Citizenship and Subjecthood in Turbulent Times: Power, Belonging, and Participation

Citizenship and democracy are intrinsic to one another. Citizenship is regularly cited as essential to the functioning of liberal democracies, while core democratic principles, such as the rule of law or pluralism and civic particiption are defining features of norms of citizenship. However, growing mistrust in public institutions and the resurgence of populism, as well as increasing regional instability and violence, and the spread of misinformation and digital transformations (including the use of artificial intelligence), mark turbulent times for citizenship and democracy today, and prompt important shifts in their otherwise symbiotic relationship. Recent experiences across Europe (e.g., youth protests in Serbia), Asia (e.g., growing internationalisation of higher education v exclusive immigration discourses), North (e.g., government shutdown and clamp down on academic freedoms in the United States), and South America (e.g., electoral violence in Venezuela), as well as Africa (e.g., civil war and extreme violence in Sudan), to name a few examples, suggest that these shifts are occurring not only in established democracies but also in more recent, hybrid, and non-democratic contexts. They thus raise important questions about how power is distributed, claimed, and contested through citizenship, and, importantly, how such shifts relate to forms of subjecthood more commonly associated with hybrid or even autocratic regimes. Against this backdrop, this section seeks a range of paper and panel proposals which examine what citizenship and subjecthood mean in today’s turbulent times. We are interested in bringing attention to the key challenges and potentials for alternative forms of belonging, power, and participation that citizens and subjects face - whether in democratic, hybrid, or authoritarian regimes - and how citizens and subjects, as well as institutional and non-institutional actors (e.g., political parties, NGOs, migrant, religious, and civil society groups, educators, etc.) respond to these shifts. We welcome theoretical, empirical, policy, and educational submissions with normative, practical, comparative and/or interdisciplinary (politics, sociology, legal, historical, feminist, and post- or decolonial to name a few) angle. Our section seeks to initiate critical conversations about how the meanings, practices, and lived experiences of citizenship and subjecthood are being reshaped in diverse democratic and non-democratic contexts. We encourage proposals that examine temporal, technological, and socioeconomic developments, and explore their influence on the identities, attitudes, and behaviours of citizens and subjects, and everyday practices and senses/politics of belonging. We appreciate research with groups who experience marginalisation - such as minoritised and racialised groups, migrant communities, and LGBTQIA+ individuals – and whose experiences can help reveal key aspects of institutionalised power dynamics, boundaries, and exclusions present in current citizenship and subjecthood regimes and experiences. Further contributions may address themes linked to acts of citizenship, national or regional identities in polarised societies, the opposing dynamics between climate scepticism and activism, growing backlash of international migration and citizenship/ subjecthood, as well as the norms of citizenship and subjecthood endorsed and communicated through legal frameworks, and civic and citizenship education curricula. While the call for panels and paper is broad and the type of submissions we expect to see we hope will vary between theoretical, empirical, policy and educational contributions, we aim to reflect the interest of our members in SG Citizenship and broader themes in current citizenship research (and related fields, i.e. civic education, political behaviour, democratic politics, etc.). We have, nonetheless, identified some initial questions that we hope the contributions to this section will address collectively, including: • How are the meanings, practices, and lived experiences of citizenship and subjecthood reshaped in turbulent times (e.g. due to democratic backsliding, polarisation, digital transformations, heightened tensions linked to migration and/or misinformation (among others))? • In what ways do citizens or subjects, political communities, and (non-)institutional actors negotiate, resist, or reproduce citizenship and subjecthood across democratic, hybrid, and authoritarian regimes? • How do temporal, technological (including AI), and socioeconomic developments influence the identities, belonging, and everyday practices of citizens, subjects, and to-be citizens or to-be subjects? • How do processes of marginalisation shape access to citizenship, subjecthood, belonging, and rights, particularly for minoritised, racialised, migrant, and LGBTQIA+ groups? • What alternative forms or models of citizenship and subjecthood are emerging - or should be emerging - in response to today's global turbulent times? Keywords Citizenship; Subjecthood; Belonging; Democratic backsliding; Polarisation; Acts of citizenship; Digital transformation and AI; Political participation; Misinformation; Civic education