Paper short abstract:

Citizenship ceremonies intend to create sense of belonging and confirm images of migrants as loyal citizens. Heterotopias are real places in which utopias are played out (Foucault 1967). The paper investigates citizenship ceremonies as heterotopias and matters of diverse imaginaries and ‘doing’.

Paper long abstract:

Citizenship ceremonies are forms of ritual practices emerging in several European nation states. Intended to create a sense of belonging, they implicitly problematize migrant loyalties and hybrid identities. The rhetoric at the ceremonies in different countries is strikingly alike; they confirm the image of successful integration and the migrant as a welcomed contribution to the new community. This paper will examine these imaginaries and the embedded expectations to the emotional effects of the discourses and materializations of citizenship, as these are not simply the results of the organizers intensions. They are also a result of the images, expectances and agency of the new citizens.

For some participants the country may appear in a more inclusive version in the ceremonies. In this sense, the ceremonies correspond to Foucault's concept of heterotopias: Whereas utopias are unreal locations, heterotopias are real places in which utopias are played out with great effect. These heterotopias are matters of distributed agency, enactment and 'doing'. Thus it will be argued that the images of migrants as citizens that are performed at the ceremonies involve materiality, performativity, history, structural constraint, and the co-dependence of the performers in the desired transformation of the self from immigrant to citizen. Based on ethnographies from citizenship ceremonies in UK, Australia and Scandinavia this paper will explore how images of migration and utopias of inclusion are performed and materialised in heterotopias in all their ambiguity and heterogeneity.