Citizenship and inclusion: rethinking the analytical category of noncitizenship

Abstract

The paper problematises the category of noncitizenship. It traces its trajectory in accounts of inclusive citizenship and argues that it is difficult to theorise it as a distinct theoretical category outside of citizenship. To support this argument, the paper distinguishes between a pluralist, political and democratic variant of accounts of inclusive citizenship and it shows how they all end up reducing noncitizenship to a journey to citizenship. To overcome this limit, the paper develops the idea of subversive politicisation and suggests that injustices and inequalities can be challenged without falling back on the vocabulary of citizenship.

Keywords:

• politicisation
• exclusion
• democracy
• inclusive citizenship
• political membership

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In contrast with outer exclusion that captures the reluctance to either admit outsiders into citizenship or trust them as co-citizens, ‘inner exclusion’ designates the subordination of other ways of being a citizen into the dominant mould of citizenship. This dimension of exclusionary politics has been heavily criticised by the literature on gender politics (Taylor 1999; see also Lister 2003; Young 1995, 2000).

2. Here, it is important to note that I use the terms deliberation and participation interchangeably. For the opposite view, see Mutz 2006.

3. I borrow the term ‘citizenisation’ from the work of James Tully (2008a, 2008b).

4. Isin (2008) gives the most sophisticated account of such processes of citizenisation when he distinguishes between acts of citizenship (that involve disruption, rupture and a break with an order) and citizenship action (that envelops routine, habit and order).