Canadian Politics
Session: A14(b) - Shifting Practices and Discourses of Citizenship: Building on Jane Jenson's Contributions (I)
Date: Jun 2, 2016 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location: Social Sciences 64
Chair/Présidente: Aude-Claire Fourot (Simon Fraser University)
Discussant/Commentateur: Leslie Seidle (IRPP)
Participants & Authors/Auteurs:
Martin Papillon (Université de Montréal) : From second-class to multilevel citizenship? Indigenous peoples and Canada’s neocolonial citizenship regime
Abstract: Long considered second-class citizens, Indigenous peoples are now challenging the very boundaries of Canada’s citizenship. Using the concept of citizenship regime as an analytical lens to make sense of ongoing changes in the norms, rules and practices structuring the relationship between Indigenous peoples and te state, this paper looks back at the last 40 years of Indigenous activism and argues the current "post-marshallian » moment in the configuration of Canada’s citizenship regime offers both opportunities and challenges to Indigenous self-determination claims. I illustrate this theoretical argument using recent conflicts over pipelines and natural resource extraction.
James Bickerton (St. Francis Xavier University) : Citizenship Regime Change in Canada and the Unity-Diversity Relationship
Abstract: The paper will begin with the elaboration of several key concepts: citizenship regime, citizenization, and the management of legitimacy deficits in democratic multination societies. Citizenship regimes are ‘successful’ to the extent that they are integrative and stabilizing, securing through legal, cultural and institutional means citizen adherence to the constitutional and political order. This paper will examine historical adaptations and modifications of different elements of the Canadian citizenship regime, including judicial interpretations of constitutional principles, national policies that alter entitlements, constitutional changes that alter rights, and political practices that constitute adaptations to changing political and cultural realities. The conceptual framework will be used to analyze the historical evolution of the citizenship regime, which in Canada’s case culminated in a new regime which embodied at its core a substantially altered balance between integrationist and accommodationist approaches toward unity and diversity. This new regime has not been static, however, since its sustainability has required the ongoing search for compromise and balance through reform, adjustment and adaptation of some of its various elements.
Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary’s University) : “Weapons of Mass Distraction”? Citizenship, Equality and the 2015 Election Campaign
Abstract: Jane Jenson’s scholarship has contributed enormously to the study of Canadian Politics, from her citizenship regime formulations and work on party politics, to her insights on a range of gendered policy developments. This paper will pay homage to her work, building on all three of these particular dimensions of Jenson’s oeuvre, by detailing and assessing the role that gendered politics played in Canada’s 2015 General Election. The paper will begin by briefly reviewing the leading parties’ (Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic, Bloc Québécois and Green) approaches to gender equality in the 2011 federal election. I have argued elsewhere that, in the 2011 campaign, the parties’ responses could be characterized as entailing both the invisibilization and instrumentalization of women, with certain parties (e.g., the Conservatives) being more partial to the former, and others, more prone to adopt the latter (e.g., the Liberals) (Dobrowolsky 2015). This paper will examine the extent to which this is still the case through a careful assessment and analysis of the parties’ gendered discourses, pledges and policy commitments in the 2015 election, specifically in relation to three key concerns: i) women’s equality; ii) changes to Canada’s immigration and refugee policies; and iii) the niqab debate vis-a-vis citizenship ceremonies. The methodology will include primary and secondary documents, speeches and media reports, supplemented by scholarly analyses of the parties in question and their historical record on these issues.
Bérengère Marques-Pereira (Université libre de Bruxelles) : The right to abortion: Citizenship right and practice in a multilevel governance framework
Abstract: In Belgium, the recognition of the right to abortion is the result of the social and political citizenship initiatives implemented by left-wing and secular feminist actors. Faced with the failure of the Belgian consociational and political system, these actors launched a mobilisation and a politisation process that contradict legislative propositions of moral conservatism. I will show that this dynamic is expressed through three methods of public responsibility (citizenship practice) within a national civil society and within transnational and international networks and organisations, which led to the emergence of the idea of reproductive rights. These methods are the following:
The participation in the development of a new social normativity
- The reflection on limits and forms of women individualisation
- Vigilance with regards to national, international, transnational and supranational institutions.
Abstract: Multiple panel workshop
More than ever, practices and discourses of citizenship are at the heart of current political debates in Canada and abroad. There are multiple explanations for this long and ongoing interest in citizenship: neoliberal challenges to social and political rights; delegitimation of forms of democratic expression such as protest, civic action and deliberation; perpetuation and recreation of second-class citizens (notably increased suspicion towards naturalized citizens of Muslim faith as well as invisibilization and intrumentalization of women); or nationalist movements in multinational societies, including Indigenous self-determination claims. The consequences of these changes are also crucial insofar as they entail profound choices about the kind of citizens we want to be and the types of democracies in which we want to live.
One Canadian scholar has profoundly influenced our ways of thinking of citizenship: this workshop celebrates her work and many of her contributions to the discipline. Featuring Jane Jenson’s concept of “citizenship regime”, the papers presented in this workshop consider its theoretical and methodological opportunities as well as its limitations.
The papers address the following themes:
- Gendered politics and policy
- Multinational and neo-colonial Canada
- Politics of scale and social policy
- Multilevel governance and representation of interests
Panel 1
The papers address the following themes:
- Gendered politics and policy
- Multinational and neo-colonial Canada
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