The banality of citizenship: Nationalism, labour and mobility controls

Bridget Anderson will argue that recognising the banality of citizenship can help to reframe debates on migration.

Abstract shapes on top of each other. A pink oval overlaps on a blue and yellow oval. The ovals are on top of a black pattern of squares.

Many countries of the world are experiencing polarisation and division in their politics, with migration as a flashpoint. Migrants are represented as competitors with citizens for the privileges of membership, where citizenship as a fantasy offers access to rights and equality, though the reality is banal.

In this presentation, Bridget will argue that recognising the banality of citizenship can help to reframe debates on migration. She will begin by asking who counts as a ‘migrant’, showing how political this seemingly neutral category is.

She will discuss how public understandings of the migrant as poor and negatively racialised are a reflection of the logics of immigration regimes. She will consider how rights become visible because they are denied to migrants taking as an example the ‘right to work’ and consider what this tells us about ‘banal citizenship’.

Bridget will argue that migration is a lens through which we can better understand socio-economic relations that shape migrants’ and citizens’ experiences alike, and thinking migrants and citizens together, recognising differences, but not assuming them, can help us move away from positioning the migrant and citizen as competitors for the privileges of membership and from the corrosion of mistaking deservingness as a measure for justice.

This event will be particularly useful for academics and students.

Image

Permission from Mette Louise Berg.

Bridget Anderson

Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship

University of Bristol

She is interested in the relation between migration, race, and nation, historically and in the contemporary world. She takes as her starting point that the 'migrant' and the 'citizen' and the differences between them are constructed in law and in social and political practice.

She is particularly interested in how immigration laws make particular kinds of employment relationships and her current research includes the EU funded project PRIME – Protecting Irregular Migrants in Europe.