Paper Short Abstract:

This paper aims to reflect on the normativity behind the application of Isin's "acts of citizenship" and its connection to the Lefebvrian concept of the "droit à la ville" through the examples of two social movements organizations composed of people with a migratory background.

Paper Abstract:

Isin’s understanding of citizenship as a set of practices (Isin/Wood 1999) is used as a critical interpretative tool within my current research on two social movements organizations composed of people with migratory backgrounds: the National Coordination of New Italian Generations (CoNNGI) and the New German Organizations (ndo). The concept plays in the research a central role not only because it allows framing as “acts of citizenship” the discursive and not discursive collective practices implemented by the actors of CoNNGI and ndo independently from their formal status as citizens but also because it enables the analysis of these practices as detached from the spatial level taken into consideration, therefore allowing a comparison between acts of citizenship beyond the statal borders in which they are enacted. Finally, it enables to engage not only with the several and partially overlapping meanings of citizenship and their actualizations (Isin/Nyers 2014) but also with the relationship between citizenship practices and democracy. In particular, the paper shows how Isin’s concept is strictly connected to the Lefebvrian droit à la ville (Lefebvre 2014) that emphasizes a conception of citizenship that is not - or not only - limited to formal legal recognition, but it reveals the importance of (both ideological and physical) space and the possibility of participation and access to it. The paper will, therefore, discuss how the concept of “acts of citizenship” can be a valid alternative to a concept of citizenship linked to the nation-state's historical and spatial dimension.