Building citizenship to address democratic backsliding: diversifying knowledge and building solidarities through PAR

Paper request topic: Current efforts to develop the capacities of citizens to act as autonomous democratic agents This workshop takes place at a time when the current global context is one of democratic backsliding, the erosion of democratic norms, the widespread use of social media to drive polarisation of attitudes, and the mobilisation of discrimination to frame fellow citizens as ‘other’ or as secondary citizens. It is critical to consider what contributions we are making from academia towards building democratic mindsets and the inclusive and decolonised practice of citizenship rights. Participatory action research (PAR) processes, when designed to support and work with heterogenous communities and groups experiencing intersecting forms of marginalisation, can contribute to citizenship development, outside of the formal education sphere. Citizenship or civic education needs to be developed through praxis - through engaging one’s own lived experience with that of others, to reflect, analyse and consider new actions, individually and collectively. Participatory methodologies such as storytelling (Ledwith & Springett 2010; Wheeler, Shahrokh and Derakhshani 2020) enable participants to explore their lived experience, present their knowledge, and enter into dialogue with each other. This process opens up pathways for marginalised citizens to see themselves as citizens (Howard 2024). I will take this further to explore how through the interplay between individual and group process in PAR, individuals gain a sense of themselves as autonomous citizens rooted in their realities and agency, but also in relationship with others. The Individualisation and atomisation of citizens are characteristics of neoliberal governmentality . I argue that this plays into polarisation, as people feel themselves to be isolated and othered. A governmentality lens can make visible the structures of power which shape and divide citizens. To build citizenship capacities that can overcome the current gender, sexuality and race backlash, requires strategies that address divisive narratives. One way to challenge narratives that construct citizens as binaries, as alterity (Isin, in Benson 2023), is through embracing diversified ways of knowing, and centring the knowledges of diverse groups. In this paper, I will interrogate assumptions about how citizens develop the ‘capacity to act as autonomous democratic agents’ (as expressed in the call). I will consider how citizenship can be considered and promoted using a decolonial lens, and a decolonising approach to knowledge generation, citizen education and development (Taylor & Tremblay 2022), drawing on research I am engaged in within the UK and in Colombia. I will explore how PAR can contribute to building democratic ways of being and relating as citizens. I would love to join this workshop in order to engage in conversations across different fields of scholarship related to citizenship, which can help me to challenge and stretch my own thinking.