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Citizenship, Membership and Belonging in Mixed-status Families

Citizenship
Gender
Migration
Family
Immigration
Saskia Bonjour
University of Amsterdam
Saskia Bonjour
University of Amsterdam
Betty De Hart
University of Amsterdam

Abstract

Traditionally, citizenship has been conceptualized as a formal, abstract relationship between an individual and the state. Feminist and queer citizenship scholars have advocated a shift towards a ‘contextualized’ understanding of citizenship as an embodied practice and everyday experience (Lister 2007). Rejecting the dichotomy between private and public sphere, these scholars have emphasized that the realm of gender, family, sexuality and reproduction is crucial to the construction of citizenship (Plummer 2001; Roseneil et al 2013). Our paper focuses on migration law, a field where citizenship or the lack thereof is especially salient, so as to shed an important new light on citizenship as a lived practice which shapes and is shaped by meaningful social relations, in particular by family relations. It is a conceptual paper that is meant to serve as a theoretical introduction to a special issue on intimate citizenships and mixed-status families. We inquire into the role of representations of ‘proper’ and ‘deviant’ intimacy (love, family, parenting, sex) in state constructions of not only ‘wanted’ and ‘unwanted’ immigration, but also gradations of membership and deservingness attributed to citizens, by looking specifically at mixed-status families. For many citizens, the obstacles posed by immigration regulations to their living together with their family members is a first, shocking confrontation with state intervention into the very heart of their private lives. We aim to enhance scholarly knowledge on mixed-status families as well as contribute to the conceptualization of citizenship not as a formal, abstract relationship between an individual and the state, but as a lived, intimate practice and experience, which shapes and is shaped by meaningful social relations