Open AccessRacial-Nationalism and Representations of Citizenship: The Recalcitrant Alien, the Citizen of Convenience and the Fraudulent Citizen
Author(s) -
Augustine Sj Park
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
canadian journal of sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.357
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1710-1123
pISSN - 0318-6431
DOI - 10.29173/cjs17939
Subject(s) - citizenship , nationalism , sociology , racism , law , alien , good citizenship , xenophobia , political science , gender studies , politics
This paper traces racial-nationalism through three recent sites of controversy relating to citizenship: the banning of face coverings while swearing the citizenship oath, the evacuation of Canadians abroad and the revocation of the citizenship of 1,800 alleged to have gained citizenship through fraudulent means. Racial-nationalism is an architecture of race-thinking defined by (1) cultural racism, which operates as a strategy of “sorting out” outsiders from insiders and (2) expulsion or what Hage refers to as the logic of pure exclusion. Through an interrogation of online reader commentary responding to news reporting, this paper examines three allegorical figures at the core of public discourses representing citizenship: the recalcitrant alien, the citizen of convenience and the fraudulent citizen.