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Chapter 1Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?
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1.1IntroductionLet us begin with a debate, an argument, waged in popular media, in bars, on street
corners, and the halls of American government. The subject is immigration, the influx of new
entrants into a unitary political community with seemingly shared ideals, norms, and a common
identity. One perspective on this issue holds that these new waves of entrants into the political
community are unlike previous migrantsmore culturally distinct, more tenaciously clinging to
their own traditions, culture, and identities. This poses threats to our nation, our institutions of
democratic government, our prosperity, the security of our community. A commentator from this
camp argues that while we have shown wonderful power of assimilation in the past, these
new migrants constitute a heavier burden than [our nation] can wisely or safely carry.
Admittedly, he states the grandchildren of these people might make thrifty, intelligent
citizens, but the intervening period may nevertheless be a costly and unsafe experiment which
imperils our society.1
Yet skeptics of this argument see threatening elements within this drive to restrict
immigration on the basis of inassimilability. They see fear as the driving force behind
interpretations of the new and distinct identities held by entrants. One writes,
Surely, we cannot be certain of our spiritual democracy when, claiming to melt the
nations within us to a comprehension of our free and democratic institutions, we fly
into panic at the first sign of their own will and tendencyWhat we emphaticallydo notwant is that these distinctive qualities should be washed out into a tasteless,
colorless fluid of uniformity.2
This latter position supports greater openness with regard to new entrants, and an approach to
1Edward Bemis, quoted in Aristide Zolberg.A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006): 211. Henceforth cited asNation by Design.2
Bourne, Randolph. "Transnational America." In The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918, ed. O. Hansen.
(Berkeley, CA University of California Press, 1977 [1916]): 249, 253-54.
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national identity which seeks merger, rather than fusiona retention of national boundaries
which imbues our conception of those boundaries with a more cosmopolitan ethic of openness
and universalism.
This debate is not ripped from the headlines of yesterdays New York Times or cunningly
excerpted from last nights installment ofLou Dobbs Tonight, yet perhaps if the language used
were a tad more inelegant and immediate, this could be the case. The restrictionist voice is that
of Edward Webster Bemis, a University of Chicago economist arguing for measures to
drastically limit turn-of-the-century European immigration to the United States. The rebuttal
comes from progressive intellectual Randolph Bourne, writing in 1916, amidst wartime fears that
hyphenated identities constituted a threat to the unity and security of the United States. There
is a point to be drawn from this deceptive presentation, initially devoid of historical context and
attribution. It is that debates regarding the desirability of immigration and its larger effects on
political membership and citizenship are the enduring part and parcel of the political
community.
In this study, the larger issue addressed is the deficiency of existing modes of democratic
participation to engage this debate and to arrive at outcomes which meet the test of democratic
legitimacy. If inclusion, pluralism, and popular sovereignty are held to be political virtues of the
highest order, the means by which we have democratically negotiated entrance into the political
community falls glaringly short. A democratically legitimate answer to this foundational political
question presupposes a more inclusive process, driven less by the hope of consensus and more by
the prospect of contentious, agonistic engagement. If the reader will permit one more seemingly
dusty and antiquarian excursion, the meaning and significance of this intellectual will come into
greater relief.
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Figure 1: The Immigrant: Is he an Acquisition or a Detriment?,Judge, 1903.
The political cartoon above is taken from a conservative American publication called
Judge, published in 1903. In the center, stands an immigrant entrant to the United States, cast in
stereotypical Eastern or Southern European stock, as were many migrants at the time. While the
bemused immigrant stands in the center of our view, a caucophany of democratic voices
surround him. Yet, as this is an image, their voices are represented by placards giving a short
distillation of their views with regard to what this figure represents. Uncle Sam, the most
prominent figure other than the immigrant himself, declares that he is brawn and muscle for my
country. A portly politician on the far right of the image, jovially proclaims he makes votes for
me. An industrialist to the left of the immigrant, with hat in hand, states he gives me cheap
labor.
