Citizenship as absolute space, citizenship as contingent trace

Alternatives

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 373-400

  Mhurchú, Aoileann Ní ^a  

^a DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY   (Ireland)

Author keywords

2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum; Citizenship; Sovereignty; Space; Subjectivity; Time

Indexed keywords

EID: 78650402389     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437541003500403     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. Stephen Castles and Alastair Davidson, Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. viii;
2. San-dro Mezzadra, "Citizen and Subject: A Postcolonial Constitution for the European Union?" (2005, online), p. 5. Available at http://www.gold.ac.uk/media/mezzadra-citizen-subject.pdf; accessed April 13, 2010.
3. R. B. J. Walker, "Citizenship After the Modern Subject", in Kimberly Hutchings and Roland Dannreuther, eds., Cosmopolitan Citizenship (London: MacMillan, 1999), p. 179.
4. Angharad Closs Stephens, "Citizenship Without Community: Time, Design, and the City", Citizenship Studies 14, no. 1(2010):41 (emphasis added).
5. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1996), p. 515.
6. Walker, "Citizenship After the Modern Subject", p. 179.
7. Mezzadra, "Citizen and Subject";
8. see also Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).
9. R. B. J. Walker, "Sovereignties, Exceptions, Worlds", in Jenny Edkins, Veronique Pin-Fat, and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., Sovereign Lives: Power in Global Politics (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 239-249;
10. Peter Nyers, "Emergency or Emerging Identities? Refugees and Transformations in World Order", Millennium 28, no. 1(1999):1-26.
11. R. B. J. Walker, "The Territorial State and The Theme of Gulliver", Chapter 6 of R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). On the notion of space as a product in and of itself and therefore of the need for a theory of space
12. see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1998).
13. For a discussion of how political space is playing out in several different types of spaces at once
14. see Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)
15. in particular Chapter 2, "Populations and Political Society."
16. Mezzadra, "Citizen and Subject", p. 35.
17. Richard Ashley and R. B. J. Walker, "Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies", International Studies Quarterly 34, special issue, no. 3(1990):367-416.
18. Ibid., p. 386.
19. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 174.
20. Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat, "The Subject of the Political", in Jenny Edkins, Veronique Pin-Fat, and Nalini Persram, eds., Sovereignty and Subjectivity (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 1-18.
21. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 133;
22. see also Milic Capek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (London: Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 21-26.
23. See Pierre-Maxime Schuhl, "Le Thème du Gulliver et le postulat de Laplace", Journal de Psychologie normal et pathologique, 44, no. 1(1947):169-184.
24. Walker, "Citizenship After the Modern Subject." On the question of how spatial organization has influenced the evolution of political society
25. see, for example, John Agnew, "The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory", Review of International Political Economy 1, no. 1(1994):53-80.
26. Michael J. Shapiro, "National Times and Other Times: Re-Thinking Citizenship", Cultural Studies 14, no. 1(2000):79.
27. Walker, "Citizenship After the Modern Subject";
28. see also "Sovereign Identity: The Politics of Forgetting", in Walker, Inside/Outside, pp. 159-183.
29. Ashley and Walker, "Reading Dissidence", p. 387. For a discussion about how this has been possible in the discipline of international relations
30. see, for example, Roland Bleiker, "Forget IR Theory", Alternatives 22, no. 1(1997):57-85.
31. R. B. J. Walker and Didier Bigo, "Political Sociology and the Problem of the International", Millennium 35, no. 3(2007):725-739.
32. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 175.
33. Ibid., p. 129. For a discussion of how the concept of the border is playing out in unexpected ways
34. see Nick Vaughan-Williams, "The Generalised Bio-political Border? Re-conceptualising the Limits of Sovereign Power", Review of International Studies 35, no. 4(2009):729-749.
35. Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 40.
36. Walker, "Citizenship After the Modern Subject";
37. see also Walker, Inside/Outside. For an account of the differences in understandings of time, space, and matter between classical and contemporary physics
38. see Capek, Philosophical Impact.
39. A "non-national" is defined under the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 2001, section 2 (c) as "a person who is not an Irish citizen. " In 2001, the term non-national replaced existing references to alien, the term used previously in Irish legislation.
40. J. M. Mancini and Graham Finlay, "Citizenship Matters: Lessons from the Irish Citizenship Referendum", American Quarterly 60, no. 3(2008):578.
