„The changing nature of citizenship” was an international conference held from June 4th-6th 2015 in the rooms of Potsdam’s Bildungsforum, open to entrenched researchers as well as junior scientists and students. After welcome addresses by JÜRGEN MACKERT (Potsdam) and a short presentation of the faculty of economic and social sciences of the University of Potsdam by dean MAIK HEINEMANN (Potsdam), BRYAN S. TURNER (New York) illustrated three areas being affected by the changing nature of citizenship in the last decades: work, warfare and reproduction. In this matter, it also became clear that the traditional concept of citizenship developed by Thomas H. Marshall1 would not apply to contemporary social systems anymore, mainly because it is too focused on the UK and does not consider processes of migration, inclusion and exclusion and social phenomena related to borders and boundaries. It was the objective of the conference to find new and pertinent approaches to the changing nature of citizenship. Therefore, 14 panels were carried out in parallel sessions of two at a time.

GARETH MILLINGTON (York) explained Henri Lefebvre’s concept of a right to the city2 that would nowadays implicate a concept of revolutionary citizenship. He illustrated these ideas by the postpolitical reactions within the framework of the London riots in 2011. Politicians and a part of the public looked at the rioters as thieving, unorganized, and chaotic rebels whereas political claims were rather ignored, said Millington. Lefebvre’s ideas could help understand the conflicts about participation, difference, and equality in today’s neoliberal city.

EDDIE HARTMANN (Potsdam) and Jürgen Mackert complemented this approach in their presentations by adding explanations about (amongst others) the riots in France 2005 and the recent protests in different US-cities after several black people had been killed by police officers. They also linked violent conflicts to the social order of a society. The discussion raised the problem of violence in stable systems of general political legitimacy. What kinds of social order produce what kinds of violence and why? This issue deserves further research.

GIANNI D’AMATO and NOEMI CARREL (Neuchâtel) introduced the concept of contentious citizenship in the example of Switzerland. They differentiated between citizens and denizens and explained that the danger of expulsion decreases with the strength of the bound to the state. The difference in political rights between citizenship and denizenship entail contention concerning the process of inclusion/exclusion and the question of who belongs to “us” and who belong to “them”. The speakers did not mention Charles Tilly explicitly, but their approach reminded strongly of Tilly’s concept of contentious politics.3 Jürgen Mackert gave another presentation proposing that there are shifting power relations that are constitutive for citizenship and that are increasingly accompanied by secrecy in decision-making (i.e. the proceedings around TTIP). Originally, the theory of citizenship viewed the relations between market, citizens and state as evenly balanced, whereas nowadays these relations implicate a growing asymmetry. Therefore, Mackert demanded a better integration of shifting power relations in interpreting the struggles for citizens’ rights. One participant asked whether a growing secrecy can really be assumed when remembering the simultaneous increase in transparency due to the internet and whistleblowers. Maybe people only perceive more secrecy, but in other decades important political or economical decisions were cloudy as well. Others argued that this transparency is more of an illusion; rather one would have to admit that citizens in many countries become more and more diaphanous.

MONIKA BUDOWSKI and SEBASTIAN SCHIEF (Fribourg) analysed household strategies of families in Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, and Switzerland because these households show specific social-economic positions of families within social inequality. The latter is indirectly linked to the development of citizenship, so this presentation offered a promising new perspective on the changing nature of citizenship. Moreover, the speakers classified the above named states in Gøsta Esping-Andersens model of welfare states4 – explaining the welfare logic of Costa Rica as social-democratic, Spain’s as conservative, Switzerland’s as conservative/liberal and Chile’s as liberal. Especially because current analyses of social structure often focus on Europe, the US and Australia / New Zealand, this Latin American perspective seemed very auspicious. It could be fruitful to add a more concrete link between the struggles for rights and welfare regimes worldwide, maybe by using a further development of Esping-Andersens concept that includes more than three welfare structures (i.e. familist / mediterranean, post-socialist or productive welfare regime).

SARA CASELLA COLOMBEAU (Aix-Marseille) talked about Frontex’ risk analyses as a part of characterizing outsiders by the European political center. In this process, immigrants or refugees are primarily seen as a potential threat (“crimmigration”). Colombeau critized for instance that smuggling is a main focus for Frontex when hundreds of people die trying to reach European borders. Again it was stressed that the Marshallian concept of citizenship is not suitable anymore, because it gives too much attention to economic processes while ignoring the unfolding of separation and identity formation between insiders and outsiders. Citizenship is hereby considered as a logic of differentiation, increasingly seen from a non-social, very economic point of view in the 21st century. It could be advantageous to analyze how this production of insiders and outsiders exactly works and what factors it is influenced by (as part of identity politics).

DIETER RUCHT (Berlin) talked about rule-breaking as tactics for acquiring rights. He explained that rule-breaking can be constitutive for progress or developments. Sometimes rule-breakers are even celebrated, like in Independence Day in the US or in Bastille Day in France. He proposed a four-type scheme in which (political) rule-breaking is differentiated in functional / moral and violent / non-violent classes. It could be interesting to have a further look at the perpetrators of violence, i.e. to distinct between the government and the individual level. Rules often change depending on the perspective from which one looks at them (i.e. a public attack can be considered as an exploit for one community and as terrorism for another). Analyzing rule-breaking, how can this ambivalence be factored adequately?