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Yet not all the voices are positive. A manual laborer angrily tugs upon the pantleg of the
immigrant, arguing that he cheapens my labor. A uniformed immigration officer with a large,
gold syringe claims that the immigrant brings with him disease. A well-dressed, mustachioed
man to the far left of the image declares without any explanation that the immigrant is simply a
menace. Lastly, a wide-eyed statesmen is the only character within the image to express
ambivalence and uncertainty, stating simply, he is a puzzle to me. Mindful of the broad
national interest he is charged with representing, the statesman is candid in his uncertainty as to
whether or not immigration is a force to be resisted or a positive development to be embraced.
For our purposes, a number of important insights jump out of this image. First, we see
again that many of the concerns and fears that characterized the public discourse around
immigration in 1903 remain enduring features our present political reality.3
Generalized notions
of menace, insecurity, and fears of the economic costs to citizens imposed by migrants are
set against the interests served by their comparatively cheap labor, and the political power
wielded by ethnic lobbies and those who support greater migration. Of the positions not
represented here, perhaps the most glaring omission are those rooted in an evolving and
emergent discourse of human rights and a humanitarian responsibility to protect. Yet even this
may be due to the ideological leanings of the publication Judge, rather than its complete absence
from the political discourse of the time. In addition, note the significance of the immigrants
silence. Though identities and characteristics are thrust upon him, many of them quite negative
3This is of course with the possible exception of the idea that immigrants bring with them disease, though even this
is debatable. There was of course Lou Dobbss infamous 2005 report on the incidence of leprosy increasing with
larger numbers of undocumented immigrants. Though this was later dismissed by numerous credible experts, the
fact that such a statement could be made on a major news media network in the United States suggests it resonates
with broader themes in American popular consciousness. See David Leonhardt. "Truth, Fiction, and Lou Dobbs."
The New York Times May 30, 2007. However, notwithstanding the widespread criticism in this instance many
credible political and public health authorities cite the increased risk of a global pandemic, such as that caused by
the Avian Flu or the H1N1 Swine Flue, due to high rates of loosely restricted global migration and movement.
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and disparaging, he lacks a formal means by which to simply state what he means to the
community or conversely, what this strange new assortment of hostile and self-serving voices
means to him. Again, though it would be an inaccuracy to say that present-day immigrants are
without political voice in any capacity, a number of factors conspire to dampen their democratic
energies: the precarious nature of their continued stay within the polity, their lack of inclusion in
formal political settings, societal distrust towards the extension of political voice towards
outsiders, racist and ethnic discrimination, linguistic and cultural barriers, among other factors.
Figure 2: The Unrestricted Dumping-Ground,Judge, 1903.
In this next image, again fromJudge in 1903, the attitude is expressed is quite different
with strong overtones of fear, alarmism, and racialized animosity. Gone is the open reflection by
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society of what these new outsiders may mean to them. Gone is the array of different
perspectives by which we could conceive of the new tide of migration. In essence, gone is the
democratic discourse which, incomplete as it may have been, characterized the previous picture.
The immigrants are universally depicted as armed rodents, of swarthy European complexion,
infesting the United States, cast as an unrestricted dumping ground. Uncle Sam, the central
figure in this picture, wears a forlorn expression, looking pensively into the distance, so as not to
see the teeming mass of hideous creatures at his feet. Again, we see labels attached to the
migrant-rodents, but this time with themes and identities universally threatening and frightful to
American popular consciousnessanarchist, socialist, mafia, assassin. President
William McKinley, assassinated in August 1901 by an anarchist of Polish descent, looms within
the smoke of Uncle Sams cigar as this ugly scene unfolds before him.
