Author: Hindess, Barry

Source: Citizenship Studies, Volume 8, Number 3, September, 2004 , pp. 305-315(11)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

Peter Nyers has suggested that the title of this special issue, `What's Left of Citizenship?', can be interpreted in at least two ways. On the one hand, it is a question of what remains of citizenship after the securitization of political communities which followed, or was greatly reinforced by, 9/11. It is also, we might add, a question of what remains after the neo-liberal reforms of the latter part of the twentieth century. On the other hand, it is a question of what is to the left of the citizenship which has been fostered by these changes. What is there in the concept and the practices of citizenship which can serve as a vehicle for resisting, or at least for deploring, what citizenship has now become, and what scope does it provide for progressive alternatives?The papers included here have shown how securitization has served to normalize new techniques of control and surveillance; suggested that it establishes a new relationship between sovereignty and bio-power; offered a fresh and revealing perspective on securitization through comparison and contrast with an earlier regime of social security; and argued that the neo-liberal subject is itself predicated on a subject of a rather different kind, the neurotic subject, and that it is this subject which programs of securitization have directly targeted. There is much in these papers which is valuable and instructive, and not a lot which I would wish to dispute. Rather than engage directly with the detail of their arguments, then, my comments suggest another, complementary, perspective from which the contemporary condition of citizenship might be viewed.I can introduce this perspective by noting, first, that most academic writings on citizenship focus on developments in a small number of Western states or in the European Union, and these four papers offer no exception. This somewhat parochial focus is hardly surprising, given the weight of academic resources gathered together in these states. It is necessary and important that we examine conditions where we live, and sometimes that we campaign to change them. We should also recognize, however, that this concentration of resources itself reflects the privileged position of these states in the international order. It is all the more important, then, that these states should not appear as the unmarked terms in our discussion. We should take care not to treat what is happening to citizenship in the prosperous Western states, and still less in the English-language ones among them, as if these developments were somehow typical of the condition of citizenship in the world today, or represented its future.I note, secondly, that both interpretations of our organizing question, `What's left of citizenship?', rest on the positive valorization of a certain—unsecuritized, pre-neo-liberal—understanding of citizenship, on the view that, suitably understood, citizenship is clearly a good thing. My aim is to unsettle this valorization by focusing, first, on the divisive or exclusive character of citizenship regimes, and second, on the negative view of other ways of life which this valorization of citizenship commonly suggests. I have discussed the first issue elsewhere and will deal with it only briefly here. The second has a continuing relevance in the international sphere, but it has a particular bearing on the condition of indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States (and, indeed, throughout the Americas) and in Australia, where I now live (Helliwell and Hindess, 2002). Before we turn to these issues, however, the first section of this paper distinguishes two very different ways in which the valorization of citizenship has come to be associated with progressive politics: through the relatively modest, contextual view that the promotion of citizenship has often seemed like a good idea in the circumstances, and through the more ambitious, universalistic view that citizenship is a desirable end for all of humanity.What's So Great about Citizenship?Wherever there have been citizens, the states or cities to which they belong have governed populations and territories which included significant numbers of non-citizens: the slaves, freedmen and resident aliens of the Greek polis, the slaves and subject peoples of the early Roman empire, the serfs who escaped to the cities of medieval Europe, and the legal and illegal migrants in contemporary states. Within these states or cities, citizenship has been one amongst a number of legal statuses and it has carried with it distinct advantages in terms of rights, liberty, protection and, in many cases, a capacity to participate in the government of the state or city concerned.1 Among the Greeks, politics was seen as an activity which was confined to citizens, and sometimes to a small minority among them, and a related view of politics can be found in later cases of citizenship.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362102042000257023

Publication date: 2004-09-01

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