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D e v e l o pme n t : E q u a l i t i e s a n d s u s t a i n a b i l i t y participation, authenticity and self-determination. Part of what it is to engage people as democratic citizens is to treat them in ways that affirm and respect these values. Citizenisation assumes that citizens have a subjective good that they are able to express and that our shared rules must be responsive to those expressions, and that we trust each other to negotiate those shared rules in ways that respect one another’s autonomy and identity, and to co-operate in good faith. It should be clear, I hope, how this alternative framework offers a different perspective. It starts by identifying inherited patterns of social relationships – in particular, those social relationships that have historically been defined on the basis of values other than democratic consent and autonomy – and then asking what sorts of measures would remedy that historic failing. The familiar language about the seedbeds and sites of citizenship misses the historic and relational aspects of the challenge. With gender or racial inequalities, for instance, the problem is not (or not only) that a group of citizens is unable or unwilling to exercise their citizenship. The problem, rather, is that we have inherited a society in which certain relationships have not been defined along the lines of citizenship at all. If we think of citizenisation as a process, not a static list of traits or sites, then we need to ask in what contexts can relationships of citizenship be established, amongst which individuals or groups? The idea of citizenisation encourages us to expand our sense of the possibilities, including our assumptions about who in our societies are deemed incapable of entering into relations of citizenship. The historic presumption that, for example, children, adolescents or disabled people can only be ruled by force and paternalism has inhibited academic research, public debate and legal innovation. Development and diversity Similarly, we can also ask about citizenisation beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. The traditional debate on responsible citizenship presupposes a certain degree of ‘boundedness’. Citizens are defined as the long-term members of a bounded political community and it is relations amongst these members that have, to date, been subject to (incomplete, fragile) processes of citizenisation. But we clearly have politically relevant relationships with people beyond our borders, as well as with temporary residents within our borders (such as tourists, business visitors, temporary asylum-seekers or migrant workers) who are not formal citizens. The very existence of the Commonwealth attests to both these kinds of relative unboundedness. Given that so many of our decisions affect the well-being of people outside our borders, and given that seemingly temporary residents may end up spending long periods of time within our borders (consider seasonal farm workers), we may have an obligation to ‘citizenise’ some of these relationships as well. The details will vary from case to case: what matters is not a static list of rights or formal status so much as the realities of consent, autonomy, self-determination and recognition – or their absence. So the idea of citizenisation opens up new possibilities in terms of the range of actors and relationships that we consider as subject to citizenship values, within and beyond the nation-state. It is particularly relevant for addressing issues of diversity. I mentioned earlier that citizenisation presupposes some idea of boundedness, which traditionally has been understood in terms of the nation-state, defined as the possession of a single nation or people. To take the example of Canada again, this model of one people or nation has always been a poor fit due to the persistence of distinct national identities amongst French-Canadians/Québécois and Aboriginal peoples, compounded by the extraordinary diversity arising from recent waves of immigration. Insofar as citizenisation is a social project to reorder older relations of hierarchy and exclusion, it operates in Canada at multiple levels, both across long-standing national divisions (e.g. between English and French, or between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals) and also within each national project (e.g. relations between old-stock Québécois and immigrant communities). We have unresolved issues relating to Canada’s origins as a settler state on indigenous lands; to English and French; and to immigrant-origin racialised ethnic groups. And all of these unresolved issues interact. For example, the federal multiculturalism policies adopted to help citizenise relations with ethno-racial minorities are seen by some as undermining the policies needed to citizenise relations with Quebec or with Aboriginal peoples. I believe this perception is misguided, but it is an issue that can only be resolved by understanding it as the intersection of multiple citizenisation projects. The challenge of deep diversity is not just a matter of needing new traits or sites of citizenship: rather, the challenge is that it calls forth multiple citizenisation projects whose interaction is unpredictable. The economic dimension of citizenship Finally, consider the impact of neoliberalism on the prospects for citizenisation. Starting in the 1980s, we have lived through an era of dramatic changes in the global political economy, with the expansion of global trade and free trade agreements, the deregulation of financial markets, the weakening of trade unions and ‘flexibilisation’ of labour markets, and the privatisation of industries and pensions. Many of the most visible struggles for citizenisation – women, homosexuals, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples – have had a trajectory that is intimately bound up with the institutions of the welfare state: representation on government advisory boards, public funding for advocacy, anti-discrimination and Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 94


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