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H2020Individual fellowship2019–2021

Affects · Mobilising Affects: Withdrawal of Citizenship and Politics of Security

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2019-05-01 → 2021-05-08
EU contribution
€224,934
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Results in brief

Mobilising Affects: Withdrawal of Citizenship and Politics of Security

The central problem addressed in this fellowship was the problem of citizenship deprivation, i.e. the possibility for states to deprive citizens of their citizenship. Mostly visible in times of crisis, citizenship deprivation is presented as a symbolic measure aimed to safeguard the national community from an internal threat. The research focused on the affective aspect of citizenship deprivation, looking at the ways in which affective frames enable state to legitimize citizenship deprivation despite well-documented legal barriers. Studying the ways in which states legitimize practices of citizenship deprivation is important because it ties into histories of repression that raise questions about security practices and their implications for expressing citizenship today. Indeed, practices of citizenship deprivation raise important questions about politics of belonging and repression. The objectives of the fellowship were to make room for studying the histories of citizenship deprivation in the UK and the Netherlands, as well as to practice qualitative methods that support such interdisciplinary research while addressing histories that often remain invisible. A focus on creative methods has grown out of this practice, resulting in innovative propositions tying creative writing-knowledge practices to pedagogical and epistemological reflections. In our times when colonial histories can no longer be ignored leading to a fundamental revisiting of institutional spaces of belonging and repression, tying the study of citizenship deprivation to the practice of creative methods made space for rethinking the ways in which history is written; for observing the tenacity of institutional repressive politics; as well as making room for alternative ways of writing that enables to write about our traumatic histories of the past and of the present.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This project examines denaturalisation laws that have been enacted in Europe, with a comparative focus on practices of withdrawal of citizenship in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Denaturalisation laws raise fundamental questions about politics of belonging and repression, as well as about what it means to be a citizen, be at at the national, European, or global level. The democratic and societal implications of the withdrawal of citizenship and the emotional politics involved are a particularly urgent concern today. Security concerns have led to an intense revival of public debates about the legitimacy of withdrawing citizenship and about its consequences, both for the individuals involved and the wider society. The research methods applied are archival research and critical discourse analysis. Empirically innovative as it collects archival material on the underexplored issue of denaturalisation, the project makes a timely intervention in current debates on security and citizenship. By studying norms of citizenship in relation to security practices, it makes a crucial contribution to security studies, in which citizenship remains an under-researched question. Its focus on emotions reveals affective relationships between citizenship and security. The project will take place at the Queen Mary University of London under the supervision of Prof. Jef Huysmans, who is a renowned scholar in critical security studies with a focus on the relationship between citizenship and security. The fellowship will significantly enhance my academic skills and career opportunities, allowing me to join a leading research centre in the social sciences after having worked in the humanities so far. It will allow the scope of my research to grow from a national context to an international and comparative framework, and establish me as an inter-disciplinary expert in citizenship and security.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union