Paper short abstract:

This paper disrupts notions of citizenship constructed from a nationalistic perspective by arguing that citizenship is an unstable and porous concept that is open for expansion and appropriation for different purposes when cast in the everyday (re)production of urban space.

Paper long abstract:

The idea of a city as a space of citizenship production has a long history dating from the ancient Greek city-state or polis, ancient Roman cities and medieval European cities. The concept of urban citizenship is an innovative concept that is useful to think through contestation in urban spaces and the redistribution of public goods. Yet, the concept is also useful in thinking through citizenship beyond national borders as it offers a space to re-think urban citizenship in relation to the everyday (re)production of space and questions of belonging. In doing the work of exploring the urban space, we believe that cities become a privileged space for exploring ways in which the historical, the present, and the future are embodied, imagined, and re-imagined through everyday interactions of urban residents. Drawing from experiences of South African townships, this paper disrupts notions of citizenship constructed from a nationalistic perspective. Employing ethnographic mapping East London – a South African city, we unpack meanings of urban citizenship grounded in urban geographies of the making and unmaking of citizenship. We draw attention to specific localised ways of identity construction, imaginations of belonging and the (re)constitution of communities. We argue that a reading of these constructions distabilises the traditional concept of citizenship, rendering it porous and making it open for expansion and appropriation for different purposes in the everyday (re)production of urban space.