There remains the question of how to interpret these two images in conjunction with one
another. I suggest that we should think of these images as speaking to one another. The negative
identities and identifications thrust upon non-citizens are by no means stable nor universal as the
first image, and our contemporary debates, show us. Yet the danger is that, "in the absence of
resistance to them, they could be stabilized.4
To the extent that venues for contesting such
negative characterizations of migrants remain under-developed or nonexistent, we cannot expect
the identities which emerge in this debate to be consistent with pluralistic or democratic values.
Characterizations of immigration, to the extent that the migrant or refugee cannot respond to the
identities and themes attached to migration, risks crystallizing into an intensely negative and
misleading caricature. The rights, opportunities, and sense of dignity afforded to migrants and
refugees within a new political community hang in the balance. Theoretically constructing these
4Bonnie Honig Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993): 15.
Henceforth cited asDisplacement.
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alternative, more inclusive sites of contentious democratic engagement as a basis for
contemporary praxis is the foremost concern of this study.
1.2 Migration, Citizenship and Democracy
To be clear, let us not deny that citizenship in a democratic polity necessarily implies
boundaries, limitations, and exclusion. Terminology such as political community or national
identity would be vacuous and empty if this were not the case. Conceptually, citizenship
attempts to reside in a space between the unrestricted inclusion of the universal, which can be a
vacuous status lacking in salience and meaning, and the irreducibly local, which may have great
salience and meaning, but only through its rigid particularism and exclusion. As Ronald Beiner
notes, it should be clear that the more that citizens become fixated on cultural differences, the
more difficult it becomes to sustain an experience of common citizenship.5
Yet though these
notions of commonality are essential to sustaining citizenships meaning, they risk papering over
the always fragmentary, imperfect, and re-arrangeable status of membership and identity in
contemporary societies. In this sense, adhering to democratic notions of popular sovereignty and
inclusive pluralism calls upon us to continually interrogate and examine these borders,
boundaries, and potential rigidities so as to ensure a vibrant political space which promotes
meaningful contestation. The central research question addressed in this dissertation then is this:
How can we move towards a theoretical model of democratic citizenship which
recognizes the fact that exclusion occurs yet allows space for outsiders to
contest the naturalization and permanence of their exclusion?
I rely upon the insights of agonistic pluralism within radical democratic theory to
conceptualize such a political space, to draw out the ways in which this model would differ from
prevailing theoretical conceptions of democratic citizenship. In addition, I empirically study the
5Ronald Beiner. "Why Citizenship Constituted a Theoretical Problem in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century."
In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 10.
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politics of migration within the contemporary United States I order to suggest the feasibility of
fostering agonistic spaces out of the living realities in which we currently work and reside.
1.3 The Citizenship-Migration Nexus and the Problem of Democratic Legitimacy
Contemporary world events have forced a renewed emphasis on democratic citizenship.
Amidst widening global inequality, we are called upon to examine the man-made borders which
may entitle one citizen to a life of prosperity, well-being, and stability, while condemning
another to a life of crowded squalor, bleak economic prospects, and a harsh and unforgiving
struggle for subsistence. If one accepts, as Michael Walzer does, that membership in a political
community is the primary social good, from which the means to pursue all other social goods
flows (income, welfare benefits, life opportunities, political voice, and so on), the
consequentiality of the issues we currently face becomes clear.6
Scholars analyzing citizenship
are not only engaged in debate about the nature of inclusion per se. They are also confronting its
concomitant role in perpetuating global inequality. Furthermore, amidst continued ethnic
conflict, refugee crises, South-North economic migration, increasingly strained social welfare
systems in the West, and increasing concerns regarding the security threats posed by outsiders,
the debate itself becomes amplified, both in academic and policy-making settings.
Perhaps it is for this very reason that conceptualizations of citizenship have tended to
view membership as something fixed and enduring, a bulwark of stability against an uncertain
cauldron of danger which swirls beyond the gates. Citizenship in modern democratic polities
tends to imply a hard outsidewhich is properly and necessarily bounded and a soft
insidewhere some version of inclusionary, universalist commitments prevails.7
Membership
6Michael Walzer. Spheres of Justice : a Defense of Pluralism and Equality. (New York: Basic Books, 1983): 29.
