Contentious citizenship: feminist debates and practices and European challenges (original) (raw)
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Analyzing the European Union citizenship through feminist perspectives
2014
The European Union has aspired to create an “ever closer union” among its people since the articulation of the European Union citizenship has been an important instrument towards it. However, attempts at creating this “ever closer union” have focused on homogenizing European citizens as a single entity without taking into account the heterogeneous differentials among such citizens. Gender differential is one such important aspect. The present paper analyzes the citizenship under EU from a feminist perspective. It attempts to conceptualize the term of citizenship and delineates the basic features of the European citizenship. Thereafter, the major feminist criticisms of the notion of citizenship are examined with specific regards to the gendered discrimination against EU citizens.
Introduction: EU citizenship, a matter of gender, generations and family dependency
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, 2018
GENDER AND GENERATIONAL DIVISION IN EU CITIZENSHIP EU citizenship is a contested concept and a slowly developing process of creating, step by step, a level playing field for citizens of all EU Member States irrespective of their home country. The concept is contested because national, transnational and supranational rights, duties and cultural sentiments interfere with each other, and citizens as well as politicians strive for optimal results in the balance among national, transnational and supranational aspects of citizenship (De Vries and Van Waarden, 2018). EU citizenship directly relates to the basic principle of free movement and the exercise of individual citizenship rights. However, the way in which individual citizens as family members (as a spouse, partner, child, or parent) are embedded in the institutional, legal and cultural contexts, especially when moving and travelling, can make a great difference in fulfilment of their citizenship rights. Gender and intergenerational relations, care-related rights and practices, family benefits and allowances, as well as services for families, define family obligations and interdependencies. These are crucial for understanding the real possibility to exercise social and individual citizenship and what has been understood as practices of citizenship (Williams, 2004; Tronto, 2005), even more so when it concerns EU citizenship. The relationship between citizenship and gender has largely been conceptualized by feminist scholars, some of whom have examined how (welfare) states regulate and shape the social reproduction of their citizens, and in so doing also that of the 'nation'
Remaking Citizenship in Multicultural Europe
2012
This book emerged out of the FEMCIT project, a transnational, multidisciplinary feminist research project that ran from to 2011. Many people contributed to the collective work of FEMCIT. Firstly, we thank everyone who was part of the FEMCIT project. We start by acknowledging Tone Hellesund, the first Scientific Coordinator of FEMCIT, whose enthusiasm, vision and belief that we might secure funding for a large European project about women's movements kick-started it all. We also especially thank Siren Høgtun, the Administrative Coordinator, who managed the complex administrative and financial aspects of the project, and Solveig Bergman, who was the other member, with us, of the 'Project Office', responsible for the scientific direction and management of FEMCIT. We owe a big 'thank you' to the Steering Committee-Nicky Le Feuvre, Line Nyhagen Predelli, Joyce Outshoorn and Monica Threlfall-for their meticulous work and good humour throughout the project. We thank all the partners in the project, who were also involved from the beginning:
'Citizenship is not a word I use': How Women's Movement Activists Understand Citizenship
In: Beatrice Halsaa, Sasha Roseneil and Sevil Sumer, eds., Remaking Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: Women's Movements, Gender and Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This chapter addresses the overall topic of this volume, of whether women’s movement claims can be understood as claims to remake citizenship in multicultural Europe, by asking the following questions: How is the term citizenship understood by contemporary women’s movement activists? What reflections and experiences do such activists impart in relation to lived citizenship? Is citizenship a concept used by movement activists – does the term have political relevance for women’s movement claims? According to Lister et al. (2007: 168), there is ‘remarkably little empirical analysis of lived citizenship in comparison with the volume of theorising about citizenship in individual member states of the European Union, never mind cross-nationally. This is particularly the case with regard to citizens’ own understanding of citizenship’s meaning’ (Lister et al., 2007: 168; see also Kaber, 2005: 1). Our study of women’s movement activists and citizenship in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK) seeks to fill some of this empirical gap in current scholarship, whilst also contributing to theoretical debates about citizenship as a concept. Moreover, we address the issue of whether the broad understanding of citizenship promoted by feminist scholars has a potential to become increasingly relevant and useful for women’s movements across different national and political contexts.
Journal of Social Policy, 2001
When I first became interested in women's citizenship, I was particularly attracted to Scandinavian feminist writing on the issue, including the work of the Danish scholar Birte Siim. Siim is a political scientist with a good feel for social policy (even if it is not listed here among her disciplinary influences). One of the recurrent themes in her important book is thus the interrelationship between women's social and political citizenship. The book's subtitle underlines her basic premise that 'politics matter' (p. 2), together with her central concern with women's agency. Agency provides the link between conceptions of citizenship as an active, participatory practice and as a set of rights, which are the object of struggle. Politics, as expressed through political institutions and discourses and individual and collective agency, provide the framework both for the analysis of feminist citizenship theories and for the comparative study of gendered citizenship in three very different European welfare states. One of her aims is to help shift 'the focus of attention in feminist scholarship from a theoretical figure of patriarchy of exclusion to an analysis of the dynamic processes of women's participation in civil society and in public political life' (p. 2). Siim identifies three feminist accounts of citizenship. • Carole Pateman's highly influential 'patriarchal hypothesis', based on a critique of the public-private divide; • a 'maternal-communitarian' model, exemplified by the work of Jean Bethke Elshtain, which emphasises women's social and cultural difference from men; • a 'pluralist participatory' model, developed by feminists such as Anne Phillips and Iris Young, inspired by civic republicanism's ideal of active political citizenship, yet also paying attention to the demands of diversity and difference. She is critical of Pateman's lack of attention to women's agency and of the maternal-communitarian preoccupation with women's maternal role. Neither model provides a satisfactory account of women's citizenship in a Scandinavian context. The 'pluralist participatory' model is closest to Siim's own position, although she suggests it raises a number of questions, particularly with regard to gendered power relations. She also welcomes the contribution offered by postmodernism, provided that women's agency is not deconstructed out of existence in the process. Here she places particular emphasis on the importance of discourse for her study, although the analysis of discourses is not sustained in a systematic way. Having provided an overview of both general and feminist approaches to the theorisation of citizenship, the book is then divided into the three case studies of France, Britain and Denmark, chosen for their contrasting citizenship traditions, vocabularies and politics. She uses a gendered modification of Bryan Turner's active/passive and public/private taxonomy and also the notions of a male breadwinner model as the basis for her analysis.
Citizenship in an Enlarging Europe: Contested Strategies
Sociological Review, 2005
This article explores some of the debates surrounding the gendered impact of both the democratisation process and European Union enlargement on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It focuses on three key issues of gender-equitable citizenship: debates about the best mechanisms for achieving gender equality in mainstream politics; questions about the efficacy of civil society activism in relation to mainstream politics; and the pros and cons of gender mainstreaming as a key component of EU enlargement. It also raises the question of the most appropriate frame for achieving more gender-equitable societies: the nation-state or supra-national institutions such as the European Union.