal political and legal equality rights, active citizenship has the potential to expand as well as deepen. At the same time, with the rise of neo-liberalism, welfare state retrenchment, decline of state employment, re-privatization and the rising gap between rich and poor, the economic, social and political citizenship rights of certain categories of people are increasingly curtailed. This book examines the complexity of citizenship in historical and contemporary contexts. It draws on empirical research from a range of countries, contexts and approaches in addressing women and citizenship in a global/local world and covers a selection of diverse issues, both present and past, to include immigration, ethnicity, class, nationality, political and economic participation, institutions and the private and public spheres. This rich collection informs our understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities for women in the persistence and changes within the contours of citizenship.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2016
ISBN
9781317160144

Chapter 1
Rethinking Citizenship with Women in Focus1

Margaret Abraham, Esther Ngan-ling Chow, Laura Maratou-Alipranti and Evangelia Tastsoglou
The last few decades have witnessed a dramatic resurgence in scholarly interest in the conceptualizations, meanings, and practices of citizenship. Traditional conceptions of citizenship have been challenged. Political changes, the expansion of social rights movements, shifting migration patterns, the consolidation of the European Union, transnationalism, globalization, new information and communication technologies, and the growth of multinational corporations have stimulated debate on what constitutes citizenship. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of rethinking and reframing our understanding of citizenship and the need for elasticity to critically incorporate the different meanings, purposes, and shifting contexts of contemporary citizenship. The contours of citizenship vary across time, space, relationships, and contexts.
The goal of this volume is to highlight the different meanings and practices of citizenship in various settings and contexts through a systematic focus on women’s everyday life experiences. Although the legal status of citizenship has acquired greater significance for the state, it neither consists of a prerequisite for the acquisition of social rights nor does it constitute a sufficient guarantee for the protection of social, cultural, political and economic rights of all citizens. In this volume we address the differentiations in the meaning and practice of citizenship. We examine the differences arising from the intersectionality of gender with other inequalities related to class, race, ethnicity, age, and nationality. We draw attention to the continuing challenges of making connections between the public and private arena in the construction of citizenship and discuss the implications of this connection on access to resources as well as economic, political and social participation in everyday life. We emphasize that ongoing globalization, migration, identity politics, intersectionality, as well as changes in the nature of the private, continue to challenge notions of the separation of the public and private and also point to the need to proactively address the varying degrees of exclusion, marginalization, and containment of citizenship that arise from narrow constructions of these spheres. We argue that reconceptualizing the public and the private is an integral/core dimension necessary for an expanded notion of contemporary citizenship. Equally important for us are notions of belonging, agency, negotiation and resistance in conceptualizing and contextualizing contemporary citizenship. Through this diverse collection we hope to offer insights on the challenges and re-negotiation of the limits of citizenship in different contexts through women’s agency at the local, national, regional, transnational and global levels.
Our intent in this introductory chapter is to set the stage for the chapters that follow by briefly considering some factors that account for the diversity of citizenship meanings and practices for women at the micro, meso and macro levels. Citizenship is a construct that shifts with economic, political and social changes, compelling us to reconsider what it means or can mean, how it is practiced, by whom, and in which contexts. Synthesizing feminist theories and perspectives on citizenship, we draw attention here to some of the conceptual and material conditions that account for the multiple differences of citizenship meanings and practices in everyday life. Furthermore, we briefly introduce the authors’ contributions to the discussion in this volume to illustrate how gender, mobility, globalization, work, family, migration, community and political activism shape the meanings and practices of citizenship for women in everyday life in different contexts.

