Abstract:
In Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights the combined analytical efforts of the
fields of human rights law, conflict studies, anthropology, history, media studies,
gender studies, and critical race and postcolonial studies raise a comprehensive
understanding of the discursive and visual mediation of migration and
manifestations of belonging and citizenship.
More insight into the convergence – but also the tensions – between the
cultural and the legal foundations of citizenship, has proven to be vital to the
understanding of societies past and present, especially to assess processes
of inclusion and exclusion. Citizenship is more than a collection of rights and
privileges held by the individual members of a state but involves cultural and
historical interpretations, legal contestation and regulation, as well as an active
engagement with national, regional, and local state and other institutions about the
boundaries of those (implicitly gendered and raced) rights and privileges.
Highlighting and assessing the transformations of what citizenship entails
today is crucially important to the future of Europe, which both as an idea and
as a practical project faces challenges that range from the crisis of legitimacy
to the problems posed by mass migration. Many of the issues addressed in this
book, however, also play out in other parts of the world, as several of the chapters
reflect.
