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Abstract
This paper introduces a materialist approach to Isin’s concept of ‘acts of citizenship’ to call for an attention to the lively and agential materials that mediate citizenship claims. It describes two ways in which materialism helps progress conceptualisations of citizenship. Firstly, it demonstrates the ways in which a materialist viewpoint forces a reconsideration of ‘acts of citizenship’ as undertaken by heterogeneous collectives, rather than them being the sole responsibility of human actors. Secondly, it suggests that, because acts of citizenship arise out of socio-material entanglements, they may exceed the apparent intentions of human subjects. This paper argues that materials are more than bystanders in claims to citizenship; they actively mediate and facilitate encounters through which political claims are made. This argument is developed through a detailed empirical study of the materials permitted to circulate from Immigration Removal Centres during a community exchange project organised by the charity Music in Detention.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Louise Amoore, Lauren Martin, Angharad Closs Stephens, Gaja Maestri and the two anonymous reviewers for their considered and helpful advice in developing this paper.
Notes
1. All names are pseudonyms.
2. We use inverted commas here to emphasise our view that this administrative practice of detaining individuals who have not committed crimes is part of ‘illiberal processes within nominally liberal states’ (Belcher and Martin Citation2013, 1).
3. Attention also needs to be given to the politics surrounding what materials are permitted to enter the centres, but given space constraints, this paper is only concerned with the regulation of materials leaving IRCs.
4. Such attention to matter and the material has ‘pluralised discussions of the political’ that had previously been accused of privileging the discursive and casting anything non-human outside of the political field (Meehan, Shaw, and Marston Citation2013, 2). Indeed Meehan, Shaw, and Marston (Citation2013), following Bennett (Citation2010), have called for attention to the ‘brute materiality and objective force of things’ in political geography, and to the ontological force that things themselves generate. Such an orientation has resulted in a refocussing of many established conventions within political geography. For instance, Darling (Citation2014, 484) notes how ‘destabilising the image of an unwieldy and abstract state apparatus in this manner has become an important orientation within political geography’. In this paper, we conceive of ‘politics’ or ‘the political’ not as a grand narrative, but rather as an emergent phenomena that is characterised (but not determined) by the disruption of power relations.
5. The term ‘intra-action’ is borrowed from Barad (Citation2007). It troubles notions of causality in which one or more completed wholes interact to produce an effect, emphasising the way that elements are constructed through productive encounters.
6. No under-18s or vulnerable adults are permitted to visit detainees unless they are visiting family members.
7. It was not possible to obtain access to conduct research within the IRC, as Sarah’s application to the Home Office in 2014 never received an answer. As Sarah did not enter the centre, she took part in the community side of the project conducting interviews, participant observation at Base 33 and taking part in a focus group.
8. Interview, Iain, IRC Music teacher.
9. Whilst this close relationship with the Home Office may leave Music in Detention open to the charge of collusion (Gill Citation2016), their ethics and safeguarding policies necessitate that their staff report anything concerning to IRC staff or the relevant authority.
10. To clarify, we are not arguing that resistance is everywhere, rather that resistance is potentially everywhere. This is not to say that the field of potential resistance is evenly distributed; it is striated and unequal in space and time. Similarly, we understand politics to be unable to determine apriori. This understanding of resistance as emergent resonates with the materialist undergirding of this paper, whereby materials are conceptualised as being lively and unpredictable. It therefore correlates ontologically with Isin and Nielsen (Citation2008) discussion of ‘acts of citizenship’ as open, emergent and focussed upon that act (rather than the action, or actor).