Citizenship and Extreme Events: Communities and the Imagining of Alternative Futures
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
José Mendes
University of Coimbra , Centre for Social Studies Portugal
jomendes@fe.uc.pt
Author(s):
The main objective is to analyse the potential of citizenship as postright, operationalized through the notion of invisible citizenship in the context of disasters and post-disasters. The intent is to deepen the analytical and empirical relevance of the concept of invisible citizenship, aiming to further conceptual and epistemological innovation and to obtain results relevant to public policies.
Disasters are used as entry points to reflect on citizenship as the right to have rights in a world of climate change crises. Through a comparative analysis of concrete disasters and their impact in Portugal and France, the objective is to study how states address the needs of citizens in the occurrence of extreme events, as states appear to be the last resort in guaranteeing the value of goods as well as people’s lives. The analysis is structured via three dimensions: institutional, community and the personal encompassing the body.
Citizens of nation-states feel they can take the privilege of the right to have rights for granted. However, in disasters such a privilege is placed in jeopardy. Hence, the questions: When is a citizen a citizen? When does or can one become a citizen? In an extreme case scenario, every person in a disaster or catastrophe may well discover that (s)he is not a citizen. The paper analyses how disasters put to the test the fabric of the social and the fragile notion of citizenship, alongside how the struggle for citizenship enacts different types of communities.
The paper, based on the mobilization and application of the distinctive concept of invisible citizenship, facilitates a move beyond the existing approaches and the developing of an epistemological and normative approach that is firmly anchored to qualitative data, is multi-dimensional and integrates different scales of action and policymaking.
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