Citizenship

(This is one of the essays to be included in a book examining the causes of day-to-day strife in the populations of modern democracies vying to live and assert the freedoms promised to them by systems of governance supposed and expected to represent them.) -/- The emigrant / immigrant / migrant makes a conscious, relatively difficult decision to exchange what s/he knows for what is not known at all but in promise. The choice is often stark and carries with it (...) the imposition of restrictions on what will be possible in terms of existing customs, culture, and direct involvement with friends and family, and signifies a leap of faith into what appears to be a better, more prosperous, happier future. -/- At times, such choice is unavoidable, others it turns out to be a gamble of sorts, but, no matter what the cause, reason, or desire underlying an act of migration away from what the emigrant has known, it never turns out to be what was expected and no amount of preparation allows the emigrant to anticipate what will in fact occur. Migration is the founding of a new life in all the aspects of the emigrant’s existence. (shrink)

إذا كانت ثمة سمة تُميز عالمنا المعاصر عما عداه من مراحل في مسيرة التطور الحضاري للإنسان، فإن هذه السمة بلا شك هي ثورة المعلومات المزدهرة والمنطلقة بلا هوادة. إن تطوير الحوسبة (عتادًا وبرمجيات)، وإعادة التوجيه التكنولوجي لشرائح واسعة من القوى العاملة على المستوى الدولي، وانتشار وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي، وتنامي شبكة الإنترنت التي تقلصت معها وبها أبعاد عالمنا الجغرافي، ... إلخ، كل ذلك أدى إلى تغيير جذري في طرائق عيشنا وعملنا وتواصلنا، بل وفي الطبيعة النوعية لأفكارنا ومشاعرنا وقيمنا وثقافاتنا وهوياتنا، وكذا (...) في كيفية فهمنا لبعضنا البعض. بهذه الثورة المعلوماتية أصبحنا أمام ما ندعوه بالمجتمع الرقمي ، والفرد الرقمي ، والمواطنة الرقمية، وهذه الأخيرة بمثابة مواطنة افتراضية في فضاء إلكتروني تكنولوجي واسع المدى، تتعدد فيه الهويات، وتتداخل القيم، وتتهاوى الخصوصية، وتُزيف المشاعر، وتنبثق حقوق وواجبات جديدة تضع الهوية بمفهومها التقليدي في مأزق. من هذا المنطلق تُناقش هذه الورقة أبعاد المواطنة الرقمية وتأثيراتها المتعددة على الهوية، لاسيما في عالمنا العربي المعاصر، من حيث كونه مستهلكًا للمعرفة وليس مُنتجًا لها. (shrink)

The article introduces a special issue on “Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies.” The contributions presented in this special issue were discussed during the conference « Multicultural Citizenship 25 Years Later », held in Paris in November 2021. Their aim is to take stock of the legacy of Kymlicka’s contribution and to highlight new developments in theories of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights. The contributions do not purport to challenge the legitimacy of theories of multiculturalism and minority rights, they (...) rather aim at deepening our understanding of the foundations of liberal multiculturalism and of its practical implementation, sensitive to social scientific dynamics of diverse societies. Without abandoning the general idea that cultural minorities should be granted special minority rights, the essays presented raise new questions about three dimensions central to liberal multiculturalism: its normative foundations, its practical categories of minorities or groups, and its fact-sensitive methodology. Taken together they shed light on the renewed variety of theories of liberal multiculturalism highlighting their complexity and internal disagreements. To introduce these articles, the article first draws a brief historical overview of the debates on multiculturalism since the 1990s (section 1). It then highlights the distinctive aspects of Kymlicka’s contribution (section 2) and identifies recent research trends (section 3). Doing so, it explains how the articles gathered here both expand on those distinctive aspects and explore those new research avenues. The section 4 summarizes the contributions. (shrink)

Debate between Dan Demetriou (Philosophy, Minnesota Morris) and Michael Huemer (Philosophy, Colorado), forthcoming in Problems in Applied Ethics: An Introduction to Contemporary Debates, Steven Cowan, ed. (Bloomsbury). The main essays are 5000 words or fewer; replies are 1500 words or fewer. This penultimate version is published here with permission from the editor.

There is no good human life outside of a state, and the good state enables us to live well together – so says Constitutivism, the theory developed in this book. Reinvigorating Aristotelian ideas, the author asks in what sense citizens of modern, populous and pluralistic societies share a common good. -/- While we can easily find examples of cooperation that benefit each member, such as insurances, the idea that persons could share a common good became puzzling with modernity – a (...) puzzlement epitomised in Margaret Thatcher’s ‘What is society? There is no such thing!’ Aristotle describes the state as the end of human development, both chronologically and normatively, but modern philosophers, from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt, conceive the relation between state and citizen as instrumental. Either the state is a means of advancing each member’s individual good or the individual is a means of advancing some collective good. From both perspectives, the Aristotelian idea that human individuals somehow realise their own good in realising some communal good appears metaphysically puzzling, even nonsensical. -/- This puzzlement, the author argues, results from our profoundly modern understanding of rational actions, which we generally see as means toward outcomes. If we allow that not only outcomes but also histories and identities can be good reasons for actions, then it makes sense to see a person’s good and the common good of their political community as constitutive of one another, as Aristotle thought. Building on this idea, the author argues that individual actions and lives exist only in conjunction with a political community. In designing our institutions, we hence also give ourselves an identity and, in that sense, constitute ourselves as persons. Her arguments shed new light on a range of traditional topics of political theory, such as the justification of state authority or the question of how to justify or challenge the design of social institutions. (shrink)

