Alternative sites of citizenship : emotions, performance and belonging for female migrants

Abstract

This PhD investigates the complexities of modern day citizenship for groups on the margins. This thesis is situated within feminist geopolitics and feminist countertopographical literatures and investigates the way in which migrant women understand and in turn practice citizenship. Outlined by TH Marshall in 1950, citizenship in its most basic form is understood as belonging to a community, and having rights and responsibilities within that community. With increased communication and transport technology we have seen a burgeoning of mobility and increased migration around the world. Coupled with the scaling back of the state in the national imagination, we are left with an ever more complicated understanding of citizenship. This thesis is therefore centred on three key elements of citizenship: as belonging to a community, as emotionally laden, and as a practice and performance through the everyday and the mundane. I draw together the literatures on migration, identity and citizenship to investigate what a real, lived citizenship is for female migrants. The thesis focuses on two main case study sites of Cardiff, UK and Singapore. Through these, I examine the different citizenship identities of migrant women, connecting the stories across time and through space. In focusing on two case study sites I examine the context of the individual migrant, seeking to highlight how there may be similarities and differences between different groups of migrant women. This thesis seeks to answer questions of what a modern day citizenship identity looks like: how might citizenship, and a citizenship identity, be seen as something which is at once multiple, complex, situated and dynamic? How can citizenship therefore be relational, tied to specific experiences in, and of, place? Finally, how might this alter future directions in citizenship research?