Philosophy and Critical Theory

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Romani Minorities in Europe and Civic Marginalisation

Numerous scholars and policymakers have highlighted the predicament of Roma as the most disadvantaged ethnic minority in Europe. This predicament has often been discussed as an unfortunate anomaly within otherwise inclusive liberal democratic states.

In this book, Julija Sardelić offers a novel socio-legal enquiry into the position of Roma as marginalised citizens in Europe. Whilst acknowledging previous research on ethnic discrimination, racism and the socio-economic disadvantages Roma face in Europe, she discusses civic marginalisation from the perspective of global citizenship studies. She argues that the Romani minorities in Europe are unique, but the approaches of civic marginalisation Roma have faced are not. States around the globe have applied similar legislation and policies that have made traditionally settled minorities marginalised. These may have seemed inclusive to all citizens or have been designed to improve the position of minority citizens yet they have often actively contributed to the construction of civic marginalisation. The book looks at civic marginalisation by examining topics such as free movement and migration, statelessness and school segregation as well as how minorities respond to marginalisation. It shows how marginalised minorities can have a wide spectrum of ‘multicultural rights’ and still face racism and significant human rights violations. To understand such a paradox, Sardelić offers new theoretical concepts, such as the invisible edges of citizenship and citizenship fringes.

Open Access (free)
Strangers among citizens
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The Introduction offers a new perspective and novel theoretical tools to analyse citizenship as well as what the position of Romani minorities in Europe indicates about citizenship in liberal democratic states. Instead of looking at Roma merely as a marginalised minority or a disadvantaged group, it aims to comprehend their position as citizens.

in The Fringes of Citizenship
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Chapter 2 scrutinises the connection between the right to territoriality and the mobility of marginalised minorities, particularly how the perception of Roma as a ‘deviant culture’ contributes to the forceful restriction of their rights (such as the right to free movement). State authorities limit freedom of movement for Roma because they construct them as a security threat. The chapter argues that all these cases should not be simply seen in terms of the right to mobility, but in terms of the rights certain groups have on particular territories. The chapter then examines whether there are any similarities in relation to territory and mobility in the case of Australian Indigenous people. Although both of these groups have rights on the territory, their claims have been suspended when they have been in conflict either with the sovereignty of the states or the economic interests of the states (as in the case of the Intervention in the Northern Territory in Australia). The chapter concludes that freedom of movement and territorial rights are two sides of the same coin: it is the states that grant or restrict them, and this leads to the positioning of marginalised minorities at the fringes of citizenship.

in The Fringes of Citizenship
Total infringement of citizenship
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Chapter 4 looks at the position of Roma without access to citizenship: those who are stateless. 75 per cent of stateless people belong to minority groups. However, not all minorities are equally vulnerable to statelessness. Whilst most stateless minorities have no access to political rights, some have a broad scope of economic and social rights. For example, Russian speakers in the Baltic states are politically marginalised but are not at the fringes of citizenship when it comes to their socio-economic rights, but some Roma, cannot prove their citizenship and so have no rights granted whatsoever. They find themselves in a space in-between where they do not fit the definition of either a citizen or a stateless person. I call this position a total infringement of citizenship. This chapter argues that Romani individuals are not only passive observers of this infringement, but they create alternative ways to access rights denied by states. It explores how states hinder access to citizenship for certain minorities through citizenship laws and other legislation. The chapter argues that statelessness is always a product of state intervention rather than the lack of it or the lack of interest of stateless minorities to regularise their status. It first scrutinises cases where Romani individuals have found themselves with hindered access to citizenship. It then compares the position of stateless Roma with that of other stateless minorities around the globe.

in The Fringes of Citizenship
Sabotage as a citizenship enactment at the fringes
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The penultimate chapter looks at how states address Roma as (active) citizens and how Roma reconstruct citizenship at its fringes as activist citizens. It exposes how fringes are created by states, by international organisations and through the everyday practices of majority populations. However, the main body of the chapter explores another meaning of the fringe: marginalised minorities on the fringe also subvert and reconstruct the core understanding of citizenship from this fringe. These acts are not necessarily only activism but also include everyday mundane practices that carry the potential of political action. I call this form of enactment as citizenship sabotage.