7Linda Bosniak. The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006): 124-25.
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within a political community ideally implies that ones status is, among other qualities, sacred,
unique, and consequential.8 One must derive benefits from the state and value their inclusion
within it, while also being prepared to perform sacred sacrificial acts in its name, and only in its
name. There is a stability attributed to the soft inside of the political community which
contrasts with perceptions of threat attributed to new and diverse forces outside the
community. This conceptualization drives the idea that the states ability to regulate the flows of
persons into and out of its borders is a paramount function of the modern sovereign state.
However, that while migration policy and the regulation of access to citizenship are one of the
most stark exercises of coercive power the modern state can possibly employ, we do not
typically see such acts in need of democratic justification and legitimation to those most
seriously affected.9
If we adopt an expansive conception of what democracy means, this silencing of non-
citizen political voices presents problems. Thinking critically and expansively about the exercise
of popular sovereignty, an indelible feature of democratic participation, means questioning the
unmitigated ability of the state to regulate entry and exit as well as access to citizenship.
Furthermore, broadening the scope of those included within our discussion of membership and
boundaries may mean providing settings in which those most deeply affected can respond to this
exertion of state power. This is not to say that every exercise of state power against an outsider
would ultimately have to emerge from inclusive transnational political sphere where, in a
Habermasian sense, norms could meet with the consent of all affected10
8Rogers Brubaker. "Immigration, Citizenship, and the Nation-State in France and Germany." In The Citizenship
Debates: A Reader, ed. G. Shafir. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998): 131-64.9
Arash Abizadeh. "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders."
Political Theory 36 (2008): 38.
10Jurgen Habermas.Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy.
Translated by W. Rehg. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996): 197.
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Conceptualizing the use of coercive state power in this way would establish inclusive
democratic settings that seem almost farcical in nature. Democratic legitimacy of a states
foreign policy would hinge upon those affected by the coercive power of such actions being
brought into the public discussion in ways which strain even the most overactive political
imagination. This would mean, for example, that an American attempt to craft energy policy
could be seen as democratically legitimate only insofar as Nigerian or Kuwaiti voices were
brought into the discussion to articulate the ways in which such an energy policy would affect
them. Examples such as this stretch the limits of both practicability and desirability, crashing
headlong into the realities of the modern international system.
However, the politics of citizenship and migration are distinct from the example cited
above. These policies have effects on individuals who already reside within our borders, in
varying degrees of proximity to full membership within the polity. A states approach towards
citizenship has profound effects for individuals already imbricated in the fabric of that society,
and already embedded in its political system. Non-citizens often live and work alongside full
citizens, paying into national systems of social entitlement and partaking in our health and
education systems. Alongside our fear of non-citizens as somehow representative of the unruly
world beyond our borders, there are a myriad of ways in which we embrace what immigrants
bring to us. Bonnie Honig writes that the foreigner within a society brings, diversity,
energy, talents, innovative cuisines, new recipes, [and] a renewed appreciation of our own
regimes whose virtues are so great that they draw immigrants to join us. 11 Non-citizen migrants
perform an invaluable role in reaffirming the choice-worthiness of our democratic polities. The
11Bonnie Honig.Democracy and the Foreigner. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001): 46. Henceforth
cited asDemocracy and the Foreigner.
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fact that immigrants live among us and contribute to the culture, politics, and economics of our
societies, suggests that the degree of democratic legitimation owed to them is substantial and
consequential. Non-citizen aliens cannot be democratically silenced in the same ways as those
that suffer the far-flung effects of coercive power indirectly, thousands of miles from its source.
Immigrants already reside within our societies, in spirit if not in democratic voice. The task of
incorporating their voices into our democratic politics thus remains an important, albeit
challenging and unprecedented, consideration. The goal of how begin to accomplish this task,
and the theoretical basis on which we would do so, is the task of this research project.
