Metropolitics

Algeria's Hirak: When a Social Movement Puts Citizenship Under the Microscope

Islam Amine Derradji & Amel Gherbi & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-03-26T06:00:00Z

The popular mobilization that rose up in Algeria in 2019 was not only a revolt against living conditions that had become unacceptable. It was also a movement that turned the country's streets into a stage for the organized construction of collective and political life by citizens seeking to revisit their history and assert their independence.
Since February 22, 2019, Algeria has been living to the rhythm of unprecedented mobilizations. Millions of Algerians took to the streets to oppose

- From the Field / North Africa, Maghreb, Africa, collective action, mobilization, civic organizing, demonstrations, protest, Algeria, social movement, citizenship, citizens

Immigrant Men and Voluntary Work in a Swiss City

Agnès Aubry — 2018-05-15T05:00:00Z

Across Europe, refugees and immigrants find themselves in uncertain civil and legal territory; precariousness infuses every aspect of their daily existence. In this paper, Agnes Aubry elucidates the multiple meanings of immigrants' voluntary work in a soup kitchen, demonstrating the legal, moral, and sociological connections between labor and citizenship.
Saturday evening, in a warehouse near the heart of a city in Switzerland.
It's 8 p.m. at the soup kitchen. Abdel, myself and 13 other

- From the Field / immigration, refugees, migration, Switzerland, citizenship, precarity, migrants, voluntary work, volunteering, civic sector

No Lawful Status: Immigrant Youth in a State of Exclusion

Alexis Silver — 2017-10-24T05:00:00Z

When the Trump administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, nearly 800,000 young immigrants were poised to lose work permits and protection from deportation. The termination of the policy was the most recent change in a constantly shifting landscape. Relying on seven years of ethnographic and interview research in North Carolina, Alexis Silver follows immigrant youth as they age into the early stages of adulthood while navigating turbulent and often

- From the Field / immigration, migration, citizenship, youth, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

Citizen Outsider: Racism, Marginalization, and Immigration in France

Jean Beaman — 2017-05-31T15:28:53Z

As refugee crises have emerged and immigration has increased in many regions of the world, several Western countries have become highly nationalistic, with debates surrounding border control and citizenship often dominating political conversation. But it's not just newcomers who have raised these discussions. Based on her forthcoming book, this piece by Jean Beaman shows how second-generation immigrants from North Africa in France, who are legally French citizens, get treated as outsiders and

- From the Field / France, immigration, banlieue, Île-de-France, ethnicity, Paris region, racism, Paris, suburbs, discrimination, migration, race, citizenship, identity, North Africans, Maghrebi, second generation, marginalization, citizen outsiders, cultural citizenship, nationality

Immigrants and Transnational Citizenship

Fernando Aquino — 2017-02-14T18:52:52Z

In spite of the loud fear-mongering about immigration and borders in the US and Europe, sociologists have found that immigrants' civic organizing in their host countries makes them increasingly important actors in changing their home countries' economy, politics, and culture. Fernando Aquino reviews an important collection of research edited by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Fernández-Kelly.
In 1992, as a new reporter for Listin USA, a branch of Listin Diario, a major Dominican daily, I was in

- Reviews / immigration, state, migration, citizenship, diaspora, civic organizing, transnationalism, remittances

Liberty, Community and Religion: A Hispano-Moroccan Family in Andalusia

Alain Cottereau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-10-11T05:00:00Z

In Europe, the relationship that migrants originating from the Arab Muslim world – whether first- or second-generation – maintain with Islam is both a little-explored subject and a source of confused concern. An ethnographic study of an Andalusian family conducted by Alain Cottereau and Mokhtar Marzok sheds light on the different ways in which people relate to religion, and calls into question what is often presumed to be a binary opposition between religiousness and a return to tradition on the

- From the Field / gender, Spain, ethnography, religion, migration, citizenship, community, Islam, Muslim, Andalusia, family, identity, belonging, male–female relations, domestic life

Democratic public spaces in the face of terrorism

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-01-29T06:00:00Z

The collective harm inflicted by the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 results in part from the fact that the perpetrators of these attacks took the specific qualities of urban public spaces and turned them against the city: hospitality, anonymity and the presumption of trust in others. All these characteristics form the foundations of civil exchanges in democratic public spaces.
The terrorist acts of which we were victims in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 caused both

- Essays / public space, democracy, sociabilities, attacks, citizenship, civility, hospitality, trust, mores, politics, street, terrorism

Understanding São Paulo's Bicycle Wars

Derek Pardue — 2015-12-08T06:00:00Z

In São Paulo, Brazil, bike lanes are a new phenomenon in a city historically dominated by automobiles. In the context of public-sector efforts to increase and diversify urban mobility, they are also at the center of furious political and social debate about who has a right to the city's streets and, by extension, who counts as a citizen.
Every week, a new viral video about São Paulo's city center circulates on social media, depicting conflict in the streets and hateful slurs hurled at

- Debates / public space, São Paulo, transport, bicycles, citizenship, right to the city, Brazil, cycling

“I, you, he, she, we are all Charlie”: what feeling concerned means

Gérôme Truc & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-02-05T05:50:00Z

The attacks that took place in Paris in early January have affected French society in a way never seen before, as shown by the number of people that joined marches all over France on 11 January and the success of the message “I am Charlie”, which spread incredibly quickly and was widely adopted, reported, adapted – and subsequently criticised – immediately after the events of 7 January. How are we to make sense of the solidarity exhibited through this message? And what are the specificities of

- Essays / France, public space, collective action, Paris, attacks, citizenship, concernedness, solidarity, attachment, terrorism