Abstract
Citizenship tests are arguably intended as moments of hailing, or interpellation, through which norms are internalized and citizen-subjects produced. We analyse the multiple political subjects revealed through migrants’ narratives of the citizenship test process, drawing on 158 interviews with migrants in Leicester and London who are at different stages in the UK citizenship test process. In dialogue with three counter-figures in the critical naturalization literature – the ‘neoliberal citizen’; the ‘anxious citizen’; and the ‘heroic citizen’ – we propose the figure of the ‘citizen-negotiator’, a socially situated actor who attempts to assert control over their life as they navigate the test process and state power. Through the focus on negotiation, we see migrants navigating a process of differentiation founded on pre-existing inequalities rather than a journey toward transformation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 225–242 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Citizenship Studies |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 25 Apr 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Funder
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under [grant number ES/K010174/1]Keywords
- Naturalization
- citizenship tests
- neoliberal citizenship
- United Kingdom
Themes
- Social Movements and Contentious Politics
- Migration, Displacement and Belonging