1.4 What Agonistic Pluralism Brings to our Discussion of Citizenship
Agonistic pluralism, or agonism, advances a conception of politics in which contestation
and conflictual engagement become the goal of our political encounters, rather than seeking
harmonious social cooperation. The many variants of agonism tend to avoid celebrat[ing] a
world without points of stabilization, as we might find in more avowedly postmodern
conceptions of politics, yet agonism does recognize the perpetuity and enduring nature of
contestation.12 The exercise of coercive power, exclusion, and hegemonic marginalization are
enduring features of modern politics from this perspective. Rather than seeking to eliminate these
features, agonism calls upon us to engage and re-engage these moments in the most inclusive and
contentious democratic settings possible, allowing a multiplicity of diverse voices to engage in
the struggle for hegemony.13
12Honig,Displacement, 15.
13Simona Goi. "Agonism, Deliberation and the Politics of Abortion." Polity 37 (2005): 60. Henceforth, cited as the
Politics of Abortion.
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The question remains as to what adopting the agonistic approach would do to resolve the
tensions inherent in our notions of borders and democratic citizenship.14 Yet this would be to
mis-frame the question as agonistic conceptions would not advance a resolution, but rather a
continuous re-vision and reworking of previous resolutions. I will suggest that agonistic
democratic theory offers us three valuable critical insights with regard to contemporary
citizenship. Firstand foremost, an agonistic approach to citizenship engages the paradoxical and
contradictory foundations of citizenship as a constitutive and productive tension, rather than as a
problem to be transcended or avoided. Second, such an approach would open a space whereby
we actively consider the question of extending political voice to non-citizens. Third and lastly,
an agonistic framework recognizes that exclusion is an unavoidable element in the constitution
of any political community; the political community could not exist absent a constitutive
outside. Yet agonism productively engages this need for closure and provides us with a
framework of radical pluralism by which to legitimate and continuously renegotiate the terms of
that exclusion.
In a departure from many prevailing understandings of liberal democratic politics, an
agonistic approach refus[es] to equate concern for human dignity with a quest for rational
consensus or overarching agreement on the principles driving our political engagement.15
Rather, the goal becomes exposure of those moments which are characterized as consensus or
the widespread will of the demos as the opposite: instances of originary exclusion and
moments of hegemony disguised as the reconciliation of two conflicting logics.16 However, the
14Though there are fundamental theoretical variations and divides in recent agonistic democratic theory, I do not
engage them here at the outset, focusing rather on points of shared agreement and what such theories bring to a
discussion of American citizenship. See Chapter 3 of this work for an extended discussion of existing typologies and
my own alternative conceptualization of the diversity of agonistic pluralism.15
William E. Connolly.Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2002): x. Henceforth cited asIdentity/Difference.16
Chantal Mouffe. The Democratic Paradox. (London: Verso, 2000). Henceforth, cited as Paradox.
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problem for agonists is not exclusion in and of itself, contrary to what some critics have
charged.17 William Connolly notes that boundaries are indispensable, providing the
preconditions of identity, individual agency, and collective action.18
Yet boundaries always
accomplish this at the expense of other possibilities, other modes of order. Thus, while agonists
recognize that universal inclusion within the political community is an illusory goal, they critique
the treatment of exclusion as apolitical or natural, devoid of a decisionistic moment in which a
we-they distinction ispolitically created. To act as if these normative tensions can be
transcended is to misconceive of the democratic project. By such accounts, Honig writes,
the problem of democratic theory is how to find the right match between a peopleand its law, a state and its institutions. Obstacles are met and overcome, eventually
the right match is made and the newlywed couple is sent on its way to try and live
happily ever after.19
The reality, according to an agonistic framework, is that such tensions are never truly
overcome, or to appropriate Honigs metaphor, the newlyweds are never completely in a state
of marital bliss with one another.
