Category: book

Edited By Peter Nyers, Kim Rygiel

The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies.

Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship. It investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. In this context the book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements.

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history.

Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Citizenship, Migrant Activism, and the Politics of Movement Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel 

1. Securitized migrants and postcolonial (in)difference: The politics of activisms among North African migrants in France Alina Sajed 

2: Claiming Rights, Asserting Belonging: Contesting Citizenship in the UK Ruth Grove-White 

3. Ungrateful Subjects? Refugee protests and the logic of gratitude Carolina Moulin 

4. “We are All Foreigners”: No Borders as a practical political project Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma and Cynthia Wright  

5. Ethnography and Human Rights: The Experience of APDHA with Nigerian Sex Workers in Andalucía Estefanía Acién González  

6. Moments of Solidarity, Migrant Activism and (Non)Citizens at Global Borders: Political Agency at Tanzanian refugee camps, Australian detention centres and European borders Heather Johnson  

7. Building a Sanctuary City: Municipal Migrant Rights in the City of Toronto Jean McDonald 

8. Taking not waiting: Space, temporality and politics in the City of Sanctuary movement Vicki Squire and Jennifer Bagelman 

9: Undocumented Citizens? Shifting grounds of citizenship in Los Angeles Anne McNevin

Authored by Kim Rygiel, Krista Hunt editor

This book examines the official war stories being told to the international community about why and against whom the war on terror is being waged. The book will benefit students, scholars and practitioners in the areas of international relations, women’s studies and cultural studies.

The war on terror has been raging for many years now, and subsequently there is a growing body of literature examining the development, motivation and effects of this US-led aggression. Virtually absent from these accounts is an examination of the central role that gender, race, class and sexuality play in the war on terror. This lack of attention reflects a continued resistance by analysts to acknowledge and engage identity-related social issues as central elements within global politics.

As this conflict spreads and deepens, it is more important than ever to examine how diverse international actors are using the war on terror as an opportunity to reinforce existing gendered, raced, classed and sexualized inter/national relations.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Cynthia Enloe; Series Editors’ Preface, Pauline Gardiner Barber, Jane Parapart and Marianne Marchand;

(En)gendered war stories and camouflaged politics, Krista Hunt and Kim Rygiel.

Part I A War for/on Women’s Rights

Post-9/11 Rescue Narratives: Between orientalism and fundamentalism: Muslim women and feminist engagement, Jasmin Zine;

‘Embedded Feminism’ and the war on terror, Krista Hunt;

Benevolent invaders, heroic victims and depraved villains: white femininity in media coverage of the invasion of Iraq, Melisa Brittain;

Rescue in the age of Empire: children, masculinity, and the war on terror, Catherine V. Scott.

Part II A War on/of Terror

The Politics Of Control: White nationalism, illegality and imperialism: border controls as ideology, Nandita Sharma;

Protecting and proving identity: the biopolitics of waging war through citizenship in the post-9/11 era, Kim Rygiel;

The headscarf debate: Muslim women in Europe and the ‘War on Terror’, Jane Freedman;

Is ‘W’ for women?, Zillah Eisenstein;

by Kim Rygiel

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, political science, globalization, citizenship, sociology, and law and anyone who wants to understand the implications of post-9/11 border controls and travel policies.

Since 9/11, national governments in the global North have struggled to govern populations and manage cross-border traffic without building new barriers to trade. What does citizenship mean in an era of heightened tension between global capitalism and the nation-state? Building on Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and an examination of national border and detention policies, Rygiel’s book Globalizing Citizenship argues that citizenship is becoming a globalizing regime to govern mobility. The new regime is deepening boundaries based on race, class, and gender, and causing Western nations to embrace a more technocratic, depoliticized understanding of citizenship.

The events of 9/11 and its aftermath exposed and enhanced tensions between the global capitalist system and the territorial nation-state. Governments and policy-makers more than ever struggle to govern populations and manage cross-border traffic without building new barriers to trade and commerce. What does citizenship mean in an era of heightened globalization and enhanced security? Is it in crisis?

In Globalizing Citizenship, Kim Rygiel explores these questions by examining border and detention policies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia as part of a larger politics of citizenship, one that preceded 9/11. Building on Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, she argues that citizenship is becoming a globalizing regime to govern mobility and access to rights and resources as nations in the global North harmonize border and detention policies, outsource state functions and power to international organizations and private companies, and rely on technologies to discipline the individual biological body.

This theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded study of border controls and detention practices reveals that the new mobility regime is not only deepening boundaries based on race, class, and gender, it is causing Western nations to embrace a more technocratic, depoliticized understanding of citizenship.

AWARDS

• 2011, Joint winner – ENMISA Distinguished Book Award, International Studies Association
• 2011, Short-listed – International Prize, Canadian Political Science Association