Voor het eerst hebben jongeren onder de achttien in Duitsland en België deze maand gestemd, bij de Europese verkiezingen. Nederlandse leeftijdsgenoten hebben dit recht (nog) niet. Te beïnvloedbaar, ze kunnen nog niet verantwoord stemmen, klinkt het. Deze tegenwerpingen zijn oneerlijk. Ze gelden ook voor miljoenen anderen die al wel stemrecht hebben.

Many philosophers accept the idea that there are duties to promote or create just institutions. But are the addressees of such duties supposed to be individuals – the members of the citizenry? What does it mean for an individual to promote or create just institutions? According to the ‘Simple View’, the citizenry has a collective duty to create or promote just institutions, and each individual citizen has an individual duty to do their part in this collective project. The simple view (...) appears to work well with regard to – you guessed it – ‘simple’ scenarios but it is riddled with further questions and problems. In this chapter, we raise five problems for the Simple View: (a) We suggest that one cannot develop a view concerning the citizenry’s duty to promote just institutions in isolation from a conception of the ontological relationship between the state and its citizens; (b) We argue that it is not obvious that the citizenry is the right entity to be attributed duties in the first place; (c) We show that a plausible account of collective duties to promote just institutions must not remain silent on the complexities and difficulties amorphous, unorganized group face in vis-à-vis collective action; (d) We contend that without allocation principles for contributory duties amongst the citizenry, or – alternatively – a method for practical deliberation that is action-guiding in collective action contexts, the claim that the citizens have a collective duty to promote just institutions remains moot; and, finally, (e) We demonstrate that the problem of reasonable disagreement is a serious threat to a collective duty to promote or create just institutions – it potentially undermines such a duty altogether and allows for conflicting contributory duties amongst the citizenry. We hope that our discussion will ultimately help improve existing theories and conceptual frameworks with a view to better understanding citizens’ obligations to promote justice under non-ideal conditions. (shrink)

Generative AI technologies have the potential to be socially and politically transformative. In this paper, we focus on exploring the potential impacts that Generative AI could have on the functioning of our democracies and the nature of citizenship. We do so by drawing on accounts of deliberative democracy and the deliberative virtues associated with it, as well as the reciprocal impacts that social media and Generative AI will have on each other and the broader information landscape. Drawing on this background (...) theory, we outline some of the key positive and negative impacts that Generative AI is likely to have on democratic citizenship. The political significance of these impacts suggests the need for further regulation. (shrink)

The point of this paper is to show that the understanding Solovyov penned and voiced about humanity close to the end of his life suggests that he regarded human rights as sacred. First of all, we provided a rough sense of who Solovyov was as a person, for he is a bit of a stranger to the majority of the audience, including scholars, in the Western hemisphere. Afterwards, we carried out what we have already said we intended to do here, (...) drawing on a public lecture that Solovyov gave at Saint Petersburg Imperial University to mark the 100th anniversary of Auguste Comte’s birth. Our perception is that Solovyov clearly thought of human rights from a faith-based angle and believed them to be sacred, and that all of his insights and those inspired by them are remarkably conducive to reflecting on human rights at the present time, whatever the religious background of each one of us. -/- . (shrink)

Chosenness, Agapism, and the Search for Moderation between Nationhood and Universalism -/- Abstract The idea of collective Chosenness (nivḥarut) was interpreted by Jewish thinkers in two initial ways: Chosenness as a divine gift which is somehow encrypted in the body of each Jewish individual, and Chosenness as a normatively acquired (rather than inherited) property. Numerous attempts were made to defend these approaches, and to mediate between them. This paper examine the idea of Chosenness from a novel perspective, by interrogating it (...) with its mirror concept, namely the Christian Agape which mandates the love of and the care for every human being, regardless of their nationality, merit, ethnicity, or ‘race’. The agapic stance has its origin in the Hebrew Bible, and was robustly developed in the Christian tradition with its distinctive universal trajectory. The significance of Agape - which is almost absent from the research on Jewish Thought vis-à-vis Christianity - to the issue of national election, is the agapic emphasis on the election of humanity as a whole. Juxtaposing chosenness with agapism sheds new light on the old issue of chosenness, in several ways: First, by demonstrating that not only narrow chosenness has its moral pitfalls; radical forms of Agape too have their moral prices. Secondly, the contextualization of chosenness vis-a-vis Agape invites a search for middle ways that balance between the two polarities. Thirdly, given that there are moderations between chosenness and Agape in both Judaism and Christianity, establishing the conceptual axis ‘Chosenness-Agapism’ may enrich Jewish-Christian interfaith discourse, thus contributing to the ability of Jewish and Christian interlocutors to better understand how their Abrahamic fellow challenges their tradition in a way which is vital to the pursuit of their own tradition’s equilibrium. (shrink)