Exploring, Questioning and Charting the Contours of Women and Citizenship

Feminist scholarship has exposed the gendered assumptions that have historically shaped citizenship. Moreover, feminist scholars have played a critical role in expanding the meanings of rights, responsibilities, nature of participation, and notions of equality and difference. The practice of citizenship involves inclusion and exclusion, roles, values, culture, power relations, equality, differences, identities, and belonging (Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006). It entails not only rights and responsibilities but participation, interaction, and interdependence that go beyond the state level to include the plurality and diversity of communities. As a result, the meanings of citizenship defy limiting the notion to carrying a passport and proofs of identity. Rather, it necessitates analytically expanding citizenship to include the different strands, the interwoven threads, the different levels, and the nuances of meaning that go beyond the formally acceptable universal constructs.
Citizenship itself has been a contested term that has undergone considerable discussion and debate (Lister 1997). It has been traditionally conceptualized in terms of the narrowly defined relationship between state and an (assumed) ethnically homogeneous nation in a historical context of emerging European nation-states. However, in the course of the twentieth century, and especially in the last few decades, we have witnessed the reconstruction and redefinition of citizenship in ways that go well beyond the nation-state. Contemporary debates on citizenship, particularly through feminist critiques, have expanded the notion to include collective rights and group recognition claims based on difference; participation not just as a likely outcome of citizenship but indeed an essential quality of it and a means engendering it; the differential experience of citizenship for various groups of citizens based on gender, age, sexuality, migrant status, class, ethnicity/race, and other forms of social division and inequality; the intertwining of the “private” and the “public” in the practice of citizenship and the gendered character of their earlier separation; and the active contestation of group boundaries and re-negotiation of the limits of citizenship in specific contexts at the local, national, regional, transnational, and global levels (Lister 1997, 2003; Sarvasy 1997; Yuval-Davis 1997a, 1997b; Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999; Stasiulis and Bakan 2005; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006; Siim and Squires 2007; Enjolras 2008; Oleksy et al. 2008).
Citizenship has been and continues to be, in theory and practice, ultimately about inclusion and exclusion. Both in ancient and contemporary society, women have been denied full citizenship. Starting with the ancient city-state of Athens where citizenship was connected to the public sphere and limited to a select few, women along with servants, minors, elderly people, and outsiders to the polis were excluded from the political life of the polis and denied the status of citizen. Women were dependent on male relatives for representation in the public sphere, and their exclusion from the polis was based on the socially constructed roles of mother, wife, and daughter, which limited them to performing duties in the private sphere of the family. This framework of inclusion and exclusion with citizenship restricted to the public arena, and, thus, male-centric, persisted as nation-states developed, and it has been critiqued by feminist scholars (Okin 1979; Pateman 1988; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006).
Historically, the creation of European nation-states and its concomitant notion of citizenship were established to defend and establish specific political and cultural communities. In so doing, in numerous ways, through discourses and practices, nation-states created borders and boundaries separating insiders from the “Other” (Castles and Davidson 2000, 81-2; Abraham 2000, 43-60). The latter have ranged historically from colonial subjects to women, particular classes and racialized minorities, to people with different sexualities and abilities (Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006). The outcomes of these intersections in citizenship are widely differentiated so that feminist critics speak of “nodal citizenship” (Stasiulis and Bakan 2000).
Since in most countries women historically have been invisible in the public sphere, they, along with children, the poor (non-property owners), and slaves frequently have not been considered citizens. Pateman’s (1988; 1992) examination of social contract theory reveals a transformation in France whereby a hegemonic state (the king and the father), ruling over both men and women, was changed to a fraternity in which men, as citizens, have the right to rule over women in the private realm while permitting gender equality in politics and other aspects of the public sphere. According to Yuval-Davis (1997a), in Britain, beginning in the Victorian period, women lost their citizenship when they got married; it was not until 1981 that full, independent citizenship was reestablished as the right of all British women. Worldwide, women frequently are at the mercy of the public, patriarchal nation-state for access to even the most limited of rights, and their “private” roots of citizenship are often denied (Hobson and Lister 2004; Dobrowolsky and Lister 2006; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006).
In contemporary times, while a number of important gains have been achieved—especially in terms of rights protecting women’s socially approved roles as mothers and as educated subjects who will be called upon to educate their children in the national project (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989; Yuval-Davis 1997b; Anthias 2000)—as far as other areas are concerned, the social citizenship of women has been tenuous and incomplete (Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006). When understood in terms of membership, the notion of citizenship intrinsically implies some form of inclusion and exclusion from the benefits associated with (full) citizenship. Such exclusion has left many women, migrants, and refugees to contend with “incomplete citizenship,” “partial citizenship,” “ambivalent citizenship,” and “fragmented citizenship” (Werbner and Yuval Davis 1999; Parreñas 2001; see chapters in this volume by Tastsoglou; Chow). In particular, immigrant and indigenous women’s social citizenship, lacking the legitimacy of mothering for the nation, has been restricted more severely as a result of a combination of patriarchal and racist attitudes and institutional practices (for example, see chapters in this volume by Hadjipavlou; Walter; Williams). This exclusion of several categories of “citizens” has in turn been the basis for individual and collective struggle to attain full citizenship, and it has left many negotiating an incomplete citizenship (Meer and Sever 2004).