41. In a European context
42. see Liza Schuster, "Common Sense or Racism? The Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Europe", Patterns of Prejudice 37, no. 3(2003):233-256. In the Irish context
43. see Una Crowley, Mary Gilmartin, and Rob Kitchin, "Vote Yes for 'Common Sense Citizenship': Immigration and the Paradoxes at the Heart of Ireland's 'Céad Míle Fáilte", National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) Working Paper Series 30(2006):1-35.
44. In 2004, the Irish government specifically argued that "to become an Irish citizen a person should have a much greater connection with this country than simply being born here": Willie O'Dea (FF), Oireachtas Debates, April 21, 2004, Twenty-Seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill, 2004, Second Stage, Dáil Éireann, p. 1265.
45. Marc Lacey "Dominican Crackdown Leaves Children of Haitian Immigrants in Legal Limbo", New York Times, May 25, 2008.
46. See, for example, Helma Lutz, "The Limits of European-ness: Immigrant Women in Fortress Europe", Feminist Review, no. 57 (Autumn 1997):93-111;
47. Mancini and Finlay, "Citizenship Matters."
48. This residency requirement was not part of the referendum proposal itself; however, it did become part of the basis for the proposal insofar as draft legislation was prepared in tandem with the referendum proposal in order to outline how birthright citizenship would be legislated for if the referendum was passed.
49. Article 2 was inserted into Bunreacht na hÉireann in 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. However, it is important to note that birthright citizenship had been the practice of the state since its foundation, having been initially enshrined in Article 3 of the 1922 constitution of the Irish Free State and later in statute (Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956 and 1986) with the enactment of the 1937 constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann.
50. The epigraph to this section is taken from Ronit Lentin and Eithne Luibhéid, eds., "Representing Migrant Women in Ireland and the EU", Women's Studies International Forum, special issue, no. 4(2004):301.
51. Michael McDowell, Oireachtas Debates, April 21, 2004, Twenty-Seventh, p. 1194.
52. The term Irish-born children came to be used to differentiate children born to migrant parents from children born to Irish citizen parents. Lentin argues that "the euphemism 'Irish-born children' racially differentiates the children of 'non-nationals' from all other children born in Ireland":
53. Ronit Lentin, "Pregnant Silence: (En) gendering Ireland's Asylum Space", Patterns of Prejudice 37, no. 3(2003):310.
54. Ibid., p. 301.
55. Ronit Lentin, "From Racial State to Racist State: Ireland on the Eve of the Citizenship Referendum", Variant 20 (2004, online), available at http://www.variant.randomstate.org/20texts/raciststate.html; accessed August 6, 2009, p. 6.
56. Ronit Lentin, "From Racial State to Racist State: Ireland on the Eve of the Citizenship Referendum", Variant 20 (2004, online), available at http://www.variant.randomstate.org/20texts/raciststate.html; accessed August 6, 2009, p. 6.
57. Alana Lentin and Ronit Lentin, eds., Race and State (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006).
58. Oireachtas Debates (May 5, 2004), Twenty-Seventh Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2004: Committee Stage, Seanad Éireann, p. 801.
59. Lobe & Osayande v. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (2003), Supreme Court of Ireland Decisions [online]. Available at http://www.bailii.org/ie/cases/IESC/2003/3.html; accessed April 13, 2010.
60. Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Information Note: Proposal for Constitutional Amendment and Legislation Concerning the Issue of the Irish Citizenship of Children of Non-National Parents (online, 2004), p. 1. Available at www.inis.gov. ie/en/inis/information%20note.pdf/files/ information%20note.pdf; accessed April 13, 2010.
61. Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Proposed Citizenship Referendum: Article by Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr. Michael McDowell, T. D., Published in Sunday Independent on March 14, 2004 (online), p. 1. Available at www.inis.gov. ie/en/inis/article.pdf/files/article. pdf; accessed April 13, 2010.
62. Included among the reasons given for why women (Irish citizens and non-Irish citizens alike) could end up presenting last minute at Dublin maternity hospitals were last-minute medical complications; lack of information regarding maternity care and entitlements during the nine months prior to giving birth; desire to give birth in the capital city despite having undergone prenatal care locally elsewhere; and an inability, given fears about job loss, to avail of prenatal care despite living in Ireland long term: Dervla King, Immigration and Citizenship in Ireland (Dublin: Children's Rights Alliance, 2004), p. 16.
63. Ronit Lentin, "Strangers and Strollers: Feminist Notes on Researching Migrant M/Others", Women's Studies International Forum 27, no. 4(2004):305.
