Author: Séverine Awenengo Dalberto
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000380084
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
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.
Author: Bronwen Manby
Publisher: African Minds
ISBN: 1936133296
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 121
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Book Description
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.
Author: Robtel Neajai Pailey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108875440
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
Drawing on rich oral histories from over two hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Robtel Neajai Pailey examines socio-economic change in Liberia, Africa's first black republic, through the prism of citizenship. Marking how historical policy changes on citizenship and contemporary public discourse on dual citizenship have impacted development policy and practice, she reveals that as Liberia transformed from a country of immigration to one of emigration, so too did the nature of citizenship, thus influencing claims for and against dual citizenship. In this engaging contribution to scholarly and policy debates about citizenship as a continuum of inclusion and exclusion, and development as a process of both amelioration and degeneration, Pailey develops a new model for conceptualising citizenship within the context of crisis-affected states. In doing so, she offers a postcolonial critique of the neoliberal framing of diasporas and donors as the panacea to post-war reconstruction.
Author: Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131714080X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
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.
Author: Katariina Holma
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000732428
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
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
Author: Bronwen Manby
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848137869
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Book Description
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 Côte 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.
Author: Michael Bratton
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
ISBN: 9781588268945
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
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.
Author: Peter Geschiere
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226289664
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
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.
Author: Brad K. Blitz
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1849808996
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
'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.
Author: Keith Breckenridge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316123944
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
Biometric identification and registration systems are being proposed by governments and businesses across the world. Surprisingly they are under most rapid, and systematic, development in countries in Africa and Asia. In this groundbreaking book, Keith Breckenridge traces how the origins of the systems being developed in places like India, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana can be found in a century-long history of biometric government in South Africa, with the South African experience of centralized fingerprint identification unparalleled in its chronological depth and demographic scope. He shows how empire, and particularly the triangular relationship between India, the Witwatersrand and Britain, established the special South African obsession with biometric government, and shaped the international politics that developed around it for the length of the twentieth century. He also examines the political effects of biometric registration systems, revealing their consequences for the basic workings of the institutions of democracy and authoritarianism.