In the Groundwork, we find three distinct conceptions of freedom: (i) A negative conception of freedom, understood as a capacity for spontaneous action independent of alien causes; (ii) a positive conception of freedom, understood as the capacity of giving law to oneself; and (iii) a second positive conception, understood as the capacity to give laws that bind others as well as oneself. The dominant interpretation of Kant ignores this third conception of freedom and interprets the second conception as a capacity (...) for self-determination or self-governance, which is seen as the most basic and important Kantian conception of autonomy. In this paper, we will focus mainly on explaining the distinction between the second and third conceptions of autonomy and will defend the claim that the third conception is morally the most basic. We will also explain briefly why Kant thinks that having the capacity for citizenship is necessary for having the capacity for self-governance. (shrink)

Existing social disparities in the United States are inconsistent with the promise of democracy; therefore, there was a need for critical conceptualization of the first principles that undergird American democracy and the genesis of democratic social change in America. This constructivist grounded theory study aimed to construct a grounded theory that provides an understanding of the process of American democratic social change as it emerged from the nation’s founding documents. A post hoc polytheoretical framework including Foucault’s, Bourdieu’s, and Marx and (...) Engels’s theories of power was used to understand power dynamics. The research question focused on understanding the process of democratic social change in America. The sample comprised the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution. The documents were retrieved from the National Archives and Library of Congress. The data analysis plan incorporated successive comparison, situational and dramaturgical analysis, deconstruction, and perspective taking as strategies. The result was the construction of a democratic social change process theory preceded by five grounded theories: (a) first principles of democracy, (b) first principles of democracy conceptual framework, (c) socio-ethical principles of democracy, (d) demoralizing process, and (e) either-or approach to democracy. Positive social change implications include applying a democratic social change process to future social change endeavors across domains and levels of analysis, a normative framework for a republican form of government, and a tool to analyze and minimize the latent consequences of social justice policies. (shrink)

In order for democratic deliberative interactions in educational settings to fruitfully occur, certain favorable conditions must obtain. In this chapter I chiefly concern myself with one of these putative conditions, namely that of school integration, believed by many liberal scholars to be necessary for consensus-building and legitimate decision-making. I provide a critical assessment of the belief that integration is a necessary facilitative condition for democratic deliberation in the classroom. I demonstrate that liberal versions of democratic deliberation predicated on this condition (...) are puzzlingly inattentive both to the inevitability of segregation, as well as the inequities occasioned by ‘school integration’. I then move to probe the possibilities for democratic education in the absence of integration. I argue that neither the possibilities for deliberation nor the cultivation of civic virtue turn on an environment being ‘integrated’. Indeed some kinds of segregation may be more conducive to fostering both deliberation and civic virtue. (shrink)

Despite the emphasis on dialogue and argumentation in educational settings, still not much is known about how best we can support learners in their interthinking, reasoning, and metadialogic understanding. The goal of this classroom intervention study is to explore the degree of students’ dialogicity and its possible increase during a learning programme implementing dialogic and argument-based teaching goals and principles. In particular, we focus on how students from 5 to 15 years old engage with each other's ideas, and whether/how this (...) engagement is influenced by lesson and classroom setting factors. The participants were 4208 students distributed in preprimary, primary, and secondary classrooms of five countries (UK, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Cyprus). Findings suggest that there is a consistent increase with age for some high-dialogicity moves, and students behave more dialogically in whole-class discussions rather than small-group activities. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Migrants invariably and unavoidably experience domination under the nation-state centered concepts, categories, and institutions that structure our political thinking. In response, we need to build new forms of citizenship, including local, regional, transnational, and supranational forms of belonging, accompanied by meaningful, democratic, political power. In this paper, I examine historical and present-day alternative models of political organization as possible viable alternatives to state-centric liberal democracy. It begins the task of assessing these models using radical republican theory that grounds (...) non-domination in the active and equal participation of people subject to power. I have three broad aims. First, we need to break down the native-migrant dichotomy to highlight commonalities and search for solidarities among migrants and other marginalized and oppressed groups, including indigenous groups. Second, I seek to awaken the political imagination. Many people do not believe there are viable alternatives to liberal democracy centered around the nation-state. In response, we should draw attention to the ways in which the nation-state’s hegemony is fragile and fragmented and the ways in which sovereignty is complex and contested. Most importantly, we need to consider alternative models for inspiration. Third, we need tools for assessing the desirability of alternatives and for building new forms of citizenship. In what follows, first I explain why the dominant, nation-state centered model of political organization is unable to deliver justice in today’s world, or, indeed, address the collective dangers that humanity faces. I next provide a sketch of a radical republican vision that provides normative guidance our thinking about alternative institutions. I end by using this radical republic vision to reflect on possibilities to guide efforts to remake the world. (shrink)

