Comparative citizenship

Week 21

Comparative Sociology

Recap

• Considered how health and welfare policies are related to capitalism and culture

• But are often gendered in their design

• Looked at notions of a ‘clash in cultures’

Outline

• What is citizenship?

• Immigration and citizenship. – France, Germany, Australia and the UK

• The issue of asylum

What is citizenship?

• Status within a nation-state

• Set of rights and responsibilities

• A social contract

Marshall’s three aspects

• T.H.Marshall divided citizenship into three aspects– Civil

• Freedom of speech, right to justice

– Political• Right to participate in political decision-making

– Social• Sufficient economic welfare and security to be

able to participate in the live of the nation

Citizenship ‘rights’

• Citizenship often involves organisation and distribution of resources

• Gender, class, ethnic inequalities can led to exclusion from these resources and therefore impact on the ‘level’ of citizenship

Three key questions

• Who can be a citizen?

• What rights and responsibilities are bound up with citizenship?

• How ‘deep’ should citizenship be?– Should it take priority over other forms of

identity?

Getting to be a citizen

• Gaining citizenship– By birth in a particular place

– By descent (parents and/or grandparents)

– By naturalization

What does citizenship mean to you?

• Do you think of yourselves as citizens?

• What form does this citizenship take?

• How important is it to you?

French citizenship

• In France, ideas about citizenship arose following the revolution.

• Citizenship is a political and territorial identification

• Citizenship is open to residents who identify and participate in the national culture

Headscarves

• The issue of Muslim girls wearing headscarves in schools caused a political frenzy

• Opponents upheld ideal of ‘secular values’

• Immigration seen as a threat to national identity?

Problematic citizenship

• Formal citizenship based oncivic participation

• Citizenship is thus seen as ‘at risk’ from immigrants

• For ‘immigrants’ to be French citizens, their identification with ‘white’ French ideas should take priority overtheir religious identity

German citizenship

• German citizenship based on a community of descent

• Blood ties is the key element in defining the nation

• First naturalization laws

only in 2004

Inclusion and exclusion

• Following collapse of the Soviet Block, Germany welcomed thousands of ethnic Germans ‘home’

• Many couldn’t speak German, and had few German cultural connections but they were granted citizenship

• 2 million Turkish ‘guestworkers’ in Germany who at that time did not have citizenship (including right to vote)

• Many 2nd or 3rd generation

Problematic citizenship

• Ethnicity is the formal route to citizenship

• Guestworkers not able to participate as full citizens

• Centrality of German ethnicity allows denial of a multi-cultural society?

Citizenship questions

• Discuss with the person sitting next to you how ideas about citizenship are invoked in the issue of headscarves in France and the exclusion of guestworkers in Germany.

Australian citizenship

• Establishment of citizenship excluded the indigenous population

• Immigration Acts up to 1960s based on whiteness

• Immigration initially restricted to UK, then other white Europeans accepted

Aboriginal identity

• White Australia policy lead to forced assimilation of Aborigines

• Aborigines Protection Act 1909 supported the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their parents. This

continued until 1970s.

UK citizenship

• After WW2, citizenship was extended to encourage commonwealth members to cure the labour shortage in Britain

• Immigration has become progressively tougher since then.

• Professional migration welcomed, unskilled workers excluded

Rights and responsibilities

• Immigrants can be excluded from the social contract

• ‘No recourse to public funds’ clause means that families whose financial situation changed risk deportation

Asylum Seekers in the UK

• Moral panic over asylum seekers

• ‘Bogus asylum seekers’ an oxymoron– Right to seek asylum enshrined in law

• Increasing numbers granted ‘leave to remain’ but denied full citizenship rights

Asylum seekers as a ‘threat’

• Why do you think asylum seekers are vilified in the media? What links can you make to ideas about citizenship?

Link to US citizenship film

• http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=925607787845599338&q=citizenship

Summary

• Ideas about citizenship are linked to wider culture

• Rights and responsibilities are not neutral but linked to class, gender and ethnic inequalities

• Categories of inclusion and exclusion do change over time, but are always present