Towards a social psychology of citizenship? Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

The concept of citizenship is currently the subject of extensive, and often heated, debate on the part of policy makers and social scientists. Many of the key concerns encapsulated in the idea of citizenship-collective identity, solidarity, pro-social behaviour, group boundaries, intra and intergroup conflict-also represent longstanding concerns on the part of social and community psychologists. However, at present, very little psychological theory or research directly addresses the subject of citizenship. The aim of this Special Issue is to explore how the construct of citizenship might contribute to social psychological understandings of social conflict and solidarity and, conversely, to consider how existing social psychological theories and methods might contribute to contemporary understandings of citizenship. The authors of the six articles in the Special Issue apply a range of theoretical perspectives (self-categorization theory, social identity theory, rhetorical psychology, the theory of social representations) and methods (experiments, surveys, interviews, ethnography) to examine situated understandings of citizenship in a variety of domains (civic and political participation, immigration attitudes, minority identities, nationalism). Despite their different approaches, the authors display a common concern to recognize complexity, contradiction and contestability as inherent, and often productive, features of the everyday construction and performance of citizenship. As a consequence, social psychological perspectives may have the potential to restore the damaged reputation of the citizen currently apparent in much policy and social scientific discourse.

Meanings of Community in Contexts of Multiculture: The Role of Citizenship, Identity, and Cultural Changes

“…Furthermore, as the literature suggests (Condor, ; Kong, ; Sindic, ), the subjective perception of citizenship is strongly related to the idea of identity and sense of belonging (Skey, ; Weil & Hanses, ). Data show multiple levels of citizenship for half of the immigrant leaders who felt like they are citizens of both their country and Italy (or a mixture, such as “citizen of the world”).…”

“…Identity is strongly connected with the concept of citizenship, as both are related to the idea of community and belonging. Citizenship is a status related to belonging to a community, which requires both an identification with a community (Condor, ) and a sense of identity (Sindic, ).…”

A transnational bicultural place model of cultural selves and psychological citizenship: The case of Chinese immigrants in Britain

“…This sense of being a citizen has been referred to as "psychological citizenship" (e.g., Sindic, 2011), in contradistinction to civic, political, ecological and other forms of ! | P a g e1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Transnational bicultural place citizenship that have received research attention from sociologists and political scientists (Condor, 2011).…”

“…These and others have been selectively used in the literature for defining political citizenship and other forms of citizenship such as civic, social, cultural, ecological and cosmopolitan/world citizenship (Condor, 2011;Isin & Turner, 2002 Transnational bicultural place aspects of the host and heritage culture into their overall self-concepts. The present study extends this line of thinking with the notion of dual cultural selves and proposes direct causal links between these selves and psychological citizenship.…”

Youth participation in environmental issues: A study with Italian adolescents

“…Nevertheless, both these paradigms implicitly assume the paradigm of young people as 'citizens in the making': a metaphor that refers to the viewpoint that the role of educational agencies is essential in promoting active citizens in the transition towards adulthood (Condor 2011;Condor and Gibson 2007;Lister, Middleton and Smith 2001;Matthews 2001;Diana and Marra 2009). In this paper, we contend that education programs can be further extended by acknowledging the role of youth as 'actual citizens'.…”