Download or read book Identification and Citizenship in Africa written by Séverine Awenengo Dalberto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state. Almost half of the population of the African continent is thought to lack a legal identity, and many states see biometric technology as a reliable and efficient solution to the problem. However, this book shows that biometrics, far from securing identities and avoiding fraud or political distrust, can even participate in reinforcing exclusion and polarizing debates on citizenship and national belonging. It highlights the social and political embedding of legal identities and the resilience of the documentary state. Drawing on empirical research conducted across 14 countries, the book documents the processes, practices, and meanings of legal identification in Africa from the 1950s right up to the biometric boom. Beyond the classic opposition between surveillance and recognition, it demonstrates how analysing the social uses of IDs and tools of identification can give a fresh account of the state at work, the practices of citizenship, and the role of bureaucracy in the writing of the self in African societies. This book will be of an important reference for students and scholars of African studies, politics, human security, and anthropology and the sociology of the state.
Download or read book Citizenship Law in Africa written by Bronwen Manby and published by African Minds. This book was released on 2012-07-27 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few African countries provide for an explicit right to a nationality. Laws and practices governing citizenship leave hundreds of thousands of people in Africa without a country to which they belong. Statelessness and discriminatory citizenship practices underlie and exacerbate tensions in many regions of the continent, according to this report by the Open Society Institute. Citizenship Law in Africa is a comparative study by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project. It describes the often arbitrary, discriminatory, and contradictory citizenship laws that exist from state to state, and recommends ways that African countries can bring their citizenship laws in line with international legal norms. The report covers topics such as citizenship by descent, citizenship by naturalization, gender discrimination in citizenship law, dual citizenship, and the right to identity documents and passports. It describes how stateless Africans are systematically exposed to human rights abuses: they can neither vote nor stand for public office; they cannot enroll their children in school, travel freely, or own property; they cannot work for the government.--Publisher description.
Download or read book Development Dual Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa written by Robtel Neajai Pailey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on rich oral histories, this is an engaging study of citizenship construction and practice in Liberia, Africa's first black republic.
Download or read book Practices of Citizenship in East Africa written by Katariina Holma and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practices of Citizenship in East Africa uses insights from philosophical pragmatism to explore how to strengthen citizenship within developing countries. Using a bottom-up approach, the book investigates the various everyday practices in which citizenship habits are formed and reformulated. In particular, the book reflects on the challenges of implementing the ideals of transformative and critical learning in the attempts to promote active citizenship. Drawing on extensive empirical research from rural Uganda and Tanzania and bringing forward the voices of African researchers and academics, the book highlights the importance of context in defining how habits and practices of citizenship are constructed and understood within communities. The book demonstrates how conceptualizations derived from philosophical pragmatism facilitate identification of the dynamics of incremental change in citizenship. It also provides a definition of learning as reformulation of habits, which helps to understand the difficulties in promoting change. This book will be of interest to scholars within the fields of development, governance, and educational philosophy. Practitioners and policy-makers working on inclusive citizenship and interventions to strengthen civil society will also find the concepts explored in this book useful to their work. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429279171, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license
Download or read book Ethnicity Democracy and Citizenship in Africa written by Samantha Balaton-Chrimes and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2015-03-28 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an ethnic minority the Nubians of Kenya are struggling for equal citizenship by asserting themselves as indigenous and autochthonous to Kibera, one of Nairobi’s most notorious slums. Having settled there after being brought by the British colonial authorities from Sudan as soldiers, this appears a peculiar claim to make. It is a claim that illuminates the hierarchical nature of Kenya’s ethnicised citizenship regime and the multi-faceted nature of citizenship itself. This book explores two kinds of citizenship deficits; those experienced by the Nubians in Kenya and, more centrally, those which represent the limits of citizenship theories. The author argues for an understanding of citizenship as made up of multiple component parts: status, rights and membership, which are often disaggregated through time, across geographic spaces and amongst different people. This departure from a unitary language of citizenship allows a novel analysis of the central role of ethnicity in the recognition of political membership and distribution of political goods in Kenya. Such an analysis generates important insights into the risks and possibilities of a relationship between ethnicity and democracy that is of broad, global relevance.
Download or read book Voting and Democratic Citizenship in Africa written by Michael Bratton and published by Lynne Rienner Pub. This book was released on 2013 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do individual Africans view competitive elections? How do they behave at election time? What are the implications of new forms of popular participation for citizenship and democracy? Drawing on a decade of research from the cross-national Afrobarometer project, the authors of this seminal collection explore the emerging role of mass politics in Africa¿s fledgling democracies.