in The Fringes of Citizenship
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Chapter 1 discusses the naming and counting of Romani minorities and approaches towards Roma as minority citizens in EU Member States and candidate countries. The Council of Europe has described Roma as ‘living scattered all over Europe, not having a country to call their own, they are a true European minority, but one that does not fit into the definitions of national or linguistic minorities’. The chapter looks at national legislation on minority protection, and examines the reports of the Council of Europe and the European Commission to analyse how they describe Roma as a transnational minority. It highlights how the documents of European international organisations, in describing the position of Roma in Europe, use developmental discourse similar to the United Nations’ narrative on Indigenous people. It argues that the invisible edges of citizenship have manifested themselves as perceived non-territorialism, and that the alleged underdevelopment of Roma has contributed to a lesser scope of minority rights in some contexts. Finally, the chapter addresses the interplay between international and national law in the context of defining the status of Indigenous people. It looks at the invisible edges of citizenship for Indigenous people in Australia, Canada and the US in the wake of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, showing that both Roma in Europe and Indigenous people in the four settler colonial states found themselves on the fringes of citizenship where states highlighted their positions as minority groups but also made them invisible as citizens.

in The Fringes of Citizenship
Some questions for Rainer Bauböck
Joseph H. Carens

In this chapter, the author describes Rainer Bauböck's virtues and limitations of three different principles of democratic inclusion. The principles include all affected interests (AAI), all subject to coercion (ASC), and all citizenship stakeholders (ACS). Bauböck argues that the three principles complement one another, with each providing legitimation for a different set of democratic institutions and practices. He has many illuminating things to say about these three principles, including the ways in which they are derived from different but compatible conceptions of democracy. Bauböck also explores fundamental questions about what a just global political order would require from a democratic perspective. The primary purpose of democracy is to provide legitimacy to coercive political rule through popular self-government. Lots of people would argue that one can be committed to equality of rights and democratic inclusion without embracing the view of the legal rights of irregular migrants.

in Democratic inclusion
Open Access (free)
A pluralist theory of citizenship
Rainer Bauböck

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that there is not a single principle of democratic inclusion but several principles, and that it is important to distinguish their different roles in relation to democratic boundaries. It considers the general "circumstances of democracy" that consist in normative background assumptions and general empirical conditions under which democratic self-government is both necessary and possible. The book discusses the principles of including all affected interests (AAI), all subject to coercion (ASC) and all citizenship stakeholders (ACS). It contextualizes the principle of stakeholder inclusion, which provides the best answer to the question of democratic boundaries of membership, by applying it to polities of different types. The book distinguishes state, local and regional polities and also argues that they differ in their membership character.

in Democratic inclusion
Open Access (free)
Rainer Bauböck in dialogue
Series: Critical Powers
Editor:

This book addresses the major theoretical and practical issues of the forms of citizenship and access to citizenship in different types of polity, and the specification and justification of rights of non-citizen immigrants as well as non-resident citizens. It also addresses the conditions under which norms governing citizenship can legitimately vary. The book discusses the principles of including all affected interests (AAI), all subject to coercion (ASC) and all citizenship stakeholders (ACS). They complement each other because they serve distinct purposes of democratic inclusion. The book proposes that democratic inclusion principles specify a relation between an individual or group that has an inclusion claim and a political community that aims to achieve democratic legitimacy for its political decisions and institutions. It contextualizes the principle of stakeholder inclusion, which provides the best answer to the question of democratic boundaries of membership, by applying it to polities of different types. The book distinguishes state, local and regional polities and argues that they differ in their membership character. It examines how a principle of stakeholder inclusion applies to polities of different types. The book illustrates the difference between consensual and automatic modes of inclusion by considering the contrast between birthright acquisition of citizenship, which is generally automatic, and naturalization, which requires an application.

Will Kymlicka
and
Sue Donaldson

Debates in political philosophy on democratic inclusion arose initially in response to the problem of what Michael Walzer called "metics". The case of the metics shows that citizenship is not ultimately about being affected by particular decisions or being subject to particular laws, but about membership in a self-governing society. In this chapter, the authors argue that these cases raise a fundamental challenge to the theories of democratic inclusion, not just about who is included, but also about what it means to be a citizen and how to characterize the underlying moral purposes of citizenship. They also argue that these cases reveal a deep tension within democratic theory between two models of citizenship: membership model and capacity contract. The membership model defines citizenship in terms of social membership and the capacity contract defines citizenship in terms of capacities for particular kinds of political agency.

in Democratic inclusion