17Monique Deveaux for instance notes that agonism has little to say about those who refuse to cooperate with
other citizens, or about citizens who have an entrenched interests in having a conflict continue unresolved or those
who adopt passive citizenship and do not see any value in ongoing conflict as the underlying principle driving a
robust democracy (See Monique Deveaux. 1999. "Agonism and Pluralism." Philosophy and Social Criticism 25
(1999): 4-5; see also Deborah Tannen,. 2002. "Agonism in Academic Discourse."Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1651-
69. Deveaux ignores the numerous instances in which self-described agonists state outright that forms of exclusion
will occur in these cases (see William E. Connolly. "Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence." Theory, Culture &
Society 11 (1994): 31-38. Henceforth cited as Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence.; Connolly,
Identity/Difference, xxix; Chantal Mouffe."Democracy, Power, and the "Political"." InDemocracy and Difference:Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996): 253;
Mouffe, Paradox, 99-100, 134; James Tully. 1999. "The Agonic Freedom of Citizens."Economy and Society 28 (2):
170. Henceforth cited as Agonic Freedom.; Honig,Democracy and the Foreigner, 121). The reasons why they
seemingly say so little stem from the fact that they entrust a radically pluralistic demos to politically articulate the
terms of the exclusion rather than simply explicitly stating themselves the ways such compulsion and exclusion
might occur. As Connolly says, agonistic pluralism does entail the necessity of setting limits[i]t simply insists
that we often do not know with assurance exactly what those limits must be (Connolly,Identity/Difference, xxix).18
Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence, 19.19
Honig,Democracy and the Foreigner, 109.
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To the extent that one can attribute a foundation to a theoretical framework which is so
avowedly anti-foundationalist, it rests again with the idea that those subject to the coercive
power of the state ought to exercise political voice in the formulation and deployment of that
coercion. Schaap writes that all agonists share a principled desire to leave more up to politics in
the sense that citizens should be free to contest the terms of public life and the conditions of their
political association.20
No outcome of this engagement can ever be considered closed; it
will always be open to question, to an element of non-consensus, and so to reciprocal question
and answer, demand and response, and negotiation.21
One means by which this extension of voice and destabilization of outcomes can be
achieved is through cultivating what Connolly calls an ethos of critical responsiveness.22 The
ethos of critical responsiveness consists of three basic attitudes. First, political actors should
possess an anticipatory attitude towards new efforts at pluralization even when such efforts
represent only nascent, embryonic forces pushing for change at the margins of the political
community. Second, those receiving political claims should be critical so as to foster meaningful
contestation within the political realm. This also guards against the emergence of fundamentalist
movements which seek not merely a voice within the contest but rather to impose [their]
identity as the universal standard and to punish everyone who deviates from it.23 Lastly, those
pressing their claims must remain self-revisionary, meaning that they recognize the contestability
of their own claims and maintain a willingness to modify their identity and the content of their
views.24
20Andrew Schaap. 2006. "Agonism in Divided Societies." Philosophy and Social Criticism 32 (2006): 257.
Henceforth, Agonism in Divided Societies.21
Tully, Agonic Freedom, 167-68; See also Goi, The Politics of Abortion, 61-62.22
William E. Connolly. The Ethos of Pluralization. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
Henceforth cited asEthos of Pluralization.23
Connolly,Ethos of Pluralization, 184.24
Connolly,Ethos of Pluralization, 184-85.
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Of course, agonistic democrats advance an inherently risky strategy of revitalizing our
shared political spaces. Any conception of the political which displaces agreement or even
stability as an overarching goal introduces the threat of violence, dissolution, and unbounded
conflict. In the language of citizenship and political community, the instability and uncertainty
associated with the outside seems to be invited into the inside of our shared political spaces,
by an agonist account. Yet for most agonistic democrats, this is simply the nature of a radically
inclusive agonistic political space. To the extent we are no longer uneasy with or threatened by
the precarious nature of the political, this is a warning that our democratic spaces have become
vacuous, devoid of the competing ideological forces which provide them with substance.
