Session 7: Redefining Boundaries
7th Global Conference
Monday 12th March – Wednesday 14th March 2012
Prague, Czech Republic
Eocnomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Challenges of Building a new Citizenship in West AfricaBappah
Habibu Yaya
Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria
Regional Integration arrangements are contemporary mechanisms for the establishment of new, supranational forms of citizenship. Globally, the European Union has set a good example. European citizenship is something of a reality. The process is however not without its challenges, particularly in the case of less developed integration systems. Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is one of the less developed integration systems in the world today that is working towards establishing common citizenship among its highly plural member states. The fifteen member state organization established in 1975 has as its main aim the promotion of ?cooperation and integration, leading to the establishment of an economic union in West Africa in order to raise the living standards of its peoples, and to maintain and enhance economic stability, foster relations among Member States and contribute to the progress and development?. To achieve that aim a protocol on free movement of persons, right of residence and establishment was early on signed and ratified in 1979 by the member states. The people are envisaged to form the bedrock of this economic community if they could freely interact. More than three decades after, however, the protocol still faces implementation challenges at the inter-state level. At the sub national level, the protocol is yet to face fully the challenges of pluralism. In that in some of the member states, like Nigeria, the question of indigene versus settlers override that of citizenship within the country. It has also been a source of exclusion, violent conflicts and social disintegration. This study thus highlights the supranational and sub national challenges that could hinder the success of building a common citizenship in West Africa under ECOWAS
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Post-colonial boundaries in Coimbra: the production of identity and difference in the experience of Academic Mobility
Geraldo Adriano Campos and Manolita Correia Lima
Centro de Altos Estudos da ESPM (CAEPM) -São Paulo, Brasil
The mobility turn in contemporary Social Sciences has been noted by several authors. The implications of the increasing focus on the mobile dimensions of social life are expressed in theoretical, epistemological and methodological terms. Besides the traditional studies on different aspects of migration and the growth on urban mobilities research, the intensification of flows of students on a global scope urges us to be aware of the impacts of the academic mobility in the definition of the national boundaries of belongings . The economic impact of this trend is easily recognizable, with its assimetries and the configuration of a geopolitics of knowledge. However, the theoretical debate on the issue has not given the due atention to new features of the cultural encounters and the production of alterities that are generated by this process and to the singular characteristics of the different groups of students, particularly in the post-grad level. If the role of some educational programs, such as the Erasmus, has been related to the production of a post-national european identity, there is a considerable lack of research on the especific ways that students find to deal with the issue of identity-difference in a context with a historical background of colonization.
This paper is based in the results of a ethnographic research done in Coimbra with in-depht interviews conducted with post-graduate students from all the countries that belong to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (Brazil, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cabo Verde, Portugal, East Timor) from different academic areas.
The results suggests that extreme difficulty in establishing cultural intimacy with the portuguese and the differences in the cultural academic environment have a strong impact in the feeling of belonging and the building of new economic gaps amongst the students from former colonies of Portugal.
Rethinking New Ways of Participation, Inclusion and Citizenship
Martin Castro, Mª Belén
Department of Political Science, University of Granada, Spain
In view of the rapid changes taking place in our societies and the ways in which citizenship is conceived and experienced, it is essential to reinforce it, the quality of democracy and governance. In fact, a growing concern exists for them and it is required a change of rules with regard to collective action, attitudes, capacities, values etc. These processes be reached through social and political learning, so it highlights themes associated within an increasingly unequal contemporary world with speedy societal changes and a declining social cohesiveness with emergent divisions. The current debate and discussion on its concept and limits have actually passed beyond the school environment and onwards to a wider context, including all institutions concerned. The paper is focused on the experiences from the called “Sites of citizenship” that involves a variety of different groups in the development of democratic practices, so they offer territorially unbounded politics. At the same time, “partnership” is a key structural and often involves novel arrangements with unfamiliar participants either created relationships of social peace, solidarity and confidence. It means observes the sites activity as forms of inclusive and pluralist citizenship and the different learning –educational, training, formal, non formal- from them .
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