CITSEE Stories

On trial at the women’s court: gender violence, justice and citizenship

Updated: 11 December 2012

Women’s Courts are radically feminist in nature because they underline that women are the most vulnerable subjects of the state, and that their personal experience of violence, rape, torture or discrimination is a political issue. The specific feminist methodology of Women’s Courts insists on an intersection between political and personal, which is given affective and aesthetic expression (women sing, weep, laugh and yell during the trials), representing thereby both their survival and resistance. Their testimonies, the space they occupy and the affectivity they are allowed to express, help to create different kinds of judicial system and juridical practices. Women’s Courts therefore aim at evolving new concepts of justice itself.

Managing migration through earned citizenship - the deserving and the others

Updated: 5 December 2012

While contracts have been largely examined as potential new form of discrimination or, somewhat less worrisome, as a communitarian technique, it may be that they can also be explained as a neoliberal device for privileging those who possess the right knowledge and skills for the market. They are the ‘deserving’ ones who have ‘earned’ citizenship. The others may earn their rights only by learning a language, understanding the shared values, and becoming as profitable labourers as possible. Neoliberalism first, communitarianism to follow.

What’s sexuality got to do with it? On sexual citizenship

Updated: 14 November 2012

Although accommodating some positive changes, sexual citizenship continues to generate further exclusions. In addition to leaving different sexual practices and relations that do not comply with the new normativity out, the newly achieved gay rights are increasingly becoming a marker of “civility” and “superiority” that, together with women’s rights, serve as a means through which discrimination of migrants and military attacks are justified in the context of the “war on terror” after 9/11.

‘What’s in a name?’ The Dilemmas of Re-Naming Yugoslav Gypsies into Roma

Updated: 7 November 2012

In today’s post-Yugoslav sphere, many young Romani intellectuals are proud of their Romani heritage. Although they encounter many obstacles due to discrimination, they fully identify with the term ‘Roma’. However, most Roma still find themselves on the margins of their societies. Whilst they sometimes refer to themselves as Roma, in other instances as gypsies, others use alternative group names such as Egyptians and Ashkali (the latter especially in Kosovo).

You're in the Army, Now...

Updated: 24 October 2012

For a long time, military conscription was how an exclusively male citizen’s duty was expressed, both in Yugoslavia and its successor states. This duty became extremely complicated in the 1990s in the context of the changing state borders, and thus the changing legal claims to men's bodies residing within them. Conflicting narratives about the war — sometimes portrayed as an external aggression, sometimes as a legitimate defence, and sometimes as a civil war — further complicated this matter.

Becoming citizens: the politics of women’s emancipation in socialist Yugoslavia

Updated: 26 September 2012

In 1946, for the first time, women’s rights as political, social and economic beings were inscribed in the new Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a result of women’s participation in the antifascist Resistance during World War Two. In the 1970s, thirty years after the inscription of women’s rights in the Yugoslav Constitution, the country had undergone a rapid process of modernization and urbanization. Nonetheless, socialist politics appeared progressive in comparison to the process of “retraditionalisation” of gender relations which took place in the 1990s.

Scottish citizenship: now is the time to start discussing it

Updated: 10 September 2012

A Scottish separation would be a unique event in the history of new state creation. The factor that makes it unique is that it would be the first case of the break up of an EU Member State, with both states aspiring – we assume – to EU membership. It is, of course, true to say that some of the state break-ups that have occurred in Europe since 1989, such as the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the independence of the Baltic states, and the break up of Yugoslavia, have occurred under the shadow of EU law. But it is clearly going to be a different type of situation where the existing state is already a member of the EU, both succeeding states are likely to aspire to continued and uninterrupted membership, there are EU citizens exercising their EU citizenship rights in both states (and citizens from both those states who are exercising their rights elsewhere), and where EU law has now – as it has since 1993 – stepped into the political domain by requiring that EU citizens should be able to vote in local elections under the same conditions as nationals on the basis of residence in the host state.

Sportizenship: the complex links between citizenship, sports and national identity

Updated: 23 July 2012

Sport is not only a manifestation of a physical contest. It is also a manifestation of cultural and national elements of a society. National sporting contests are often said to instil a sense of community in a state. By attending and supporting different sporting events, people reinforce the identity dimension of citizenship. Supporting a team emphasises an individual’s link to his or her polity, be it a city, a sub-state entity or a country.

CITSEE Research Project