Intimate citizenship: introduction to the special issue on citizenship, membership and belonging in mixed-status families

Hart, B. de; Bonjour, Saskia

doi:10.1080/1070289x.2020.1737404

Cited by 35 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…As explained in the introduction of this Special Issue (Bonjour and De Hart, 2020) like legal consciousness, the intimate citizenship literature remains largely 'within' national borders, and issues of migration, migration law and ethnicity receive only limited attention. Using the concept of 'intimate citizenship' helps us to highlight the crucial relationship between citizenship and intimate life.…”

Section: Theoretical Framework: Legal Consciousness and Intimate Citimentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Everything went according to the rules’. Female citizen sponsors’ legal consciousness, intimate citizenship and family migration law

Hart

Besselsen²

2020

Identities

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Academic literature has studied the legal consciousness of common citizens: the way ordinary people think and talk about law in their everyday lives. Building on this literature, we explore how Dutch female citizens with a migrant partner experience the impact of migration law on their everyday lives. We questioned how legal consciousness is linked to intimate citizenship, thus demonstrating how 'private' matters such as intimate relationships, marriage, and family have a profound impact on citizenship. Based on two sets of interviews, conducted in 2000 and 2016, we were able to determine how these women, despite being citizens formally, experienced the profound impact of increasingly restrictive family reunification policies. Contrary to our expectations, female sponsors continued to express considerable support for restrictive migration law. In performing intimate citizenship, they claimed an exception from the strict application of the rules for their particular family situation, rather than radical change.

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Section: Theoretical Framework: Legal Consciousness and Intimate Citimentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Everything went according to the rules’. Female citizen sponsors’ legal consciousness, intimate citizenship and family migration law

Hart

Besselsen²

2020

Identities

Self Cite

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“…Since citizenship is not experienced by subjects as members of an abstract collective and as isolated individuals in the absence of relationships, but as members of a network of meaningful relationships, among which intimate and family ones take on particular importance (Bonjour & de Hart 2021), in my analysis I also introduced the intimate dimension of citizenship. As highlighted by feminist studies, in a more contextualized understanding of citizenship, as an embodied practice and daily lived experience, gender relations, family dynamics, sexuality, reproductive mechanisms, and the burden of care, are crucial elements for the construction of lived citizenship (Lister 2007).…”

Section: A Synthetic-relational Approach To Migration Borders and Cit...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeking Better Life Chances by Crossing Borders: The Existential Paradox and Strategic Use of Italian Citizenship by Migrant Women

Gatti

2022

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Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Naples (Italy) in the period 2014 to 2020, this article focuses on the rearticulation of the migration–citizenship nexus through a gender perspective. The article questions how migrant women exercise their agency despite the structural constraints that prevent their full inclusion and how they are able to cross and transgress the boundaries of citizenship and national belonging in search of better life opportunities. The data analyzed show the existential paradox linked to the migration–citizenship nexus that affects the lives of migrant women in Italy and their use of citizenship as a strategy to react to a blocked destiny, to follow one’s aspirations, and to rebalance gender relations. The article refines an integrated approach that considers the relationship between agency, aspiration, and capability as a broader theoretical framework within which to jointly study the dynamics of gender, migration, and citizenship as closely related, beyond the boundaries of fixed and opposite categories.

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“…At the same time, migration law in Europe is not only determined by national states since large parts of it have been harmonized on the EU level. The EU has also been influential in nudging member states to certain trends of migration law-making in non-harmonized areas (Bonjour and de Hart, 2021: 6; Bonjour, 2014).…”

Section: Case Study 1: Equality Of the Sexes And The Protection Of Women As An Aim Of Current Migration Law-making In Eu And Denmarkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tokenizing and Articulating Protection of Women in Migration Law: Strategies of Exclusion in Contemporary Europe and the Nineteenth-Century USA

Stybnarova

2021

Social & Legal Studies

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This article investigates continuities in migration law-making that claims to aim at protecting women but in effect is a tokenist strategy excluding non-Western female migrants. It shows that despite developments in the legal recognition of women’s equality, present restrictions on family reunification in Western Europe, illustrated through the EU and Danish migration laws, echo law-making in the late 19th-century US, exemplified in the process of adopting the Page Act, which also introduced stricter rules for female migrants under the stated objective of protecting women. Using the social theory of articulation, the article demonstrates how legislators continuously articulate and rearticulate the wellbeing of migrant women to legitimize discriminatory migration rules regardless of how highly women’s rights are respected in law and society. The article contributes to previous feminist scholarship in migration law by showing the continuity and intentionality of the articulative practices in law-making directed at migrant women.

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Intimate citizenship: introduction to the special issue on citizenship, membership and belonging in mixed-status families

Cited by 35 publications

References 47 publications

‘Everything went according to the rules’. Female citizen sponsors’ legal consciousness, intimate citizenship and family migration law

‘Everything went according to the rules’. Female citizen sponsors’ legal consciousness, intimate citizenship and family migration law

Seeking Better Life Chances by Crossing Borders: The Existential Paradox and Strategic Use of Italian Citizenship by Migrant Women

Tokenizing and Articulating Protection of Women in Migration Law: Strategies of Exclusion in Contemporary Europe and the Nineteenth-Century USA

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