The conference ended with a summarizing presentation given by RICHARD MÜNCH (Bamberg) who tried to relate all aspects of the panels to each other and displayed central results. The conference raised challenging and diverse issues on the changing nature of citizenship. The approaches presented at this conference reflected both the topicality and transnationality of the findings. Papers focused on many regions of the world (from Europe and Asia to the Americas) and demonstrated that the methodologies presented are applicable to current affairs (i.e. Frontex and the refugees or the analysis of households in Latin America and Europe). This is also what constitutes the relevance of research in this area. Moreover, two main messages were transported on the conference: The model of Thomas H. Marshall is no longer applicable to today’s social world and we need complex, interdisciplinary and supraregional concepts to understand and explain social phenomena. Doing this by using citizenship as an analytical framework is propitious, as the conference proved.

Conference overview:

Jürgen Mackert, Maik Heinemann (Potsdam): Welcome addresses
Bryan S. Turner (New York): Introduction

Panel 1: Citizenship: Consequences of Neoliberalism
Chair: Bryan S. Turner (New York)

Bob Jessop (Lancaster): Variegated Neoliberalism and the Dissolution-Conservation of Citizenship Rights in Global Perspective
Dieter Plehwe (Berlin): Austerity Capitalism: The neoliberal quest against social citizenship and the prospect of the European welfare state
Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg (Potsdam): The proliferation of economic expertise and economists in European governance

Panel 2: Citizenship, resistance and violence
Chair: Gregor Fitzi (Bielefeld)

Gareth Millington (York): On Lefebvre’s “Revolutionary citizenship”
Eddie Hartmann (Potsdam): Symbolic boundaries and collective violence. The urban riots in suburban France in 2005
Jürgen Mackert (Potsdam): Great transformations, violence and rights

Panel 3: Citizenship and human rights
Chair: Jürgen Mackert (Potsdam)

Lydia Morris (Essex): Domestic welfare and migrants rights: squaring the circle
Kate Nash (London): Human rights, Neoliberalism, and other values

Panel 4: Prospects of citizenship
Chair: Gregor Fitzi (Bielefeld)

Bryan S. Turner (New York): Demography and democracy: Gunnar Myrdal and the consequences of low fertility and ageing populations on citizenship
John Torpey (New York): The future of citizenship: problems and prospects

Panel 5: Citizenship, gender, and reproduction
Chair: Bryan S. Turner (New York)

Paula-Irene Villa (München): The nature of citizenship. An intersectional perspective on gender and sexuality
Theresa Wobbe (Potsdam): European Union’s gendered citizenship: equal treatment, parental policies, and intersexuality

Panel 6: A new concept of citizenship?
Chair: Eddie Hartmann (Potsdam)

Gianni D’Amato/Noemi Carrel (Neuchâtel): Contentious citizenship: political culture and the quest for civic inclusion
Jürgen Mackert (Potsdam): Towards a new political economy of citizenship: shifting power relations, secrecy, and the devaluation of citizen’s rights

Panel 7: Citizenship, inequality, and poverty
Chair: Jens Hälterlein (Berlin)

Dietmar Loch (Lille): Citizenship in French poor neighborhoods: the changing voices of poverty
Monica Budowski/Sebastian Schief (Fribourg): Strategies of households in precarious prosperity in Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, and Switzerland

Panel 8: Post-authoritarian citizenship in Latin America
Chair: Jürgen Mackert (Potsdam)

Jenny Pearce (Bradford): Authoritarian vs. resistand citizenship: contrasting logics of violence diffusion and control in Latin America
Carolina Galindo (Bogotà): Citizenship experiences in “shared sovereignty” scenarios: two cases from Colombia
Sérgio Costa (Berlin): Fragmenting citizenship? Focal policies, social inequality, and convivial patterns in Latin America

Panel 9: The market and the transformation of democracy
Chair: Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg (Potsdam)

Heiner Ganßmann (Berlin): Market integration, monetary union, and democracy in the Eurozone
Jörn Lamla (Kassel): Citizens’ community in consumers’ democracy. The perspective of actor-network-pragmatism

Panel 10: Surveillance and control
Chair: Jens Hälterlein (Berlin)

Jason Pridmore (Rotterdam): Monitoring, measuring and maximizing: surveilling citizenship through market focused practices

Panel 11: Religion, post-secularism, and intolerance
Chair: Gregor Fitzi (Bielefeld)

Christian Joppke (Bern): Secular law and sharia: friction and accommodation
Bryan S. Turner (New York): The Böckenförde dilemma: religion, law, and citizenship

Panel 12: Migration and the politics of exclusion
Chair: Eddie Hartmann (Potsdam)

Sara Casella Colombeau (Marseille): Frontex’ risk analysis. Defining and staging the European external border
Ludger Pries (Bochum): Shifting from national to European regimes of exclusion and belonging? Labor markets and asylum systems in comparison
Juan M. Amaya-Castro (Costa Rica): Migration control and the production of citizenship

Workshop
After the election – the UK, Europe, and the end of a united citizenship?

Panel 13: Social movements of citizenship
Chair: Michael Neuber (Potsdam)

Igor Štiks (Edinburgh): Occupy citizenship: protest, critique, emancipation
Dieter Rucht (Berlin): Rule-breaking as tactics for acquiring rights

Panel 14: Citizenship in Europe – European citizenship
Chair: Maja Apelt (Potsdam)

Sandra Seubert (Frankfurt am Main): Antinomies of European citizenship
Klaus Eder (Berlin): European citizenship and identity politics in Europe
Adrian Favell (Paris): Paradoxes of mobility: The potentials and pitfalls of free movement of persons in a liberalized Europe

Conclusion
Bryan S. Turner (New York): Introduction
Richard Münch (Bamberg): Citizenship between transnational integration and national disintegration

Notes:
1 Thomas H. Marshall, Citizenship and social class and other essays, Cambridge 1950.
2 Henri Lefebvre, Le droit à la ville, Paris 1968.
3 Charles Tilly, Contentious politics, Boulder 2007.
4 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Oxford 1990.