Cultural psychology for a new era of citizenship politics

Abstract

In the current era of citizenship politics, both legal citizenship and cultural citizenship have become highly contested social categories and new bases for social discrimination. Psychological studies of migration thus need to consider more explicitly how shifting sociopolitical contexts shape migrant life opportunities and how migrants respond to their shifting circumstances. Cultural psychologists have much to contribute to this project given their focus on the ways cultural experiences are shaped at once by broader social determinants and the intentional acts of social agents who navigate diversely organized worlds. However, we argue that cultural psychologists need to integrate critical concepts into cultural psychological studies of migration to avoid both overlooking important determinants of migrant lives and inadvertently perpetuating social inequalities and discriminatory policies. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted with Polish “irregular” migrants in Canada and Sikh Americans, we show how critical concepts such as “illegalization,” “deportability,” and “cultural citizenship” can help expand cultural psychological inquiry to better understand contemporary immigrant experiences. We conclude with discipline-specific recommendations for building a cultural psychology fit for the study of migration in the 21st-century.

Exploring the interplay between (im)mobility and imagination

“…In cultural psychology, although there have been studies on tourism (Gillespie, 2006a(Gillespie, , 2006b, pilgrimage (Beckstead, 2010;Murakami, 2014) or migration (Abreu & Hale, 2011;Bhatia & Ram, 2009;Kadianaki, 2014), these have very little been addressed in terms of mobility. It is only recently that debates and issues related to the mobility turn have entered in cultural psychology (Adams, 2016;Ellis & Bhatia, 2019;Schliewe, 2017;Zittoun & Levitan, 2019;Zittoun, Levitan, & Cangia´, 2018). Nevertheless, cultural psychology has developed an important reflection on imagination as developmental and social dynamic over the last five years.…”

Shaping citizenship: Dynamic relations between the reified and the consensual universes in defining the “good foreign resident”

“…Third, for unveiling how sometimes these texts also leave open certain dilemmas and choices through ambiguous formulations (Billig et al, 1988;Gray & Griffin, 2014;Xenitidou & Sapountzis, 2018). Fourth, for comprehending how these meanings are re-elaborated by experts and officials of mediating systems in charge of implementing the laws, who, ultimately, can open the door for meanings not incorporated in the text of laws to enter implementation (Castro & Batel, 2008;Ellis & Bhatia, 2019;Figgou, 2016), operating processes of re-complexification.…”

“…Together, these transformations legitimize mobility rights as natural and unproble matic for certain groups, differentiating characteristics (capacity to invest, or to work in highly qualified professions) that are worthy of receiving more rights, creating groups and identities that are in practice different (Santos et al, 2023). This suggests that as migration becomes diversified, there is a surge of more global and complex understandings of identity and belonging (Ellis & Bhatia, 2019) and the law accompanies this flexibility -yet supporting and defining as acceptable only some of these identities (Calhoun, 2002). Now regarding the work regimes in particular, the transformations in the text of the law further accommodate the value of fiscal participation in the country.…”