Download or read book Citizenship in Africa written by Bronwen Manby and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Citizenship in Africa provides a comprehensive exploration of nationality laws in Africa, placing them in their theoretical and historical context. It offers the first serious attempt to analyse the impact of nationality law on politics and society in different African states from a trans-continental comparative perspective. Taking a four-part approach, Parts I and II set the book within the framework of existing scholarship on citizenship, from both sociological and legal perspectives, and examine the history of nationality laws in Africa from the colonial period to the present day. Part III considers case studies which illustrate the application and misapplication of the law in practice, and the relationship of legal and political developments in each country. Finally, Part IV explores the impact of the law on politics, and its relevance for questions of identity and 'belonging' today, concluding with a set of issues for further research. Ambitious in scope and compelling in analysis, this is an important new work on citizenship in Africa."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Download or read book Identifying with Nationality written by Will Hanley and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nationality is the most important legal mechanism sorting and classifying the world's population today. An individual's place of birth or naturalization determines where he or she can and cannot be and what he or she can and cannot do. Although this system may appear universal, even natural, Will Hanley shows that it arose just a century ago. In Identifying with Nationality, he uses the Mediterranean city of Alexandria to develop a genealogy of the nation and the formation of the modern national subject. Alexandria in 1880 was an immigrant boomtown ruled by dozens of overlapping regimes. On its streets and in its police stations and courtrooms, people were identified by name, occupation, place of origin, sect, physical description, and other attributes. Yet by 1914, before nationalist calls for independence and decolonization had become widespread, nationality had become the defining category of identification, and nationality laws came to govern Alexandria's population. Identifying with Nationality traces the advent of modern citizenship to multinational, transimperial settings such as turn-of-the-century colonial Alexandria, where ordinary people abandoned old identifiers and grasped nationality as the best means to access the protections promised by expanding states. The result was a system that continues to define and divide people through status, mobility, and residency.
Download or read book Statelessness and Citizenship written by Brad K. Blitz and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In our supposedly borderless world, having a nationality, and thus access to documents which permit travel and proof of identity, has become increasingly important. In many parts of the world, including the cases in Europe, Africa and Asia covered in this collection, large groups of people struggle with forms of de facto or de jure statelessness. In addition to providing a conceptual framework derived from international human rights norms for understanding better the phenomenon of statelessness, this collection presents important empirical research material helping us to understand, from the ground up, how statelessness is experienced.' Jo Shaw, University of Edinburgh, UK 'What difference does citizenship make? The vulnerability of stateless persons clearly demonstrates the benefits of having a nationality. But so far nobody has examined how much the situation of stateless persons improves when they finally get documents and citizenship status. This exploratory study analyses practical difficulties and real progress in overcoming statelessness. It gives voice to the victims and sets a political agenda. Academic researchers, non-governmental organizations and policy-makers should read this book.' Rainer Bauböck, European University Institute, Florence, Italy 'Embracing a subject that is generally treated abstractly, as a matter of human rights law, the authors of this pathbreaking book root statelessness deep into historical context and lived experience. They emerge with conclusions that are both dismaying (the expansive scope of the problem) and hopeful (the measurable progress some states have made in expanding the boundaries of citizenship). Alas, this eloquent book could hardly be more timely.' Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa, US The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that there are more than 12 million stateless people in the world. The existence of stateless populations challenges some central tenets of international law and contemporary human rights discourses, yet only a very small number of states have made measurable progress in helping individuals acquire or regain citizenship. This fascinating study examines positive developments in eight countries and pinpoints the benefits of citizenship now enjoyed by formerly stateless persons. The expert contributors present an original comparative study that draws upon legal and political analysis as well as empirical research (incorporating over 120 interviews conducted in eight countries), and features the documentary photography of Greg Constantine. The benefits of citizenship over statelessness are identified at both community and individual level, and include the fundamental right to enjoy a nationality, to obtain identification documents, to be represented politically, to access the formal labor market and to move about freely. Gaining or reacquiring citizenship helps eliminate isolation and solicits the empowerment of individuals, collectively and personally. Such changes are of considerable importance to the advancement of a human rights regime based on dignity and respect. This highly original and thought-provoking book will strongly appeal to a wide-ranging audience including academics, researchers, students, human rights activists and government officials with an interest in a diverse range of fields encompassing law, international studies, public policy, human rights and citizenship.
