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Belonging, citizenship and identities

Individuals’ membership of social groups and communities is a dynamic and contested field that is being vehemently negotiated in everyday social practice, in the interaction between citizen and state, in fierce and violent encounters between different groups or in the interface between local and global actors. Increased migration within and across borders for labour or safety; internal processes of economic, social and cultural differentiation and growing inequality, and political and environmental emergencies are all factors that contribute to heightened political, intellectual and popular discussions around the definition and negotiation of social identities – of belonging and recognition - in the Asian region.

To begin to understand the mechanisms inherent in the politics of identity, research must focus on 1) cultural understandings that rely on traditional cosmologies and historical experiences or draw on new images and values made accessible through the flows of globalisation, and which are all part of larger affective models; 2) legal definitions and policies that make notions of identity and belonging the basis of distributing rights and entitlements and an integral aspect of processes of inclusion and exclusion; and finally 3) the practices, experiences and expressions of identity in various socio-political environments, where individuals and groups claim and promote particular kinds of belonging and authorities either recognise these or reject them and impose alternative categories.

The consideration of citizenship in the context of regional and global change requires that attention be paid to legal definitions of citizenship in specific constitutions. But it is equally important that attention is given to different cultural understandings of belonging, which builds on for example ethnicity, religious intellectual traditions and historical political structures and are expressed and embodied in a variety of material and social activities. Finally, attention must be devoted to how citizenship and belonging is practiced and experienced by different social groups and individuals, possessing or aspiring to different degrees of citizenship; how it works in everyday social contexts and in encounters between political and social institutions and the individual.

Interdisciplinary and comparative study of the three above-mentioned areas can lead to a much deeper understanding of the dynamics of political, social and cultural belonging in Asian contexts. As a result of such study, it will not only be able to develop broader theoretical tools for discussing both legal and emotional states of belonging (and their changes) in an increasingly global arena, but it will also be possible to provide a much better foundation for a basic understanding of parameters of belonging and recognition that differ greatly from those in the European/American regions. Not least, such research can prove an essential tool for the prediction of emerging social conflicts as well as for the identification of development opportunities.