25
The
cornerstone which unites the diverse existing accounts of agonistic democracy is the focus on the
constitutive role of strife within the political realm.26
Thus, within agonistic democratic theory
there exists a general suspicion of attempts to determine in advance what is to count as
legitimate political action because this too often becomes a way of co-opting radical challenges
to the dominant interests within a society.27
With this said, agonists are not blind to the dangers, threats, and vicissitudes that such a
conception of the political may introduce. Accordingly, all of these theorists do place some basic
conditions on the type of engagement which can occur within agonistic democratic spaces. For
one group of theorists, this takes the form of agonistic respect.28
Connolly defines agonistic
respect as the process by which, each party comes to appreciate the extent to which its self-
definition is bound up with the Other and the degree to which the comparative projections of
25Chantal Mouffe. "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" Social Research 66 (1999): 751.
26Wenman, Mark Anthony. "Agonistic Pluralism and Three Archetypal Forms of Politics." Contemporary Political
Theory 2 (2003): 169. Henceforth, Three Archetypal Forms.27
Schaap, Agonism in Divided Societies, 257.28
Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization; Identity/Difference; "Response: Realizing Agonistic Respect." The Journal
of American Academy of Religion 72 (2004): 507-13; Tully, Agonic Freedom.
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both are contestable.29
Tully states more straightforwardly that agonistic respect is rooted in the
principle of always listen to the other side.30 (1999, 174). While Connolly notes that we should
avoid at all costs the suppression of tensions and ambiguities in the name of tranquility,
harmony, or agency, he admits that an agonistic democratic space cannot endure dogmatic
fundamentalisms which abandon any notions of contestability and set about imposing their
monistic vision on other segments of the order.31
Similarly, Mouffe draws upon an unlikely ally, Michael Oakeshott, and his conception of
societas, to advance a vision of the political in which we dispense with notions of the common
good, but retain a common bond or public concern.
32
This thin conception of commonality
produces a politics in which those with divergent perspectives face each other as adversaries who
share a common symbolic space rather than by enemies who seek to eliminate one another
violently.33 The task and challenge of democratic politics is how to deal with the ever-present
and implacable threat of a disruptive and violent antagonism, while seeking to inspire a
productive and contentious politics ofagonism.34
In such an agonistic conception, the notion of
the enemy does not entirely disappear however. Instead, it is displaced and remains pertinent
with respect to those who do not accept the democratic rules of the game and who thereby
exclude themselves from the political community.35
29William E Connolly. "Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault." Political Theory 21
(1993): 382. Henceforth, Beyond Good and Evil.30
Tully, Agonic Freedom, 174.31Connolly, Beyond Good and Evil, 384; Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence, 38.
32Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political. (London: Verso, 1993): 82. Henceforth, cited as The Return.
For Oakeshotts theoretical distinction between the state as corporation, universitas, and the state as civil
condition, societas, see Michael Oakeshott. "On the Character of a Modern European State." In On Human
Conduct. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1975): 185-326.33
Mouffe, Paradox, 13.34
Mouffe, Paradox, 5.35
Mouffe. The Return, 4.
