Abstract
Citizenship, belonging, and the nation-state have been the subject of considerable scholarship, and a contribution of this sort always runs the risk of producing a text that bears significant similarities to others already published. This edited collection, however, has managed to produce a novel, thought-provoking, and timely contribution to the field. Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-States in the Twenty-First Century, in the broadest terms, interrogates questions of citizenship and belonging, reinforcing the centrality of the nation-state within this realm. Although the chapters, the case studies, the approaches taken, and their subsequent conclusions vary substantially, there is strength in this diversity and it speaks to the complexity of the subject matter.
What pulls these diverse elements together is the book’s overall aim: understanding citizenship and belonging without losing sight of the ongoing impact of the nation-state. This approach, however, is suitably nuanced: the claim is not that all notions of citizenship and belonging emerge from the state alone, but rather that continued state sovereignty over these issues, and the nation-state’s impacts in both policy and discourse, have ensured their continued importance. Thankfully, the text largely manages not to negate the agency of individuals, and other sub- and supra-national influences completely.
The nine substantive chapters in Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-States in the Twenty-First Century illustrate a diversity of contributions to these broader issues. Understandably, given the nation-state based approach mentioned above, these largely deal with different national examples or observe the relationship between a state and one particular subset of its population. The first half of the book considers some of the more widely studied cases in the area of citizenship studies, namely the United States and Europe, whereas the second half of the text uses examples from the Middle East and Africa. Although making no claims to be comprehensive, these different sites of interrogation balance the text and a broader awareness of the diversity of state contexts in which questions of citizenship, integration, and belonging take hold. There is also a balance struck between questions of states managing new arrivals and existing internal minorities.
Beyond these broad observations, the differences among the chapters make it difficult to analyze them collectively. Chapter 1, by Sofya Aptekar, investigates the complexities of the citizenship mechanisms of the United States. She manages to illustrate the ambiguities of these processes (including the fascinating treatment of the question of ‘moral character’), their intersection with other boundaries, and the role of citizenship as a ‘final hurdle’ in the immigration process. Although emphasizing the impact of the state, she also illustrates the – at times – enormous discretionary powers of the state’s agents.
In a similar vein, the next chapter, by Ramona Fruja, explores attempts at integration by Germany and Denmark. By looking at the ‘enduring practices of scrutiny’ used by states in order to integrate citizens, she shows that despite elements of convergence, such as in the introduction of citizenship tests, these states still differ due to their national models and particular historical circumstances. Continuing in the European context, the work of Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak follows in the next chapter, looking at the experiences of educated Moroccan and Turkish Dutch citizens. They explain how the dominant ‘culturalized’ conceptions encouraged by the state of what it means to be ‘Dutch’ construct them as others within that community, and the discomfort that this engenders. Again, this speaks to some of the unintended consequences of such policies, but also how these broader national discourses come to be experienced at a personal level. The final European-based contribution comes from Barzoo Eliassi, who investigates Kurdish migrants in Sweden and how state policies function to both include and exclude. He also shows how this newly obtained Swedish citizenship differs in the migrants’ experiences of it with regard to their previous Iranian, Iraqi, Afghani, or Turkish citizenship.
Moving to a different context, David Mednicoff’s chapter on Qatar looks at how, despite its comparatively recent independence, the Qatari state has put significant effort into building its national identity. He considers how the development of the state is tied up with the development of national identity: two processes that reinforce one another. Furthermore, the rapidity of the state’s growth has necessitated this cohesion for internal and external stakeholders. In Chapter 6, coining the term ‘regimes of belonging,’ Sinem Adar observes the diversity of forms that national belonging and internal classification take, the impact that these have on minorities, and how they belong politically. Using the cases of Egypt and Turkey, and in particular their non-Muslim populations, she traces the impact of some of these historical forms of diversity management and their effect on the current landscape of political belonging. Her analysis illustrates the (at times) counter-intuitive nature of some of these findings. Turkey is also the topic of the next chapter, by Ozlem Goner, who takes a more theoretically heavy approach by drawing on Foucauldian analytics of power to consider the governing of the Kurds and Alevis in Turkey.
A historical intervention is made in Chapter 8 by Idir Ouahes, who investigates the nation-building efforts of the Syrian state through education. Yet, as his case illustrates, this particular state, as with others, at times does not have control at the ideological level and may lose it to other forces, in this case to the ‘supranational Islamic sphere.’ There is some weight given in this text more broadly to questions of religious difference, which adds to the timeliness of this contribution. The final chapter, by Erika L Iverson, takes up the case of Kenya, looking at the role bureaucracy plays in the treatment of Somali refugees. Rightly opening with the work of Hannah Arendt, she investigates how bureaucratic processes can have a considerable impact on the way in which refugees are treated; a sad consequence of our national, international, and aid regimes that is often overlooked.
Overall, the text presents a kaleidoscope of ways in which various nation-states and their practices have become implicated in creating populations that belong and others that do not, and whether these ends are the result of intended or unintended consequences. Each chapter adopts a different case study, a different perspective, and often a different methodology, yet when read together this collection achieves its aims in providing insight into the ways in which state practices more generally affect citizenship and belonging. Although some might consider the diversity of the substantive chapters a possible weakness, these differences in approach and context reinforce how despite different journeys, they all underpin the general premise of this book, which is the continued impact of the nation-state in relation to questions of citizenship and belonging.