In gloomy and despairing times, we who work for liberation generate light and joy. We experience this every time we work together to defend our communities, when we fight to win collective victories, when we build something new. Much of the time these experiences are in marches and meetings – really important spaces for movement work. But here we want to amplify the usefulness of collective study, and share some thoughts about why Harsha Walia’s new book Border and Rule would (...) be a great place to start if you might like to try a political kind of book club. (shrink)

Het idee dat burgerschapsonderwijs noodzakelijkerwijs democratisch is omdat ze door een democratische staat wordt georganiseerd, is een bedenkelijke assumptie. Veronderstellen dat goed burgerschap overigens beperkt kan blijven tot een reeks van ‘meetbare’ kenniscomponenten (bv. kennis van presidenten, koningen), overtuigingen (bv., ‘er zijn mensenrechten’) en ‘competenties’ (bv. ‘kunnen omgaan met meningsverschillen’) is niet enkel een karikatuur maken van de democratie zelf, maar getuigt evenzeer van een democratisch paternalisme.

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the demands of citizen sovereignty and civic solidarity. While Debs (...) shares some of the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism. (shrink)

In ‘Are Citizenship Tests Necessarily Illiberal?’, Michael Blake argues that difficult citizenship tests are not necessarily illiberal, so long as they test for the right things. In this paper, I argue that Blake’s attempt to square citizenship tests with liberalism fails. Blake underestimates the burdens citizenship tests impose on immigrants, ignoring in particular the egalitarian claims immigrants have on equal social membership. Moreover, Blake’s positive justification of citizenship tests – that they help justify immigrants’ coercive voting power – both neglects (...) the fact that such tests are coercively imposed on immigrants and that the citizenship test Blake envisions does little to help ensure immigrants’ votes are legitimate. Citizenship tests thus aren’t, even in principle, a way of protecting citizens from unjustified coercive power. They are, even under favourable circumstances, an illiberal way of obstructing immigrants’ quest for social equality. (shrink)

In republican political philosophy, citizenship is a status that is constituted by one’s participation in the public life of the polity. In its traditional formulation, republican citizenship is an exclusionary and hierarchical way of defining a polity’s membership, because the domain of activity that qualifies as participating in the polity’s public life is highly restricted. I argue that Black American abolitionist Frederick Douglass advances a radically inclusive conception of republican citizenship by articulating a deeply capacious account of what it means (...) to participate in the public life of the polity. On Douglass’s conception of republican citizenship, what it means to contribute to the polity, and thereby be a citizen, is to act in ways that contest and shape what the polity values. We contest and shape what the polity values not only through public discourse traditionally conceived or grand political acts like revolt, but also through quotidian forms of social interaction. In his pre-American Civil War political thought, Douglass deployed his radically inclusive account of republican citizenship as the conceptual foundation of his stance that enslaved and nominally free Black Americans were already, in the 1850s, American citizens whom the polity ought to acknowledge as such. The everyday resistance in which enslaved Black Americans engaged—their plantation politics—is, for Douglass, a paradigmatic type of citizenship-constituting activity, because it involves modes of collaboration and confrontation that enact a recognition of mutual vulnerability and embody the assertion that one matters. Douglass’s conception of republican citizenship offers a normative framework for emancipatory struggles that strive to secure meaningful membership for the marginalized through the transformation of unjust polities. (shrink)

Contemporary societies are regulated by a complex system, which tends to be exhaustive, supported by growing social and technical interdependence. This system is composed of subsystems: global economic production, liberal political institutions and a social organization based on labour. As a whole, these three dimensions – political, economical, social – tend to compress contemporary life forms into a single way of life, primarily structured by systemic functionality. Although it admits variations of degree (or even, to some extent, qualitative differences), the (...) functional codes (of systems) guide actions daily and impose severe limitations on lifestyles, which are particularly noticeable when the struggle for survival, both economically and socially, mobilizes all of one’s time and energy. The means obliterate the ends, functioning obliterates meaning, survival obliterates the proper human “life”. At the political level, liberal thought masks the “malaise of modern civilization” resulting from these limitations by evacuating the question on forms of life to the private sphere, concurrently with the insistence on an abstract political ethic of the “just”, ultimately determining the form and functioning of the institutions, which overrides any and all ethics of “good”. (shrink)

What does social cohesion require in culturally diverse post-immigration societies? Immigration and social cohesion are, in the public debate, believed to be incompatible. In normative political philosophy, a similar understanding manifests in the argument that social cohesion-based on a common national identity-is incompatible with immigration. In so doing, its proponents justify restrictive border policies. In this chapter, I will critically engage with this argument by reconnecting the literature in social sciences to normative political philosophy. I will offer a conditional and (...) pro tanto argument that social cohesion in post-immigration societies justifies open and non-discriminatory border policies. My argument is conditional in two senses: first, it assumes social cohesion is based on a common identity, and second, it only applies to the societies with significant cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity that can be best described as post-immigration societies. My argument implies that liberal nationalists have a choice: they can either keep defending social cohesion in the traditional way, which comes with open borders; or they can abandon this view, thereby losing one of the strongest justifications for restrictive borders. (shrink)

