Table Of ContentCitizenship, Belonging, and
Nation-States in the
Twenty-First Century
Citizenship, Belonging, and
Nation-States in the
Twenty-First Century
Edited by
Nicole Stokes-DuPass and
Ramona Fruja
CITIZENSHIP, BELONGING, AND NATION-STATES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Selection and editorial content © Nicole Stokes-DuPass and
Ramona Fruja 2016
Individual chapters © their respective contributors 2016
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First published 2016 by
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ISBN 978-1-137-53603-7 ISBN 978-1-137-53604-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53604-4
Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Citizenship, belonging and nation-states in the twenty-first century /
edited by Nicole Stokes-DuPass and Ramona Fruja.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-137-53603-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Citizenship—
History—21st century. 2. Nation-state—History—21st century.
I. Stokes-DuPass, Nicole.
JF801.C57245 2016
323.6—dc23 2015025845
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
This work is dedicated to two individuals who have left their indelible mark
on my spirit and have helped to shape me into the person that I am today. My
mother, Sharyn Menzies, is, in a word, phenomenal. She is a living testament
to perseverance under any odds, and the one whom I credit with instilling in
me my work ethic and my insatiable appetite for learning. My grandfather,
James R. Stokes Sr. always has vision. He is the idea-person in our family, who
dreams big and then uses hard work to achieve what he envisions. Thank you
both for these and many other life lessons.
Nicole
This work is dedicated to my family—by blood and by commitment—both
near and far. Thank you for all the evident and subtle ways in which you have
supported me to make this work possible.
Ramona
Contents
List of Figure ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xxvii
1 Constructing the Boundaries of US Citizenship in
the Era of Enforcement and Securitization 1
Sofya Aptekar
2 Enduring Practices of Scrutiny: State-Centered
Perspectives on Naturalization and Integration in
Germany and Denmark 31
Ramona Fruja
3 Politics of Belonging, from National to Personal:
The Political Framing of “Dutch” Identity and
Ethnic Minority Citizens 55
Marieke Slootman and Jan Willem Duyvendak
4 Conceiving Citizenship and Statelessness in the
Middle East and Sweden: The Experiences of
Kurdish Migrants in Sweden 85
Barzoo Eliassi
5 Change, Challenge, and Continuity in Qatari
Development: Identity and Citizenship in the
Fulcrum of Hyper-Globalization 111
David Mednicoff
6 Regimes of Political Belonging: Turkey and
Egypt in Comparative Perspective 137
Sinem Adar
viii Contents
7 Recognition as a Relationship of Power and Struggle:
The Governing of Kurds and Alevis in Turkey 163
Ozlem Goner
8 Situating the Syrian State: Nation and Education
1914–2014 195
Idir Ouahes
9 Permanently Waiting: The Kenyan State and
the Refugee Protection Regime 221
Erika L. Iverson
Notes on Contributors 247
Index 251
List of Figure
5.1 Population Growth in Qatar (1940–2030) 114
Preface
In recent years, there has been considerable media and scholarly dis-
course about citizenship and belonging and the capabilities and
responsibilities of the nation-state to balance seemingly contradictory
objectives—on the one hand, to secure its territory and its citizens
from threats (real or perceived) and, on the other hand, to create the
necessary conditions for inclusion and belonging among all who reside
within its borders. Two tragic events recently highlighted this tension.
First, the January 7, 2015 Paris shooting at the headquarters of the
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where the brothers Cherif and Said
Kouachi killed 11 people and were heard shouting in Arabic, “We
have avenged the Prophet Mohammed!” and “God is great!” as they
later killed a police officer on the street in Paris. A month later, on
February 15, 2015, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein—a 22-year-old
Danish-born Muslim man—fired shots into the crowd at a free speech
forum, outside of a Copenhagen café. The event was organized in
response to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy and featured an appearance by
the controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who gained infamy
because the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten had published his con-
troversial drawings of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 and 2008.
Similar to Charlie Hebdo, the Jyllands-Posten cartoon c ontroversy
sparked comparable debates about freedom of speech and whether or
not the offensive drawings should have been published at all.
In the wake of the Copenhagen shootings, former Danish prime
minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt concluded that the country would
have to come up with new solutions to the threat of extremism,
declaring: “As a nation, we have experienced a series of hours we will
never forget. We have tasted the ugly taste of fear and powerlessness
that terror would like to create. But we have also, as a society, answered
back” (Gargiulo and Yan 2015). Public attention was then focused on
the shooters in these incidents. In particular, El-Hussein was well
known to Danish police for several criminal acts—ranging from petty
theft to a stabbing incident, the latter of which led to his imprison-
ment. However, there had not been any suspicion of his being
xii Preface
radicalized until later reports indicated that he had made online con-
tact with members of Islamic State (ISIS). His story raised a crucial
question: Why did he seem to have more attachment to the radical
views of ISIS than to his status as a Dane? It is equally important,
however, to shift focus from his individual choice and actions—as
important as they are—and consider the context of the Danish state.
Without suggesting that particular state actions and initiatives
“caused” the terrorist’s actions, it is nevertheless important to reflect
on what role, if any, the Danish state and state actors have played in
generating contexts where certain members are more susceptible to
this kind of radicalization.
At the heart of both events is the delicate balance between notions
of freedom of expression and the rights of recognition and inclusion
for the Muslim populations in these countries. Implicitly, the dilem-
mas extrapolate to the mechanisms of recognition and inclusion across
contemporary nation-states. Given the often-problematic contexts of
immigrant and minority group integration in France and Denmark,
these events may also be representative of what Ruben G. Rumbaut
described as “reactive ethnicity”—a process of heightening ethnic
identity that emerges as an unintended consequence of highlighting
group differences and creating bright boundaries between those
identified as “us” and those identified as “them” (2008: 3). Rumbaut’s
work described individual processes of constructing one’s own iden-
tity under the hostilities of “contextual dissonance” (2008: 4), and we
are interested in how such contexts can also result, at both macro- and
micro-levels, from the actions of state actors who rhetorically and
policy-wise delineate the meaning and salience of political and cultural
identities within the state’s borders. Not only is membership through
citizenship a boundary that traces state borders, its exclusionary
parameters also seep both into seemingly unified nations (Bosniak
2008) and those modern states where tensions over belonging are all
too evident in both symbolic and tragic ways.
In the broadest sense, therefore, this volume advances the argu-
ment that it is the nation-state that ultimately delineates conditions
for belonging, not only for newcomers but also for historical minor-
ity groups. Through its continued relevance in such analyses, the
nation-state remains a critical unit of analysis, its actors having the
power to use citizenship legislation, immigration, and integration
policies to highlight group differences and to create, reinforce, or
appease the bright boundaries of “us” and “them” between or among
groups. Collectively, the cases demonstrate this position against the
background of discourses that propose postnational models and
