Unfamiliar acts of citizenship: enacting citizenship in vernacular music and language from the space of marginalised intergenerational migration

Abstract

Conceptualising citizenship as an act rather than a status enables us to rethink the familiarity of both ‘who’ can be a citizen and the type of ‘practices’ that can be understood as citizenship. This paper focuses on unfamiliar practices of citizenship per se by exploring the liminal site from which intergenerational migrant youth resist the taken-for-granted space of citizenship through a turn towards vernacular music and language. It considers how citizenship is resisted here through the unfamiliar act of turning away from either identifying or, failing/refusing to identify with the nation-state. It explores the effect of this move in challenging narrow national linguistic and ethnic ideologies through the development of non-standard language practice and cross-cutting musical styles. It argues that citizenship is enacted in this move by creating a space in vernacular music and language for expressions of hybrid political identity and belonging.

Keywords:

• Acts of citizenship
• intergenerational
• language
• migration
• music
• resistance
• unfamiliar

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Reiko Shindo and the two anonymous reviewers for detailed and constructive engagement with earlier drafts of this paper. A draft of this paper was presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Glasgow in September 2014 and at the University of Manchester Critical Global Politics Research Seminar series in December 2014 where it benefited from questions and comments from audience members and fellow panellists.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. An exception is literature on the undocumented youth known as DREAMERS and their various acts of civil disobedience including ‘coming out of the shadows’ rallies, sit-ins, mock(ing) graduations and hunger strikes. These acts are however focused on acquiring formal citizenship and directed at the federal and state level unlike the indirect acts focused on in this paper.

2. This is not to ignore how music, language and fashion can be used also to reinforce cultural hierarchies in keeping with active citizenship (acts that re-entrench existing socio-historical practices) rather than acts of citizenship (acts that disrupt socio-historical practices). Ní Laoire et al. (2011) also, for example, explore how some youth drew on language, fashion, music and sport in the form of traditional Irish dancing, the Irish Celtic language and Irish Gaelic football or hurling to try to reaffirm their ‘Irish’ identity.

3. The official term of this ‘slang-like linguistic style’ is a multi-ethnolect (ibid.).

4. Sois t’es l’un ou soit t’es l’autre…Flamand ou Wallon?... Mais t’es blanc ou bien t’es marron, hein?

5. Ni l’un ni l’autre, je suis; j’etais et resterai moi

6. This leaves open the possibility of recognising shared intragenerational experiences in other respect which puts into practice what some people like Anthias (2009) stress is very important when thinking about migration across generations.