What does social cohesion require in culturally diverse post-immigration societies? Immigration and social cohesion are, in the public debate, believed to be incompatible. In normative political philosophy, a similar understanding manifests in the argument that social cohesion-based on a common national identity-is incompatible with immigration. In so doing, its proponents justify restrictive border policies. In this chapter, I will critically engage with this argument by reconnecting the literature in social sciences to normative political philosophy. I will offer a conditional and (...) pro tanto argument that social cohesion in post-immigration societies justifies open and non-discriminatory border policies. My argument is conditional in two senses: first, it assumes social cohesion is based on a common identity, and second, it only applies to the societies with significant cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity that can be best described as post-immigration societies. My argument implies that liberal nationalists have a choice: they can either keep defending social cohesion in the traditional way, which comes with open borders; or they can abandon this view, thereby losing one of the strongest justifications for restrictive borders. (shrink)

Methodological nationalism assumes that, to understand a phenomenon, nation- states are the relevant units of analysis. This assumption has been recognized as a source of bias in most of the social sciences. Does it bias Rawls' understanding of justice, too? This paper argues that it does for at least two reasons. Firstly, what Rawls thinks justice requires on a global scale falls short of what states and international organisations actually do. Secondly, framing the difference principle in national terms, as Rawls (...) did, is a way to increase the “citizenship rent”, or the revenue a person receives just by being citizen of a rich country The paper argues that methodological nationalism biases Rawls’ understanding of justice by affecting both the plausibility and the coherence of his theory. (shrink)

Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh are forced into labour both inside and outside the camps for a wide range of reasons. This article examines this situation in relation to the access to education for those children living in the camps in Cox’s Bazar. Being informed by several perspectives concerning child labour and access to schooling in developing country contexts, this research work has adopted a qualitative approach to study various factors working behind this pressing issue. After collecting data by means (...) of qualitative methods, including non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews, the researcher has analyzed the findings with these informed perspectives. Results show that lack of formal identity, limited access to the formal labour market, absence of social sanctions against child employment, lack of aspirations, household composition, and substandard living conditions are some of the key factors that drive children to engage in various forms of labour, especially outside the camps. They often work in small workshops as labourers and in the host community households as domestic workers. Undocumented children are also reported to become victims of bonded labour, sex trade, and trafficking in the region. The author argues that a lack of formal education has compounded this issue into a severe humanitarian crisis which calls for immediate support and actions from local and international agencies. (shrink)

For several years Michael Blake has been among the most important contributors to the philosophical literature on immigration. This book is therefore greatly anticipated, and develops a number of fruitful arguments. Although I will argue that the account is unsuccessful or incomplete at key points, it’s clearly an important work of relevance to those working on immigration, as well as to political philosophers more generally. In particular, Blake provides powerful arguments against the claim that “open borders” are required by liberal (...) principles of justice, develops his own “jurisdictional” account justifying immigration restrictions and the acceptable limits to these restrictions, and, in the most interesting and novel part of the book, discusses the role of virtues and values other than justice in relation to immigration policy, focusing specifically on the virtue of mercy. This last section of the book has potential for starting a rewarding line of research for political philosophers working on many topics, not just immigration. (shrink)

In dit artikel onderzoek ik of de standaardbenaderingen van burgerschapsonderwijs in de Lage Landen geschikt zijn om jonge mensen voor te bereiden om de huidige politieke realiteiten tegemoet te treden, laat staan om onrecht te bestrijden. Ik laat zien waarom een nadruk op ‘democratische principes’ of de rechtsstaat de status quo waarschijnlijk niet zal veranderen zolang opvoeders er niet in slagen de aandacht voor de waarheid te cultiveren die nodig is om te kunnen oordelen over rivaliserende normatieve claims. Met name (...) op tolerantie gebaseerde interpretaties van burgerschap zullen weinig bereiken in afwezigheid van burgerlijke deugden – vooral moreel oordelen en morele moed – die nodig zijn voor dissent. Dissent omvat minimaal een bereidheid om de waarheid te spreken tegen de macht. Maar het ernstigste probleem betreffende burgerschapsonderwijs op school betreft de legitimiteit ervan, gegeven dat dat onderwijs gebaseerd is op een door de overheid opgelegd curriculum met als doel een gewenste respons op de boodschap ervan op te leggen en te conditioneren. Daardoor staat het per definitie vijandig tegenover dissent. (shrink)

Many profess a belief in the importance of school integration. In this essay I argue that the evidence tells against the sincerity of this belief.

