Radically Rethinking Citizenship: Disaggregation, Agonistic Pluralism and the Politics of Immigration in the United States
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Author | Robert W. Glover |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00861.x |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Radically Rethinking Citizenship: Disaggregation,
Agonistic Pluralism and the Politics of
Immigration in the United Statespost_861 209..229
Robert W. Glover
James Madison University
The status of citizenship and the rights extended to non-citizens are among the most contentious and hotly debated
political issues in numerousWestern polities. Some scholars, most notably Seyla Benhabib, have deemed the contem-
porary changes a ‘disaggregation of rights claims’, in which the interplay between ideals of particularism and
universalism lead to an ‘unbundling’ of civil, political and social rights with formal national membership. Yet this
theoretical framing harbors deficiencies that complicate our understanding of the contemporary politics of immigra-
tion. In this article, I critically examine this account to show both its theoretical shortcomings and the incomplete
explanations to which these deficiencies lead. In particular, I focus on the case of the 2006 protests in response to
restrictionist immigration reform in the United States. Furthermore, I suggest ways in which an agonistic pluralist
approach to citizenship and immigration issues provides us with a richer account of the political negotiations under
way, as wellas a means to re-conceptualize democratic voice and, at least in part, to begin democratically legitimating
borders and access to political membership.
Immigration and citizenship rank among the most salient issues in contemporary polities.
If we consider membership in a political community to be the ‘primary social good’ from
which all other goods flow (such as welfare benefits, life opportunities, political voice), the
consequentiality of citizenship within a stable, prosperous state becomes clear (Walzer,
1983, p. 29).Under standing ongoing changes in the status of citizenship as well as the rights
granted by the political community is of the utmost scholarly importance. This is particu-
larly so as many societies engage in frenzied debates over the understanding of ‘citizen’ and
‘alien’ in an era of global mass migration, with vulnerable migrants, refugees and asylees
thrust into an anxiety-laden state of political limbo.
Since T. H. Marshall’s formulation of citizenship, scholars have frequently conceptualized
citizenship as a combination of civil, political and social rights and entitlements. However,
Seyla Benhabib and others argue that we are witnessing a ‘disaggregation of citizenship
rights’ in which the civil, political and social rights associated with member ship are
increasingly ‘unbundled’ from one another ( Benhabib, 2002; 2003; 2005).1Many claim that
these dimensions of citizenship are increasingly ‘delinked’ from territorial boundaries
altogether, in the form of human rights nor ms and transnational political engagement
(Ong, 2006; Williams,2007). Throughout the world,‘proto-citizenship’ rights can now be
exercised at both local and supranational levels by an array of actors – long-term residents,
denizens, refugees or those with multiple memberships ( Benhabib, 2006, p. 172).
In this article I challenge this account, arguing that it subtly affirms rigid distinctions
between particularist parochial exclusion and universalist attitudes of openness. This sim-
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00861.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011 VOL 59, 209–229
© 2010The Author.Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
plifies the political struggles fought by diverse actors, falsely positing linear and inevitable
transitions from the former particularism to latter universalism. A closer examination
reveals significant attempts to ‘rebundle’ citizenship rights and linkages between claim
making and national membership. Fur thermore, disagg regation fictively constructs an
evolutionary account of the evaporation of particularism, underemphasizing political
agency in the contemporary politics of migration.
Thus far, Benhabib has focused largely on the European Union, where she argues that
this ‘effect has proceeded most intensively’ (Benhabib, 2006, p. 46). Here, I examine
disaggregation in light of the politics of immigration in the United States.2As a self-
styled ‘nation of immigrants’, American citizenship draws legitimacy from ideals of uni-
versal personhood and individual rights rooted in ‘self-evident truths’ of individual
equality. Such attitudes would seem to support the broad extension of rights to non-
members posited by the disaggregation thesis. Yet inclusion and openness are often
embedded within particularistic conceptions of community and belonging, manifested in
periodic swings towards nativism and restrictionism. Fur thermore, even Benhabib notes
that the ‘irony’ of current citizenship practices in the United States is that while certain
social rights and benefits have been forthcoming for aliens, ‘the transition to political
rights and the privileges of membership remains blocked or is made extremely difficult’
(Benhabib, 2003, p. 422). Contrary to a gradual transition from closure to openness, the
trajectory of citizenship and membership in the US exhibits non-linear dimensions – a
precarious and tense negotiation drawing emphatically opposed normative principles into
paradoxical coexistence and codependence.
I suggest understanding these changes through the lens of ‘agonistic pluralism’, as articu-
lated by scholars such as William E. Connolly, Chantal Mouffe and Bonnie Honig. The
agonistic framework unsettles the dichotomy of ‘openness’ and ‘closure’, the implicit
assumptions of linearity and inevitability, and it exposes the uneven trajectory of ‘unbun-
dling’ and‘re-bundling’. Additionally, agonistic pluralism offers practical insights enabling us
to rethink the extension of political voice and provide modern polities with a means to
legitimate democratically their national boundaries. At a time when the question of how
to ‘deal with’immigration constitutes a foremost political concern, fostering a debate laden
with destructive simplifications, such insights are essential.
Critiquing the Disaggregation Thesis
The disaggregation thesis is appealing, suggesting a global cosmo-politics that alleviates
suffering of the disadvantaged, empowers the oppressed and protects the universal rights of
individuals as human beings, rather than those with the proper national membership. Yet
the way in which this thesis has been framed raises numerous concerns. It affir ms and
upholds a problematic binary between the‘par ticular’ and‘universal’ normative foundations
of citizenship,conflates a nor mative account of the need for citizenship to be‘disaggregated’
with the suggestion that this process is under way, while failing to examine ways in which
‘disaggregation’ and‘unbundling’ are never unidimensional. In this section,I articulate each
of these concerns in turn.
210 ROBERT W. GLOVER
© 2010The Author.Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011, 59(2)
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