Pledging allegiance: The strangers inside democracy and citizenship

Fiona Jenkins*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Allegiance arises as a visible issue most obviously where there is conflict, such that one identity, or one commitment, seems to preclude holding other identities, other commitments. But perhaps it also has a wider political life as a dimension of a tacit social contract, which demands that we not only agree to respect, but more profoundly, commit to the choice-worthiness, of the norms or ideals governing our co-belonging. As Honig notes, this may even give a special, positive role to the stranger, whose choice of a place or a people, and the free giving of allegiance, can bear reading as the overt act of commitment that those who already belong, or who simply owe allegiance by virtue of birth, are unable to make except in times of conflict or struggle. If the renewal of the symbolic value of allegiance is needed for the revitalisation of a social contract, then this may be the site of forms of xenophilia no less than xenophobia, or of a complex relation between the two. It may also mark a moment in which one may sense democracy being renewed, or, and in tension with this, find state sovereignty renewing symbolic power as it grants or withholds citizenship. This insight inflects the following reading of the rise and implications of some key aspects of ‘citizenship testing’ regimes, which in many Western nations in recent years have become ways of establishing conditions of entry to participation in civil society and, by extension, of entry to citizenship. In what follows, I first review Honig’s argument about the foreigner, and how the question of his or her consent is of importance to the ideology of a social contract, which binds together a free people under law. I then consider how citizenship-testing regimes are explicitly linked in some nations, Australia for one, to a renewal of the importance of a pledge of allegiance to the principles deemed constitutive of the nation. Within this frame, which purports to be one of equal membership, the question of what qualifies a person for entry to citizenship is linked to the regular reminder that conferral of citizenship is to be considered as a privilege, not a right, with implications for those upon whom such a privilege has or might be conferred (or refused, or withdrawn) by contrast with those for whom it is a birth right. This suggests that it is the renewal of the terms of sovereignty that dominates in the pledge. However, as I also discuss, pledging allegiance is a complex speech act; and what comes into play in demanding such a pledge, in enacting it, or in the ways in which it constitutes a public space, may exceed the primary intentions that have led to its renewed emphasis in citizenship regimes.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationAllegiance and Identity in a Globalised World
    PublisherCambridge University Press
    Pages169-191
    Number of pages23
    ISBN (Electronic)9781139696654
    ISBN (Print)9781107074330
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2014

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