Interdisciplinary work on the nature of borders and society has enriched and complicated our understanding of democracy, community, distributive justice, and migration. It reveals the cognitive bias of methodological nationalism, which has distorted normative political thought on these topics, uncritically and often unconsciously adapting and reifying state‐centered conceptions of territory, space, and community. Under methodological nationalism, state territories demarcate the boundaries of the political; society is conceived as composed of immobile, culturally homogenous citizens, each belonging to one and only one (...) state; and the distribution of goods is analyzed according to a stark opposition between the domestic and the international. This article describes how methodological nationalism has shaped central debates in political philosophy and introduces recent work that helps dispel this bias. (shrink)

This paper identifies and synthetically demonstrates the most important steps and changes in the evolution of the idea and institution of citizenship in Europe over more than two thousand years. Citizenship is one of the essential categories defining human status. From a historical perspective, the idea of citizenship in Europe is in a state of constant evolution. Therefore, the essence of the institution of citizenship and its acquisition criteria are continually being transformed. Today’s comprehension of citizenship is different from understanding (...) citizenship in Europe in earlier epochs of history. In some of them, the concept of citizenship existed only in the realm of ideas. In others, the idea materialised, and membership in the state (or city) and civic rights and obligations found a formal, legal expression. The formation of the idea and institution of citizenship is a long and multi-phase process. Published in "Studia Europejskie – Studies in European Affairs", Vol. 25, 1/2021, pp. 7-31. (shrink)

Online deliberation is one important instance of civic tech that is both for and by the citizens, through engaging citizens in Internet-supported deliberative discussions on public issues. This article explains the origins of a set of symposium articles in this journal issue based on the 2017 'International Conference on Deliberation and Decision Making: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Civic Tech' held in Singapore. Symposium articles are presented in a sequence that flows from designing decision making systems to platforms to specific technological nudges.

Tentazione di Siracusa, "Tentación de Siracusa", es el título que eligió Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) para la breve, aunque magistral, conferencia que pronunció el 18 de enero de 2001 en Ortigia, en el Palacio del Senado siracusano. Allí fue convocado por las autoridades del Collegio Siciliano di Filosofía y por el entonces intendente de la comuna sícula, Giambattista Bufardeci, quien le otorgó en tal ocasión la ciudadanía honoraria de esa antigua y culturalmente variada urbe mediterránea, una ciudad atravesada milenariamente por la (...) tensión entre filosofía y política, que vio partir por mar, reducido a esclavo, a Platón, y que se manchó con la sangre de Arquímedes, derramada por un soldado romano invasor. La lectio derridiana, que propone sin ambages una nueva figura para la relación entre filosofía y política, abordando el fenómeno de la "mundialización" así como la pregunta por el sentido contemporáneo de la ciudadanía, debió esperar casi dos décadas para ver la luz. Recién en 2018 la editorial Mimesis, sello italiano de incuestionable prestigio, la hizo accesible dentro de su colección "eterotopie", dirigida por los profesores Salvo Vaccaro (Università degli Studi di Palermo) y Pierre Dalla Vigna (Università dell'Insubria). El texto fue traducido íntegro para su publicación por Francesco Garritano y Marina Machì (ambos de la Università della Calabria), quienes ofrecieron, como adelanto de su versión, un breve fragmento por primera vez en la edición del 21 de enero de 2001 del periódico italiano Repubblica, bajo el título Il tiranno e il filosofo). (shrink)

In this essay I question the liberal faith in the efficacy and morality of citizenship education (CE) as it has been traditionally (and is still) practiced in most public state schools. In challenging institutionalized faith in CE, I also challenge liberal understandings of what it means to be a citizen, and how the social and political world of citizens is constituted. I interrogate CE as defended in the liberal tradition, with particular attention to Gutmann’s ‘conscious social reproduction’. I argue that (...) CE in practice does not operate on the bases of non-repression or non-discrimination, and has weak claims for legitimacy. In fact, CE in many forms reproduces social inequalities, and contributes to the expulsion of disadvantaged students from schools and from the ranks of recognized citizens. (shrink)

There is a loud and persistent drum beat of support for schools, for citizenship, for diversity and inclusion, and increasingly for labor market readiness with very little critical attention to the assumptions underlying these agendas, let alone to their many internal contradictions. Accordingly, in this book I examine the philosophical, motivational, and practical challenges of education theory, policy, and practice in the twenty-first century. As I proceed, I do not neglect the historical, comparative international context so essential to better understanding (...) where we are, as well as what is attainable in terms of educational justice. I argue that we must constructively critique some of our most cherished beliefs about education if we are to save the hope of real justice from the rhetoric of imagined justice. (shrink)

