Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship

Abstract

Citizenship has become the language through which several interconnected societal concerns are debated in Europe today. One of these concerns relates to youths' willingness and abilities to live up to dominant citizen ideals. The questioning of young adults' citizenship is particularly intense for youths with an ethnic minority background who are feared to hold values at odds with majority society. In this article, I ask how Danish youths define what it means to be a good (and a bad) citizen, and I investigate how their answers are shaped by their status within dominant hierarchies of belonging. Analyzing 71 in‐depth interviews with young adults in Denmark, I find that they share a conception of citizenship informed by virtues central to the Danish welfare state. At the same time, minority and majority youths place different emphasis on specific traits and duties. These shifts in emphasis reflect that the two groups do not experience the same access to making claims to citizenship. In particular, the ideal of the politically active and critical citizen is largely reserved for majority youths who – because of their status – feel more entitled and called upon to make independent judgments. Theoretically, the article brings the literatures on ordinary citizenship and everyday nationhood into conversation to reflect on the simultaneous reproduction of common norms and on how hierarchies of belonging nevertheless shape different groups' abilities to redefine citizenship. More generally, I contribute to broader sociological debates about agency and structure by discussing how majority youths' power to make independent claims to citizenship masks their privileged position in the national order of things. The study thus sheds light on how structure is made visible to those who are confronted with constraints (minority youths) and invisible to those who have a secure status (majority youths).

Dutch national identity in a majority-minority context: when the dominant group becomes a local minority

“…They see superdiversity as a helpful frame for understanding horizontal relations between groups living together in very diverse settings, but not so much vertical ones that reflect the social power of the national majority group. Our study engages explicitly with the mainstream context by turning to definitions and conceptualizations of national identity, as the power to define it remains arguably with the national majority (Lundström 2017 ; Simonsen 2022 ).…”

Defining Swedishness: When Swedes Without a Migration Background Are a Local Numerical Minority

“…Living in a majority-minority context can confront people with difference, with potential new (ethnic) hierarchies (Vertovec, 2019), but can also contribute to diversity being found commonplace (Wessendorf, 2014). At the same time, people without a migration background remain nationally dominant, and as such not only have more access to material resources, but also have more access to defining, redefining, and perpetuating ethnic boundaries (Simonsen, 2022). Do Swedes without a migration background take up the available narratives of national identity, or do they offer alternative constructions of Swedishness situated within a majority-minority context?…”

“…The Swedishness of Swedes without a migration background is not discussed, and the conversation becomes about what the Other must do or be to be able to claim Swedishness. Respondents don't engage with the meaning and consequences of this discourse, possibly implying they take for granted the power to decide what Swedishness is (Simonsen, 2022). However, occasionally they engage critically and reflectively with the categories they talk about within the framework of a Swedish identity, as well as their own dominant position in Swedish society.…”

My History or Our History? Historical Revisionism and Entitlement to Lead

“…Reicher and Hopkins (2001) posit that the more an individual conforms to a prototypical group member in terms of traits, norms, and behavior, the greater their perceived right to speak in the group's name. Debates on immigration routinely feature arguments that certain citizens "deserve" more than others due to their prior contributions to the nation (Sainsbury 2012) and ethnic minorities themselves have been found to link their status within the nation with their willingness to voice critical reflections on society (Hopkins and Blackwood 2011;King 2013;Simonsen 2022). In particular, disadvantaged groups who view national hierarchies as legitimate often come to exhibit a depressed sense of entitlement relative to members of advantaged groups (Jost, Banaji, and Nosek 2004;Major 1994).…”