Session 8: Being a Citizen

5th Global Conference

Friday 6th November – Sunday 8th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Citizens and Aliens: A Greek Paradigm of ‘Effective’ Government
Christina Georgiadou
Department of History and Social Anthropology, Aegean University, Greece

The paper is based on a series of incidents involving undocumented migrants in Athens. The incidents occurred and were brought to public notice short after the European elections in June 2009. Few days after the defeat of the ruling party in the European elections, the government announced strict measures against ‘illegal migration’. The announcement was accompanied by a huge and spectacular police operation against undocumented migrants that crowded around the center of the city. The operation was justified as a measure against the supposed hygienic threats and high criminality in the area. This demonstration of power appeared as an attempt of the government to regain the Greek citizens’ support, by displaying that it was capable of offering them a ‘safe, clean and orderly’ city centre. Viewed through Foucault’s distinction between sovereignty, whose aim is obedience to the laws and government which has as its purpose the welfare of the population, the state’s power, in this particular (though not unique) case, appears to have a twofold manifestation. It is manifested as government of the Greek citizens (that is, care and regulation of their safety and hygiene) and, simultaneously, as imposition of sovereign power to the alien non-citizens who, being undocumented, stand outside the law and law has to be forcibly imposed on them. The imposition of sovereign power on non-citizens that are kept outside the law, becomes one of the tactics for the good government of citizens, which is in accord with Agamben’s idea that the ‘state of exception’ is constitutive of the political community. In this case, the political community consists of Greek citizens who believe that their rights to safety and health are threatened and their governors who ensure the citizens’ support through a spectacular performance of violence against the ‘threatening aliens’.

Economic Migrants, Expatriate Citizens and the Right to Vote within the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Wessel le Roux
Department of Public, Constitutional and International Law, University of South Africa, South Africa

This paper seeks to explore the impact of migration on post-apartheid conceptions of citizenship within the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In particular, it investigates the link between citizenship and the voting rights of migrants as an example of the disaggregation of citizenship rights (Benhabib). Three important recent developments in the region provide the framework for the discussion: (i) The Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons was adopted by SADC on 16 August 2005. The protocol aims to facilitate the free movement of citizens through the region and the acquisition of permanent and temporary residence status by citizens in the territory of other state parties. The protocol is silent, however, on the political status of these economic migrants in both the sending and receiving states; (ii) As if in direct defiance of the SADC protocol, a wave of wide-spread xenophobic violence broke out in South Africa on 11 May 2008. Over the next six weeks it claimed the lives of more than 50 people. For many analysts the violence marked the breakdown of state authority and institutions of effective political integration at local government level; (iii) During the 2009 national elections in South Africa, the issue of migrant voting rights served before the South African Constitutional Court for the first time. The Court was asked in the Richter and AParty cases to rule on the constitutionality of permanent residence as a prerequisite for voting rights. The Court relied on a conception of diasporic nationalism to rule that expatriate citizens retain the constitutional right to vote in South Africa. The
judgment contrasts sharply with the position in Zimbabwe, where expatriate citizens are stripped of their right to vote. The paper explores the apparently progressive reasoning and impact of the judgment. It asks, in particular, whether the notion of diasporic nationalism has any useful role to play in the effective political integration of economic migrants within the SADC region. In so doing, it also explores the regional relevance of the alternative models of political integration recently identified by Benhabib (the carnival of the multitude, postnational urban politics, and cosmopolitan federalism).

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Racialized Citizenship: The Contested Advance in the Rights of Prisoners in Light of the Struggle of African-Americans for Citizenship
Itai Sneh
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of new York, USA

This abstract aims at providing a historical context and a political narrative for the social, economic, ideological and political reasons behind mass incarceration of women.

The progress of citizenship rights such as voting for women prisoners had not been uniform; on the contrary major advancements were often reversed in the name of safety, security, values, utility, and efficient administration. The trials and tribulations of both numerous activists, advocates, politicians and other public figures, as well as countless, nameless, “foot-soldiers,” proved that the struggle for liberty, equality and power has been extremely demanding, frustrating and violent. Resistance from the establishment has been fierce, as the very control over the conduct of incarcerated populations, and the routine management of prison facilities, were at stake.

My paper will analyze the reasons for success and for failure in selective periods: the 1820s, the Progressive era, the 1960s through the 1980s. The role of race, the media, the judiciary, and the political circumstances in each case will be particularly addressed

I will also compare and contrast to similar patterns evident in another major challenge to pre-existing legal norms, perceptions of order, and traditions of governance initiated by a disenfranchised group: the African-American civil rights movement, especially in the aftermath of the Civil War, and in the 1950s-60s.

I will conclude by offering some lessons for what worked to reform troubled systems, excluding rules, and offensive practices, and why; what failed, and why. The findings will be presented in a practical path in view to educating future human rights defenders.