The article considers what arbitrary law-making is and what may count as arbitrary law-making in the field of migration policy. It contributes to the discussion of arbitrary law-making in relation to migration policy in two ways. First, it offers an analysis of arbitrariness, pointing out that rhetorical definitions abound – perhaps not surprisingly, given that migration is a highly-contested policy area – and argues for why transposing a conception developed in ethical theory to the law has high theoretical costs. An (...) alternative conception is described and found to be better equipped to deal with arbitrary law-making in migration policy. It is argued that if we want to understand how arbitrariness plays out in the field of migration law – which is necessary to find ways to hinder its spread by the adoption of specific law-making practices – we first need to distinguish arbitrariness from legitimate choices of legislators. Secondly, a typology of forms of arbitrariness is fleshed out in relation to contemporary migration policy. The policy area is here broadly construed to include not only naturalisation processes, but also migration, asylum and refugee policies and more generally border control. The examples are taken from a broad selection of countries. They have been chosen for illustrative purposes only. Keywords: arbitrariness, discretion, arbitrary power, forms of arbitrary power, borders, migration policy, citizenship policy. (shrink)

The special issue covers both fronts by presenting a conceptual analysis of arbitrary law-making that sets out to typify its various meanings, along an empirical account of its actual functioning in legal and political practice. As arbitrariness becomes a pressing concern for lawyers, politicians and scholars attempting to grasp the discretionary powers of judicial and administrative authorities vis-a-vis legal subjects, its social impact as well as its political consequences must be taken into consideration in order to fully comprehend how central (...) arbitrariness has become for a philosophical and a sociological account of law-making. Migration policy is precisely where arbitrariness vividly shows its face, and where its various forms unleash their most revealing implications. It is in this field that we must dig further if we want to know how this hitherto peripheral and surrogated dimension of legal decision-making stretches the leeway of legal officials to the very margin of legality, disclosing the social tension and the power struggle between their agency and the structures that condition and enable it. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to complement and extend Cécile Laborde’s argument against the Swiss minaret ban, which emphasizes the exclusion of Muslim citizens from equal national belonging. We argue that if we take seriously the normativity that is embedded in the Swiss direct democratic context (Carens 2004), especially in its ability to determine the substance of national belonging, then the symbolic exclusion of Muslims from political belonging is more relevant than the former with regard to democratic justice. Section 1 (...) defines basic notions and presents some arguments that were circulated in Swiss public political debate during the referendum campaign. Section 2 will present extant arguments in normative political philosophy about the ban. Section 3 expands our argument, which can be summarized as follows: the double absence of recognition of Muslims as (i) equal autonomous subjects and (ii) as political agents calls into question the legitimacy of the direct democratic process that led to the ban, making it unjust by the standards implicit within democratic practices in Switzerland. (shrink)

Burgerschapsonderwijs is een belangrijke missie op scholen. Met de toegenomen aandacht voor zelfredzaamheid en kennis over het politieke systeem zitten we op het goede spoor. Maar dat geldt niet voor de kunst om met verschillende meningen om te gaan. Kan ons onderwijs die burgerschapsvorming wel aan gegeven een aantal praktische uitdagingen en de geïnstitutionaliseerde blinde vlek voor ons koloniale verleden?

This essay examines Étienne Balibar's readings of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. The text is framed as a review of two books by Balibar: 'Equaliberty' and 'Violence and Civility'. After describing the context of those readings, I propose a broader reflection on the ambiguous relationship between 'post-Marxism' and 'deconstruction', focusing on concepts such as 'violence', 'cruelty', 'sovereignty' and 'property'. I also raise methodological questions related to the 'use' of deconstructive notions in political theory debates.

Recently, British Prime Minister Theresa May made a bold anti-cosmopolitan claim: ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship...

Temporary workers stand to gain from temporary migration programs, which can also benefit sender and recipient states. Some critics of temporary migration programs, however, argue that failing to extend citizenship rights or a secure pathway to permanent residency to such migrants places them in an unacceptable position of domination with respect to other members of society. We shall argue that access to permanent residency and citizenship rights should not be regarded as a condition for the moral permissibility of such programs. (...) Instead we will focus on the essential protections that must be extended to all migrant workers, irrespective of the length of their migration project. (shrink)

Are democratic states permitted to denationalize citizens, in particular those whom they believe pose dangers to the physical safety of others? In this article, I argue that they are not. The power to denationalize citizens—that is, to revoke citizenship—is one that many states have historically claimed for themselves, but which has largely been in disuse in the last several decades. Recent terrorist events have, however, prompted scholars and political actors to reconsider the role that denationalization can and perhaps should play (...) in democratic states, in particular with respect to its role in protecting national security and in supporting the global fight against terror more generally. In this article, my objective is to show that denationalization laws have no place in democratic states. To understand why, I propose examining the foundations of the right of citizenship, which lie, I shall argue, in the very strong interests that individuals have in security of residence. I use this formulation of the right to respond to two broad clusters of arguments: (1) those that claim that it is justifiable to denationalize citizens who threaten to undermine the safety of citizens in a democratic state or the ability of a democratic state to function as a democratic state, and (2) those that claim that it is justifiable to denationalize dual citizens because they possess citizenship status in a second country that is also able to protect their rights. (shrink)