64. Lentin, "From Racial State to Racist State"; Steve Garner, "Babies, Bodies, and Entitlement: Gendered Aspects of Access to Citizenship in the Republic of Ireland", Parliamentary Affairs 60, no. 3(2007):437-445;
65. E. Lub-héid, "Childbearing Against the State? Asylum-seeker Women in the Irish Republic", Women's Studies International Forum 27(2004):335-349. It should be noted that Garner is slightly more skeptical than either Lentin or Lubhéid with regard to the ability of feminist theories when merged with racist state theories to completely "explain" events such as the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum.
66. On this point, see Walker, "Sovereignties, Exceptions", p. 242.
67. The epigraph at the top of this section is quoted from Bryan Fanning, New Guests of the Irish Nation (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009), pp. 179-180.
68. See, for example, Bryan Fanning, "Against the 'Racial State", Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 96, no. 381(2007):1-8.
69. Bryan Fanning and Fidèle Mutwarasibo, "Nationals/Non- Nationals: Immigration, Citizenship, and Politics in the Republic of Ireland", Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 3(2007):452.
70. Fanning, New Guests, p. 148.
71. Ibid., p. 147.
72. Ibid., p. 3. It should be noted that Fanning is not advocating cosmopolitanism as a panacea for exclusion in all its various guises. While critical of how exactly it will work, he nonetheless sees it as the only "real" way of ensuring that the state can successfully deal with the challenge of immigration.
73. Ibid., p. 149.
74. On the concept of the "new Irish, "
75. see Fanning "The New Irish", in Fanning, New Guests;
76. Alice Feldman, "The New Irish Lecture Series", Boston College Centre for Irish Programs 48 (2007-2008);
77. Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, conference "The New Irish?" Dundalk Institute of Technology, September 27, 2007.
78. Stephens, "Citizenship Without Community", p. 34.
79. Allen White and Mary Gilmartin, "Critical Geographies of Citizenship", Women's Studies International Forum 31(2008):390-399.
80. See also, for example, discussion by Piaras MacÉinrí, "If I Wanted to Go There I Wouldn't Start from Here: Re-Imagining a Multi-Ethnic Nation", in D. Ging, M. Cronin, and P. Kirby, eds., Transforming Ireland: Challenges, Critiques, Resources (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 38-51.
81. White and Gilmartin, "Critical Geographies", p. 393.
82. White and Gilmartin, "Critical Geographies", p. 393. Ibid.
83. see also Gilmartin and White, "Revisiting Contemporary Irish Migration: New Geographies of Mobility and Belonging", Irish Geography 41, no. 2(2009):143-149.
84. White and Gilmartin, "Critical Geographies", p. 393.
85. Ibid., p. 394.
86. Ibid., p. 394.
87. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 155.
88. Ibid., p. 168.
89. Julia Kristeva, Strangers To Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 3.
90. Peter Nyers, "Forms of Irregular Citizenship", in Vicki Squire, ed., The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity (London: Rout-ledge, forthcoming 2011).
91. Anne McNevin, "Migrant Mobilizations in los Angeles: Illegality, Citizenship, and the City", paper presented at the 2010 International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, p. 2.
92. McNevin does not argue that this status is uncontested but that the struggles of these groups "are at once reactions to their marginalised condition and productive of new forms of political belonging.... This is the kind of ambiguity that makes it possible for Felix to speak of 'undocumented citizens' and to expect that his meaning will be understood, even if the term is contested":
93. ibid., p. 9.
94. Ibid., p. 4 (emphasis added).
95. See also, for example, Shapiro, "National Times and Other Times: Re-Thinking Citizenship", which explores alternative spatiotemporal spaces of citizenship in literature;
96. and Closs Stephens, "Citizenship Without Community", which looks at temporal disjunctures of community in design.
97. Jenny Edkins "Exposed Singularity", Journal for Cultural Research 9, no. 4(2005):383.
98. Peter Nyers, "The Accidental Citizen: Acts of Sovereignty and (Un) mak-ing of Citizenship", Economy and Society 35, no. 1(2006):22-41.
99. I am very grateful to Peter Nyers for providing me with this example of the type of temporal exclusion experienced through modern concepts of birthright citizenship.
100. Jenny Edkins, "Humanitarianism, Humanity, Human", Journal of Human Rights 2, no. 2(2003):257.
101. Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 7 (emphasis added).
102. The epigraph to this concluding section is from Shapiro, "National Times and Other Times: Re-Thinking Citizenship", p. 79.
103. White and Gilmartin, "Critical Geographies", p. 395.
104. Walker, Inside/Outside, p. 127.
105. Rob Walker, in his role as discussant at a panel entitled "Vernacular Sovereignties I" (International Studies Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, February 17, 2010), posed the question of whether a better ontology necessarily promises a better politics.
106. Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, p. xv.