âProtecting our cultureâ has become common code in Western Europe to deny immigrants full citizenship. By âfull citizenshipâ we mean not only enjoying the legal rights that come with citizenship but being recognized symbolically and emotionally as co-citizens. As will become clear in this book, it has recently become much harder for immigrants to acquire this âfullâ status: legal rights are only granted after lengthy procedures including citizenship exams, while symbolic access to national belonging is still often denied by native majorities to even second- or third-generation immigrants who are legal citizens (cf. Uitermark et al. 2014).
This protectionism is based on a static and essentialized understanding of culture as well as on an idea of citizenship that has culture at its core. But if we accept that cultures evolveâand do so âthrough dissent and robust criticism from their membersâ (Nussbaum 2000: 48)âneither the âculturesâ of immigrants nor those of receiving societies can be taken as self-evident, homogenous wholes. Cultures are rife with disagreement, and immigration changes the cultures of both immigrant groups and receiving societies, not only due to confrontations between them but because this confrontation stirs up disagreements and power struggles within these cultures.
âCultures are dynamic, and change is a very basic element in all of themâ (Ibid). This, however, is far from the dominant understanding of culture in many countries today. In its place we see the âculturalization of citizenshipââa process in which what it is to be a citizen is less defined in terms of civic, political or social rights, and more in terms of adherence to norms, values and cultural practices (Geschiere 2009; Duyvendak 2011; Hurenkamp et al. 2012).
The research project that gave birth to this volume studied the culturalization of citizenship in the Netherlands and other immigrant-destination countries in Western Europe (especially France and Great Britain, see Hurenkamp et al. 2012) and its impact on the prospects of (potential) immigrants from especially Muslim majority countries and Sub-Saharan Africa. The first part of this volume focuses on the Dutch case as a radical version of the trend in many European countries to tie full-fledged citizenship to the embrace of âmodern Westernâ values, particularly regarding gender and sexuality. The second part of this volume examines the opposite pole of this global cultural polarization: dynamics of local belonging as well as responses to the literal and symbolic closing of Europeâs borders within the Global South. The contributions to this volume are authored by scholars from Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Curaçao, St. Maarten and the Netherlands.
Citizenship and Culture
The explicit culturalization of citizenship in post-war Western Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon. For many decades, citizenship was first and foremost tied to possessing nationality (Heater 1990; Turner 1993) and understood in terms of citizensâ rights and obligations (Marshall 1950). To be a citizen was to be a full member of a national community and to be granted the rights and accept the duties of this membership.
If we follow the famous English theorist T.H. Marshall, citizenship in England began with the development of civil rights in the eighteenth centuryârights that guarantee individual liberty such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to own property, engage in contracts and appear in a court of law. The political rights codified in the nineteenth century implied the right to vote and run for political office, while the social rights that enabled people âto live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the societyâ (Marshall 1950: 30) were closely associated with the twentieth-century expansion of the welfare state. Only with social rights, Marshall argued, could citizens effectively pursue and enjoy their civic and political rights; only with access to food, shelter, healthcare and education could people be expected to respect other peopleâs property and to engage in political affairs.
Marshallâs concept of citizenship has since been criticized for ignoring the role of ethnicity, religion and culture (Turner 1997; Isin and Turner 2007): implicitly, citizenship was always defined by the dominant class, race, gender, culture and ethnic group of the country.
By the culturalization of citizenship, we try to capture a process by which culture (emotions, feelings, norms and values, and symbols and traditions, including religion) has come to play a central role in the debate on what it means to be a citizen, either as an alternative or in addition to political, judicial and social citizenship. With the culturalization of citizenship, citizens are subjected to new âfeeling rulesâ (Hochschild 2003) that render âbelongingâ or âfeeling at homeâ a requirement (Duyvendak 2011). Especially immigrants are expected to demonstrate feelings of attachment, belonging, connectedness and loyalty to their country of residence.
Some authors argue that focusing on culture at best detracts from the real issues of citizenship, which are socio-economic. For full-fledged citizenship, people need education, jobs and social security. These critics are in fact demanding a return to Marshall, who also argued that social rights are the foundation of all the other rights that come with citizenship. These critics furthermore argue that the culturalization of citizenship is often simply racist, demanding cultural integration and assimilation by immigrants while implying that they can only be citizens on conditions set by natives (cf. Lentin and Titley 2012; Pakulski and Markowski 2014).
Others argue that a certain degree of cultural adaptation can be demanded from immigrants, and that this is not necessarily exclusionist or racist. To deny the importance of cultural adaptation is in fact to deny immigrants opportunities for socio-economic success. It is, for example, impossible to find and keep a job without knowing and, to a certain degree, adapting to cultural norms such as when to shake hands, when to be outspoken and when to be discreet, and when to look people in the face (Veenman 2007). To deny this and to argue that immigrants (as well as other citizens) are entitled to cherish their own norms is to deny them full citizenship, because without some adaptation they will remain excluded from the labour market (Swierstra and Tonkens 2005). It is harder to lead a good life when one is unaware of societyâs expectations.
Local, National and Cosmopolitan Citizenship
The issue of scaleâof how culture plays out and is appropriated by citizens on local, national and global levelsâis a key theme in the culturalization of citizenship. That citizenship is more often experienced at the local rather than the national level has been emphasized particularly in the communitarian tradition, which argues that identity, belonging and citizenship arise through membership and social interaction within specific (local) communities (Sandel 1982; Walzer 1983). In the Netherlands, numerous studies have shown that immigrants more readily identify with the neighbourhoods and cities they reside in than the country as a whole (Hurenkamp et al. 2011b; Van der Welle 2011; Tonkens and Hurenkamp 2012). The opposite is true for many native Dutch, who continue to identify primarily at the level of the nation.
While growing population heterogeneity may fuel tensions within neighbourhoods and public institutions, local governments and civil society organizations in the Netherlands often organize projects that craft citizenship around practical activities that have both functional and emotional meaning (Hurenkamp et al. 2011a). Many such projects approach cultures as having more or less fluid boundaries and offer opportunities for citizens to develop intercultural fluency. Policymakers can play a crucial role in encouraging such local citizenship, in which culture can become a tool for immigrants to give shape to urban citizenship (De Wilde et al. 2014; De Wilde 2015).
Findings like these are part of the rising interest in âthe daily negotiation of cultural difference in urban contextsâ (Colombo 2015: 16). Some studies find that âordinary situationsâeveryday urban encounters at the city market or at the playground, exchange and gift relation among neighbours etc.âcreate a feeling of being involved with others that produces tolerance and promotes inclusionâ (Ibid: 17, cf. Wise 2009; Wilson 2011; Wulfhorst et al. 2014). Other studies warn that such encounters should not be romanticized as they are also sites of conflict and power struggle (Valentine 2008; Ho 2011; Valentine and Sadgrove 2012). Understanding citizenship as âcraftsmanshipâ (Sennett 2008)âas a skill developed through practiceâis a useful corrective to the naive liberal idea that rewarding people with a passport will make them full-fledged members of the public domain as well as to the disciplining idea that adhering to fixed norms and values is the sole entry to belonging (Hurenkamp et al. 2011a, b, 2012).
Cultural citizenship can...