Whatever the merits idealized liberal accounts of citizenship education may have in the seminar room, in this essay I argue that they are both unpersuasive and ineffectual. This is the case, because they are insufficiently attentive to the empirical realities, first (a) with respect to how real – versus imaginary – school systems function; and second, (b) with respect to the broader political context in which citizenship education policies are implemented. Because so much is already known about the former, I (...) devote more attention in this essay to the latter. (shrink)

Al decennia verdedigen liberale theoretici de stelling dat burgerschap de taak is van de school. Hoewel er onder hen substantiële meningsverschillen bestaan, delen ze allemaal hetzelfde geloof in zowel de plicht als capaciteiten van scholen om te doen wat hun theorieën voorschrijven. Wij hebben alle begrip voor de gedachten achter deze theorieën; ze brengen namelijk idealen tot uitdrukking die wij na zouden moeten streven. Ze beschrijven niet de scholen die wij hebben, maar die we nodig hebben. Maar welke verdiensten deze (...) geïdealiseerde liberale visies op burgerschapseducatie ook mogen hebben in een vergaderzaal, ze zijn niet overtuigend en bruikbaar. Simpelweg omdat ze onvoldoende rekening houden met de empirische realiteit van de bredere politieke context waarbinnen beleid op het gebied van burgerschapseducatie wordt ontwikkeld en geïmplementeerd. (shrink)

Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus (Political-Philosophical Treatise) aims to establish the principles of good governance and of a happy society, and to open up new directions for the future development of humankind. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz demonstrates the necessity of, and provides a guide for, the redirection of humanity. He argues that this paradigm shift must involve changing the character of social life and politics from competitive to cooperative, encouraging moral and intellectual virtues, providing foundations for happy societies, promoting peace among countries and building (...) a strong international community. (shrink)

The deliberative systems approach is a recent innovation within the tradition of deliberative democratic theory. It signals an important shift in focus from the political legitimacy produced within isolated and formal sites of deliberation (e.g., Parliament or deliberative mini-publics), to the legitimacy produced by a number of diverse interconnected sites. In this respect, the deliberative systems (DS) approach is better equipped to identify and address defects arising from the systemic influences of power and coercion. In this article, I examine one (...) of the least explored and least understood defects: the exclusion of non-speaking political actors generated by the uniform privileging of speech in all sites within a system. Using the examples of prefigurative protest, Indigenous refusal to deliberate, and the non-deliberative agency of disabled citizens, I argue that the DS approach allows theorists to better understand forms of domination related to the imposition of speech on those who are either unwilling or unable to speak. (shrink)

Individuals sometimes pass their duties on to collectives, which is one way in which collectives can come to have duties. The collective discharges its duties by acting through its members, which involves distributing duties back out to individuals. Individuals put duties in and get (transformed) duties out. In this paper we consider whether (and if so, to what extent) this general account can make sense of states' duties. Do some of the duties we typically take states to have come from (...) individuals having passed on certain individual duties? There are complications: states can discharge their duties by contracting fulfilment out to non-members; states seem able to dissolve the duties of non-members; and some of states' duties are not derived in this way. We demonstrate that these complicate, but do not undermine, the general account and its application to states. And the application has an interesting upshot: by asking which individuals robustly participate in this process of duty transfer-and-transformation with a given state, we can begin to get a grip on who counts as a member of that state. (shrink)

Definicja patriotyzmu najczęściej ogranicza się do stwierdzenia, że jest to tylko pielęgnowanie pamięci o historii. Jednak patriotyzm może mieć dwojakie oblicze: jedno – najczęściej podkreślane – skierowane ku przeszłości i drugie ukierunkowane na teraźniejszość, a nawet przyszłość. Co więcej, zdaniem wielu badaczy patriotyzm nie musi być ściśle związany z jednym narodem czy kulturą. Wartą zainteresowania koncepcję patriotyzmu konstytucyjnego podczas dyskusji o tożsamości narodowej toczonych po II wojnie światowej wypracowali historycy i filozofowie niemieccy. Jednym z popularyzatorów tego projektu był i cały (...) czas jest Jürgen Habermas. Według niemieckiego filozofa patriotyzm konstytucyjny to nie pozytywistyczne zasady konstytucyjne, ale pewne abstrakcyjne formy, sposoby interpretacji spajające określoną zbiorowość. Takimi uniwersalnymi zasadami mogą być procedury suwerenności oraz liberalne prawa jednostki. Patriotyzm konstytucyjny wydaje się odchodzić od tradycyjnego powoływania się na pamięć historyczną. Zamiast niej proponuje nie tyle czystą naukę, ale próbę uzyskania samoświadomości poprzez jej znajomość. W artykule przedstawiono argumenty wskazujące na to, że w koncepcji patriotyzmu konstytucyjnego proponowanej przez J. Habermasa refleksyjnie opracowana historia odgrywa bardzo istotną, a nawet kluczową rolę. (shrink)

These are for entries for _The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon_, edited by Jon Mandle and David Reidy, on H.L.A. Hart, Charles Beitz, Sovereignty, and Citizen.