Performative Citizenship
Performative Citizenship (https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198805854.013.22) was written by Elgin Isin in 2017. It was published in the Oxford Handbook of Citizenship.
Citizenship confers rights and duties. Not all rights are exercised, and some performances of duties are refused. Because to whom those right and duties extend to is contestable, citizenship itself is expressed by exercising/performing it and by claiming it.
The expansion of citizenship (to include women, blacks, etc.) can only have been a result of acts.
Noncitizens also differentiate themselves through acts. (While citizens are generally considered a homogenous polity, noncitizens are not.) There is assymmetry of power among noncitizens.
- Colonial states are a particular case study. Noncitizens advanced to citizenship by borrowing the features of the empire, by convincing citizens that they were more alike than not. Certain categories of noncitizens had advantages in this.
The expansion of citizenship (to include new rights and duties) also can only have been a result of acts. Activists, advocates, etc., and generally speaking social movements, use a language of rights claiming (e.g., right to gay marriage).
- Embedded into this act is a claim to the right to make such claims. The fact that public discussion focuses on the explicit claims rather than the implicit one suggests that there is general support for the right to claim rights.
Rights claiming is necessarily a disruptive act. Claimants perform (e.g., protest, assemble, etc) to stake the claim and challenge citizens to stake a counter claim.
By participating in rights claiming, people are activated to be citizens. To claim a right, or to form an understanding of a claim, or to challenge a claim, they apply fundamental principles (e.g., equality, justice). Through participation, people identify those they agree with and form groups; they identify those they disagree with and argue or bargain. Fundamental principles are also sometimes universal, causing unlike peoples to come together. Social contracts emerge.
In democratic polities, the right to vote is fundamental but not guaranteed even to legal citizens.
- Indigenous populations are a particularly powerful case study. Organized and protested to claim rights to land, self-government, etc. Not claiming citizenship of the colonizer state so much as claiming citizenship of their original state.
- Idle No More
- Undocumented migrants organizing to claim rights to reside, work, etc.
- No One Is Illegal
In nondemocratic polities, performances like those often carry severe risks.
- Nonetheless, examples do exist. See Arab Spring.
- Mothers and widows of soldiers in states such as Iran are able to demonstrate and claim rights.
- Factory and neighborhood assemblies in China
Performances also cross boundaries:
- Subtle, artistic performances by Ai Weiwei or Banksy
Organizing on behalf of people as in !Boats4People