Making Citizens: Public Rituals and Personal Journeys to Citizenship (Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series)

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. ## Le monde n'est pas ronde. In the artistic webzine Mondepasrond.net on migration, borders and human rights, Antoine Cassar explains why, for him, the world is not round: According to which passport one holds, the world takes on a different size and shape -governments have conveniently imposed upon individuals a world in the form of a complex polyhedron of nationstates. 1 The starting point of this book is both an appreciation of the importance of passports and an interest in those few who manage to cross borders, to navigate rules, regulations and testing, to acquire new citizenship and, consequently, new passports. The central concern of the book is the reception that these new national citizens get in their new countries, and particularly where the state chooses to mark the making of new citizens with official ceremonies. I will analyse this ceremonial performance of citizenship in six countries across the (Western) world -the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the UK and Ireland -examining the ways in which citizenship and the nation are represented in the ceremonies. In particular, I'll ask: How does the state choose to represent itself and migrants in these ceremonies? Who is upheld as the citizen to be welcomed or embraced by the state, and what forms of citizenship are silenced or rejected in these representations? What kind of potential identities -national, local and more global -are suggested by the ceremonies? And what identities are suppressed or ignored? In an increasingly mobile world with mounting concerns about the states' control of borders and migration, passports and citizenship rights matter more than ever. This book asks what citizenship ceremonies can tell us about how citizenship is understood through empirical research in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland. In an increasingly mobile and transnational world, where states endeavor to make borders more 'secure', passports and rights matter more than ever. Making Citizens explores how countries make public rituals out of endowing new citizens with citizenship. It asks what citizenship ceremonies can tell us about how state membership is understood and experienced and about a country's sense of itself and of migrants. The book argues for the need to understand contemporary concepts of citizenship as a product of colonial history. As the first in-depth comparative study of citizenship ceremonies, Making Citizens explores how the these events can shed light on how the boundaries of citizenship are being drawn by the state, and how this is experienced by individuals. Drawing on empirical research in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Ireland, this book provides a unique intervention into sociological understandings of citizenship and the narration of nation "In an increasingly mobile and transnational world where states endeavor to make borders more 'secure', passports and citizenship rights matter more than ever. Making Citizens explores how countries make public rituals out of the endowing of citizenship to new citizens. It asks what citizenship ceremonies can tell us about how citizenship is understood and experienced and about a country's sense of itself and of migrants. The book argues for the need to understand contemporary concepts of citizenship as a product of colonial history. As the first in-depth comparative study of citizenship ceremonies, Making Citizens explores how the ceremonies can shed light on how they boundaries of citizenship are being drawn by the state, and how this is experienced by individuals. Drawing on empirical research in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Ireland, this book provides a unique intervention into sociological understandings of citizenship and the narration of nation"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-11 Bounded Citizenship....Pages 12-37 Taking the Oath....Pages 38-71 Europe Welcomes....Pages 72-107 Routes to Citizenship....Pages 108-137 Welcome to Britain?....Pages 138-169 Conclusion....Pages 170-176 Back Matter....Pages 177-201