Uncertain Citizenship: Life in the Waiting Room

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This book investigates uncertainty as a governing practice from the unique vantage point of 'citizenisation' twenty-first-century integration and naturalisation measures that make and unmake citizens and migrants, while indefinitely holding many applicants for citizenship in the waiting room of citizenship.

Uncertain Citizenship investigates uncertainty as a governing practice from the vantage point of 'citizenisation' - 21st-century integration and naturalisation measures that make and unmake citizens and migrants, while indefinitely holding many applicants for citizenship in the waiting room of citizenship. Fortier's distinctive theory of citizenisation foregrounds how the full achievement of citizenship is always deferred. If migrants and citizens are continuously citizenised, so too are they migratised. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork with migrants and with intermediaries of the state tasked with implementing citizenisation measures, Fortier scrutinises life in the waiting room and shows how citizenship takes place, takes time and takes hold in ways that conform, exceed, and confound frames of reference laid out in both citizenisation policies and taken-for-granted understandings of 'citizen', 'migrant', and their relationships to citizenship.

Reviews

'Uncertain Citizenship is innovative, nuanced and both theoretically inspiring and empirically engaging. It is certain to become a cornerstone for future scholarship and debates around racism, migration and citizenship.'
Ethnic and Radical Studies

'In this brilliant book, Fortier examines the uncertainties in which citizenship is enmeshed and their effects on states, would-be citizens and those charged with managing the process of citizenship. These uncertainties condense long histories and shifting political, cultural and emotional pressures, making citizenship carry a formidable burden of desire and anxiety.'
John Clark, Emeritus Professor, The Open University

'By forensically examining scenes of uncertainty where non-citizens await becoming citizens, Fortier brilliantly illustrates how governments engage both citizens and non-citizens through insufferable games of conferral, deferral and repeal.'
Engin Isin, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London

'This vital contribution dismantles taken-for-granted understandings about contemporary citizenship to lay bare the inherent uncertainties, insecurities and inequalities at its heart. You'll never look at citizenship the same way again.'
Michaela Benson, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London

'Anne-Marie Fortier writes with such sensitivity and perception on the impact of the UK governments regimes of citizenship and naturalization. This book illuminates the precarities and uncertainties of racialized citizenship and raises important questions on the injustices involved in process of determining who is deemed worthy of citizenship.'
Bridget Byrne, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

'Taking British citizenship as her focal point, Fortier combines field work with an exhaustive reading of the secondary literature to contend that citizenship is rendered vulnerable by political and socioeconomic developments and that this uncertainty is central to governmental practices of citizenship.'
CHOICE (March 2022)

Author Bio

Anne-Marie Fortier is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University