Moreover, twentieth-century mainstream theories on citizenship have conveniently glossed over the different trajectories and experiences women have had in gaining civil, social, and political rights from men through false assumptions of universalism. The liberal conceptualization of citizenship presumes that individual citizens have equal status, rights, and duties. This conceptualization is based on the notions of individual freedom, equality, and rights in relation to the state. The republican conceptualization of citizenship emphasizes political participation as a means to promote the common good rather than status and rights; however, the assumption of common good here is rooted in culturally predetermined notions that do not really account for difference and as such are essentially exclusionary.
Feminist theory and empirical research have demonstrated how women have been excluded from full citizenship in both the liberal and republican traditions. Feminist scholarship has clearly shown that, despite claims to universalism, citizenship has been essentially male defined. Feminist scholars argue that treating citizenship as a universal relationship between individuals and the state is problematic without considering the way gender dynamics impact on individuals in terms of (1) status and access to resources, (2) political participation, and (3) the formation and implementation of state policies (Pateman 1988; Young 1990; Phillips 1991; Jenson 1993; Jenson and Saint-Martin 2003). Feminist scholarship has challenged the binaries underlying the ways in which citizenship has been theorized and operationalized (Mouffe 1992; Fraser 1995, 1997; Young 1997; Isin and Wood 1999). These binaries include: equality of opportunity versus equality of end result; a masculinized public defined by rationality versus a feminized private defined by care; individualism versus collectivism; individual liberal “rights” versus civic republicanism or communitarian “responsibilities”; negative rights versus positive entitlements; and [homogeneous] identity versus difference and diversity (Lister 2003; Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006, 11).
Globalization has both complicated and changed citizenship regimes and concepts. Various issues in relation to economic participation are at play: for example, industrial citizenship, social citizenship of individuals and corporations, organizational citizenship, market citizenship and firm citizenship. Moreover scholars underline the important changes in the world of work and the complex globalized patterns that result in the negotiation of citizenship by both people who work and those excluded from work (Couty and Murray 2005, 620). Globalization has changed the relationship between communities, individuals and the state. The contours of citizenship emphasizes the need to draw critically (i.e. with a view of securing and deepening the rights of the disenfranchised) upon an expanded, flexible, and nuanced understanding of the meaning and practice of citizenship, particularly as the ongoing forces of globalization involve important linkages between the local and global in shaping citizenship.
Our chapters show the complexity of economic and social citizenship in an increasingly globalized world and the implications for citizenship rights and practices. The economic–social dimension of citizenship in the late 20th and 21st century is related to global economic changes and challenges in modern societies. These are changes that have produced various forms of social exclusion at crisis levels. Their causes lie in long-term processes associated with neoliberalism, economic globalization, and the enhancement of market forces in conditions of increased global competition. Such changes often produce the material deprivation of different population groups and the emergence of new poverty (Karantinos et al. 2003). More specifically, the above crisis involves a deterioration of labor market conditions (an increase of unemployment and atypical work forms) and a breakdown of the welfare state. As a result, social citizenship and social inclusion through the exercise of common citizenship rights are also in crisis for a wide range of social groups living in situations of unemployment and poverty (Hespanha et al. 1998, 178-9; Pantazis and Gordon 2000). Labor market divisions, unemployment, and more particularly “divisions of welfare” policies are crucial in understanding the risks of social exclusion and deprivation experienced by different groups in developed societies (Roche 1998, 26). The ensuing new managerial practices do not necessarily translate into improved working conditions and greater citizenship through participation in economic decisions in the workplace. In some parts of the world such practices have led to an increasing trend toward market citizenship with an increased emphasis on a trend for privatizing public resources (for example, see chapter by Abraham in this volume). Thus, globalization has complicated and altered citizenship regimes and conceptual boundaries.
Given that migration movements have been and are still at the heart of the global economy and the political reorganization of the world, the chapters in this volume also address the difficulties that women encounter and the strategies they use to negotiate economic and social citizenship (see chapter by Varela in this volume). Migration has always been and remains a matter of “boundaries,” “rights,” and “unequal opportunities,” and, thus, it can be a source of social exclusion and a cause of new forms of social inequalities (for example, different status and salary among workers, new segregation in the domestic work sector, employment without social assistance). An increasing number of immigrant populations are occupied in self-employment and entrepreneurial jobs. At the same time, ethnic businesses tend to be both controlled by men and requiring intensive labor. Women, once again, tend to occupy a subordinate role; consequently, what are generally termed “family businesses” tend to be businesses run by men who use the labor of their wives and daughters as an accessible and profitable recourse (Phizacklea 1987). Research points out that this is due to the difficulties they encounter in being included in the classic labor niches of the local labor market, and it is also a strategy for escaping from precarious labor conditions. This strategy which was widespread in the developed countries earlier has become actually very common in the new immigration countries (Anthias and Mehta 2003; Apitzsch and Kontos 2003; Maratou-Alipranti 2006).

Continuity and Change in Conceptualizing the Contours of Citizenship

Given the influential and pioneering work of the British theorist T.H. Marshall in expanding contemporary conceptualizations of citizenship it is appropriate that we briefly consider his work as part of the historical backdrop in addressing the dynamic nature and the complexity of the meanings and practices of citizenship. In his seminal work Citizenship and Social Class, Marshall defined citizenship as “full membership in the community” (1950, 8). This notion of citizenship was based on the threefold dimension of civil, political, and social rights and obligations. For him the civil dimension was “composed of the rights necessary for individual freedom” and occurred through the legal system; the political dimension was “the right to participate in the exercise of political power” through the right to vote and hold political office; and the social dimension was the “the whole range from the right to a modicum of welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and the right to live the life of a civilized being according to the standa...

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