“Citizenship is the right to have rights” was famously claimed by Hannah Arendt. The case of the Slovenian erased sheds new light on this assumption that was supposedly put to rest after World War II. We lack a comprehensive paradigm for grasping what citizenship means today in, and for, our societies. My thesis is that there are currently three ways to understand the notion. These different views tend to merge and overlap in today’s debate, furthering misunderstandings. I will account for the different conceptions of citizenship by looking at the opposite of citizenry. The political model holds the subject (sujet) in opposition to the citizen (citoyen), entailing problems related to the democratic quality of institutions. Law and jurisprudence look at citizenship by trying to limit the numerous hard cases arising in a world of migration where the opposite of the citizen is the alien and the stateless. While in social science citizenship is the opposite of exclusion and represents social membership, my aim is therefore to distinguish and clear out these three different semantic areas. This essay is presented in four sections: First, I briefly recall the case of the erased. The second section focuses on discourse analysis so as to enucleate the three different meanings of citizenship that we find in the current debate according to the prevailing disciplinary fields: political, legal and social sciences. Thirdly, attention will be directed to the composition of the different semantic areas that are connected to the term citizenship. I suggest that we are now dealing with a threefold notion. Finally, I will point to an array of questions that citizenship raises in today’s complex society and try to show how this tri-partition of the meaning of “citizenship” can be a useful device for decision makers so as to design as consistent policies as possible.
The Contemporary Debate on Citizenship. Some Remarks on the Erased of Slovenia
MINDUS, Patricia Maria
2009-01-01
Abstract
“Citizenship is the right to have rights” was famously claimed by Hannah Arendt. The case of the Slovenian erased sheds new light on this assumption that was supposedly put to rest after World War II. We lack a comprehensive paradigm for grasping what citizenship means today in, and for, our societies. My thesis is that there are currently three ways to understand the notion. These different views tend to merge and overlap in today’s debate, furthering misunderstandings. I will account for the different conceptions of citizenship by looking at the opposite of citizenry. The political model holds the subject (sujet) in opposition to the citizen (citoyen), entailing problems related to the democratic quality of institutions. Law and jurisprudence look at citizenship by trying to limit the numerous hard cases arising in a world of migration where the opposite of the citizen is the alien and the stateless. While in social science citizenship is the opposite of exclusion and represents social membership, my aim is therefore to distinguish and clear out these three different semantic areas. This essay is presented in four sections: First, I briefly recall the case of the erased. The second section focuses on discourse analysis so as to enucleate the three different meanings of citizenship that we find in the current debate according to the prevailing disciplinary fields: political, legal and social sciences. Thirdly, attention will be directed to the composition of the different semantic areas that are connected to the term citizenship. I suggest that we are now dealing with a threefold notion. Finally, I will point to an array of questions that citizenship raises in today’s complex society and try to show how this tri-partition of the meaning of “citizenship” can be a useful device for decision makers so as to design as consistent policies as possible.
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