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From Silenced Citizenship to Voice: How the Struggle for Public Housing Reshapes Citizenship in post 2011 Israel

Citizenship
Civil Society
Democracy
Social Movements
Welfare State
Political Sociology
Liberalism
Political Activism
Gal Levy
Open University of Israel
Gal Levy
Open University of Israel

Abstract

At this writing, the Housing Ministry has announced an ambitious plan to increase the public housing stock, after years of declining supply and increasing demand. This announcement has escaped the the eyes of the financial sections of mainstream media; in the social media however, it was enthusiastically welcomed. There activists were cheering their own success. Not in vain indeed. This uncommon way to open an abstract is, I hope, well deserved as it sums in a nutshell its main aim: showing how exit turns into voice and where and how citizenship is at works nowadays. The proposed paper is part of an ongoing research on political activism from the margins. It follows the struggle of activists’ groups that emerged since the 2011 social protest in Israel. These groups are unique in form and in contents and in those whom they represent. By distancing themselves from political parties, social movements and NGOs, these mostly novice activists expose the limits of liberal citizenship as a means to trigger social change in neoliberal times. The struggle for public housing is led neither by “professional” activists nor by politicians. It is a grassroot struggle in its bare sense: coordinated and headed by (mostly) women whose dire need for housing solutions drove them to the public sphere. Identifying as “strugglers” - to distinguish themselves from the “professional” activists who are also involved in their struggle - these women have moved, metaphorically and physically, from the margins to the centre. In Hirschman’s model, they chose voice over exit. Now, their voice is being heard not merely in vigils and protests, but also in the very echelons of power, at the Ministries and in Parliamentary committees. This paper takes their story as an opportunity to revisit Hirschman’s model, and more pertinently, to ask when and how citizenship is being silenced and how voice can be reappropriated by the disenfranchised. Hirschman’s model for its valuable simplicity has made the choice between exit and voice a matter of individual preference. Recently, the question of silent citizenship has resurfaced as the “democratic deficit” was seen to grow exponentially and inasmuch as the voice of capital overtook that of ordinary citizens. The 2011 social uprising across the globe awakened not only the middle strata that was silenced with the demise of the welfare state. It also energised those who for years chose exit and loyalty over voice. Still, a closer look at the public housing struggle reveals that all along these women opt for voice, while showing loyalty at the political level. Until recently this voice remained unheard. This paper offers an investigation into this struggle using the concept of “silent citizenship”. Yet, instead of asking what this concept teaches us about the struggle, I take the inverse perspective. As I followed the struggle, I was taught how citizenship has been abused as citizens were silenced. My aim is to show how this struggle, in James Tully’s words, “calls into question and modify ... the game of citizenship participation”.