Citizenship in the Shadow of Empire: Enforced and Contested

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Citizenship is often framed as a legal and social benefit, granting individuals rights, protections, and a sense of belonging. However, scholars have also theorized citizenship as a constraint (Soysal 1994; Bulakh 2023), a mechanism of policing and control (Andersson 2014), and a tool for making claims to the state (Petryna 2002; Nguyen 2010; Biehl 2015). This interdisciplinary panel critically examines the enforcement of citizenship, focusing on its consequences for individuals and communities in (post)Soviet peripheries. The papers in this panel explore passportization as a form of state violence, the unequal distribution of citizenship as a privilege, and the ways in which memory and national narratives shape nation-building and the imposition of citizenship. The panel is concentrated on the coercive dimensions of citizenship and its role as both an instrument of governance and a site of contestation.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Eric Lohr, American U

Papers

• Forced Citizenship: Political Migration to the Soviet Union, Belonging and Passportization in 1930-50s - Yevhenii Monastyrskyi, Harvard U

• Migration, Subjecthood and Citizenship in Imperial and Soviet Central Asia: The Case of Hadj - Nazerke Mukhlissova, Yale U

• Deadly Care: Citizenship and Access to Medicine on the Russia-Occupied Territories of Ukraine - Dafna Rachok, UNC at Chapel Hill

• Reterritorialization of Citizenship, Wartime Mobilities, and Gender during Russia's Full-Scale War against Ukraine - Ruslana Koziienko, Central European U (Austria)

Discussant

• John Vsetecka, Nova Southeastern U