Active Citizenship in Religiously and Culturally Diverse Societies (ACT)
My doctoral research is part of a larger three-year project on active citizenship (ACT) at PRIO.
I am looking at three major disciplines: feminist studies, anthropology and human geography. The PhD, which will result in a monograph, aims to look at the participatory dimension of citizenship among citizens in Oslo and Copenhagen, focusing on motivations, agency and power behind societal engagements, the locations where these take place and the contestations between the lived experiences of a diverse citizenry and official discourses on active citizenship. Variously socially positioned citizens may have differing practices, experiences and understandings of civic engagement. The dynamic of power relations, access to formal and informal participatory spaces, subjective knowledge and values, as well as individual motivations can all have an impact on social agency and the locations where citizenship practices take place.
There is a need to understand the conditions for citizenship equality, and how societal systems, structures and practices contribute to hegemonic practices or enable new possibilities for agency. Going beyond an understanding of citizenship as more than simply the formal relationship between an individual and the state, I employ a feminist conceptualization of citizenship as membership of a community and of the patterns of inclusion and exclusion which shape that membership. In addition to traditional channels for (political) influence, I will be looking at new forms of mobilization, such as grassroots mobilization, collective action and informal spheres through a total of 74 interviews and 15 focus groups. I started my project in October 2014 and will finalize in October 2017.