Building citizenship from the margins: citizen self- and group-formation through PAR processes

A governmentality approach to citizenship focuses on the structuring power of government through its regulatory powers – visible and invisible (Foucault 1978, Gaventa 2006). Prevailing governmental discourses of citizenship frame citizens as ‘us’ and ‘other’, which Isin (in Benson 2023) describes as ‘alterity’. To understand how marginalised or ‘othered’ citizens challenge this framing and form a sense of citizenship requires a focus on agency. Some scholars suggest that identity and citizenship mutually shape each other (Mouffe 1996, Yuval-Davis 1999), and that claiming citizenship from the margins requires a reassessment and reassertion of identities which have become devalued, and the generation of alternative discourses demanding justice (Kabeer 2005); demands for redistribution and recognition (Fraser and Honneth 2003), and for respect and dignity (Lister 2013). A reframing of citizenship may require a disruption or cognitive dissonance, which shifts perceptions and may enable citizens to create alternative narratives to prevailing exclusionary framings of citizenship (Turner 2016, Freire 1972). Or as Isin puts it (ibid) ‘citizenship virtues are produced by those who are dominated, because they are forced in a space where they must articulate anew what it means to struggle against it’. This paper will explore how such a shift and reframing can take place through collective reflection, analysis and action. It draws on processes of participatory action research (PAR) conducted in two cities in northern England, and in Nicaragua. Peer researchers from marginalised settings were trained in participatory research methods to explore experiences of marginalisation and of solidarity, and generate learning and action. The research process involved participatory methodologies such as storytelling (Ledwith & Springett 2010; Wheeler, Shahrokh and Derakhshani 2020) to enable participants to explore their lived experience, present their knowledge and dialogue with each other. The methodology links the exploration of individual subjective experiences to group-based dialogue across differences, and collective sense-making. This process opens up possibilities for change (Heron, 1996; Howard, Ospina & Yorks 2021), and may generate ‘agentive citizenship’ (Hull and Katz 2006) and deepen democratic thinking and action. The research generated learning about the factors which contribute to citizen agency, and how these operate at different registers. At the personal level, it involves rebuilding a sense of self-worth, or self-recognition. At the relational level, it involves building mutual respect and recognition, which contribute to a sense of belonging to a wider collective or community. Peer researchers identified relational acts of citizenship through which they are challenging injustice, for example helping others in the community to challenge violence or discrimination. These everyday acts and ‘ways of being-in-common’ (Isin & Nielsen 2008) prefigure an alternative construction of citizenship based in small acts of solidarity and resistance to exclusionary discourses, spaces and practices.