The Right to Belong (If You Can Afford It): Market-based Restrictions on Social Citizenship

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Citizenship and Belonging

Abstract

This paper uses data from face-to-face interviews with recently resettled Burundian and Burmese refugees in Michigan to explore the concept of market citizenship. Market citizenship (Brodie 1997) is defined as the allocation of citizenship rights based on an individual’s economic power and participation in the labor market. While refugees have legal access to certain social rights, through the limitations of market citizenship they are frequently denied access to those rights. Our data illustrate some ways in which that denial occurs, but also points to ways that refugees use family relations to circumnavigate the barriers to social citizenship that they frequently experience during the immediate resettlement period. We argue that citizenship is broadly constrained by neoliberalism, and that relying upon refugee families’ creative mobilization of familial and community relations.

Authors

• Stephanie J. Nawyn, Michigan State University

• Breanne L Grace, University of South Carolina