Download or read book Struggles for Citizenship in Africa written by Bronwen Manby and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hundreds of thousands of people living in Africa find themselves non-persons in the only state they have ever known. Because they are not recognised as citizens, they cannot get their children registered at birth or entered in school or university; they cannot access state health services; they cannot obtain travel documents, or employment without a work permit; and if they leave the country they may not be able to return. Most of all, they cannot vote, stand for office, or work for state institutions. Ultimately such policies can lead to economic and political disaster, or even war. The conflicts in both Ct̥e d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had at their hearts the very right of one part of the national population to share with others on equal terms the rights and duties of citizenship. This book brings together new material from across Africa of the most egregious examples of citizenship discrimination, and makes the case for urgent reform of the law.
Download or read book Making Citizens in Africa written by Lahra Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a study of contemporary politics in Ethiopia through an empirical focus on language policy, citizenship, ethnic identity, and gender. It is unique in its focus not only on the political institutions of Ethiopia and the history of the country but in that it studies these subjects at the intersection of both modern and historical time periods. In particular, it argues that meaningful citizenship, which is much more than the legal state of being a citizen, is a process of citizens and the state negotiating the practice of citizenship. Therefore, it puts the citizen back at the forefront of the process of expanding citizenship, suggesting the ways that citizens support, resist, and affect state policy on political rights.
Download or read book Biometric State written by Keith Breckenridge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking study of South Africa's role as a site for global experiments in biometric identification throughout the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Perils of Belonging written by Peter Geschiere and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite being told that we now live in a cosmopolitan world, more and more people have begun to assert their identities in ways that are deeply rooted in the local. These claims of autochthony—meaning “born from the soil”—seek to establish an irrefutable, primordial right to belong and are often employed in politically charged attempts to exclude outsiders. In The Perils of Belonging, Peter Geschiere traces the concept of autochthony back to the classical period and incisively explores the idea in two very different contexts: Cameroon and the Netherlands. In both countries, the momentous economic and political changes following the end of the cold war fostered anxiety over migration. For Cameroonians, the question of who belongs where rises to the fore in political struggles between different tribes, while the Dutch invoke autochthony in fierce debates over the integration of immigrants. This fascinating comparative perspective allows Geschiere to examine the emotional appeal of autochthony—as well as its dubious historical basis—and to shed light on a range of important issues, such as multiculturalism, national citizenship, and migration.
Download or read book African Or American written by Leslie M. Alexander and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The struggle for black identity in antebellum New York
Download or read book Citizen and Subject written by Mahmood Mamdani and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism's legacy--a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either "direct" (French) or "indirect" (British), with a third variant--apartheid--as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a "customary" mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa. Through case studies of rural (Uganda) and urban (South Africa) resistance movements, we learn how these institutional features fragment resistance and how states tend to play off reform in one sector against repression in the other. The result is a groundbreaking reassessment of colonial rule in Africa and its enduring aftereffects. Reforming a power that institutionally enforces tension between town and country, and between ethnicities, is the key challenge for anyone interested in democratic reform in Africa.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of African American Citizenship 1865 Present written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 859 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of essays tracing the historical evolution of African American experiences, from the dawn of Reconstruction onward, through the perspectives of sociology, political science, law, economics, education and psychology. As a whole, the book is a systematic study of the gap between promise and performance of African Americans since 1865. Over the course of thirty-four chapters, contributors present a portrait of the particular hurdles faced by African Americans and the distinctive contributions African Americans have made to the development of U.S. institutions and culture. --From publisher description.
Download or read book Disputing Citizenship written by Clarke, John and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Citizenship is always in dispute – in practice as well as in theory – but conventional perspectives do not address why the concept of citizenship is so contentious. This unique book presents a new perspective on citizenship by treating it as a continuing focus of dispute.The authors dispute the way citizenship is normally conceived and analysed within the social sciences, developing a view of citizenship as always emerging from struggle. This view is advanced through an exploration of the entanglements of politics, culture and power that are both embodied and contested in forms and practices of citizenship. This compelling view of citizenship emerges from the international and interdisciplinary collaboration of the four authors, drawing on the diverse disputes over citizenship in their countries of origin (Brazil, France, the UK and the US). The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the field of citizenship, no matter what their geographical, political or academic location.