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In this way, agonistic democracy does not force us to devise methods of inclusion for
those committed to the incitement of hatred, abuse, exploitation and violence (to suggest some
possible grounds for exclusion). Critics such as Wenman charge that there are fundamental
variations in the inclusivity advocated by agonistic democrats such as Tully and Connolly as
opposed to a thinker like Mouffe.36 Yet it seems clear that all agonists share an underlying
commitment to the necessity of some, albeit minimal, criteria for exclusion from agonistic
political spaces, which means that the idea of agonistic citizenship is ultimately nota
contradiction in terms. Agonistic pluralism can provide us with a means, albeit a non-enduring
one, by which we determine membership in the political entity. It remains non-enduring in that
the rules governing political exclusion and the nature of engagement could themselves be the
subject of agonistic contestation and reconsideration (Goi 2005, 77).37
From an agonistic democratic perspective, this tendency to silence non-citizen voices
presents a number of problems. Thinking critically and expansively about the exercise of popular
sovereignty means questioning the unchallenged ability of the state to regulate entry and exit, as
well as access to citizenship, without providing settings in which those affected can respond to
this exertion of state power. Our current understandings of citizenship do not require, or perhaps
even allow, any justification be made to those marginalized by state borders and citizenship
policies. From an agonistic perspective, this threatens the legitimacy of citizenship as a political
identity, and as such, the current framework of exclusion would need to be re-considered. As
36
Wenman, Three Archetypal Forms.37Goi, The Politics of Abortion, 77. A point which tends to be under-emphasized in much of the agonistic
literature thus far is the social and economic preconditions which would be needed to ensure that such a political
conception not become merely elite-led domination. Many of the scholars reviewed above note the need for
significant social and economic reforms in order to ensure the accessibility and equality of agonistic spaces. Yet
there remains a dearth of analysis on how such reforms could occur while meeting the demanding agonistic criteria
for democratic legitimacy. Mouffe, The Return, Ch. 6; Connolly, Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence, 39
(footnote omitted); Goi, The Politics of Abortion, 74-77 have provided some initial suggestions of how this
process of reform might occur. I take up this question in Chapter 5 of this work, addressing what I feel to be a
serious lacunae within the theoretical frame of agonistic pluralism.
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Bonnie Honig writes, this would ultimately mean providing agonistic political spaces for those
outside the circle of who counts [and who] cannot make claims within the existing frames of
claim making.38
While this would not rule out the exercise of power against political outsiders,
it would offer the polity an opportunity to engage those whose contending identity gives
definition to contingencies in ones own way of being, the constitutive others of our own
political identities.39
1.5 The Novelty and Importance of the Proposed Research Project:
The research project proposed here fills a number of gaps both within agonistic
democratic theory and the literature on citizenship, rights, and migration. Turning first to the
contributions to agonism, this project presents the first sustained review of agonistic democratic
theory as a whole. In so doing, it maps out the distinctions between different scholars and their
thought in ways that tend to have been glossed over and simplified in previous treatments.
Second, my project addresses the social and economic preconditions necessary for agonistic
settings to remain contentious and inclusive venues for participation, rather than new
institutional locations by which to marginalize democratic voice and impose upon those engaged
ill-fitting notions of consensus. This addresses a recurring critique of agonistic democratic theory
and fills a glaring lacuna with the literature.40 Third, in the section addressing the scale of the
agonistic intellectual project, I engage an important criticism which surfaces repeatedly in
discussions of agonistic pluralism: just how sweeping a process of social transformation does
this model of democratic engagement entail or demand. Fourth, many agonists have been
reluctant to specify what types of institutional settings would need to emerge in order for
38Honig,Democracy and the Foreigner, 101.
39Connolly,Identity/Difference, 179.
40Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo. "Agonized Liberalism: The Liberal Theory of William E. Connolly."Radical
Philosophy 127 (2004): 8-20.
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agonistic democratic engagement to flourish.41
Agonists have good reasons for this reluctance.
Schaap notes that agonistic theorists tend to share a suspicion of attempts to determine in
advance what is to count as legitimate political action because this too often becomes a way of
co-opting radical challenges to the dominant interests within a society.42
Yet, while
sympathizing with their shared concern, I fear that this tendency makes agonistic pluralism
vulnerable to criticisms regarding practicability and feasibility.43
Thus, in chapters four and six, I
attempt in very concrete terms to establish what types of institutional settings and venues could
potentially foster processes of agonistic democratic engagement, with the larger goal of bringing
agonism out of the abstract, theoretical realm and attempting to firmly embed agonism within the
everyday spaces of the political. In keeping with the agonistic theoretical tradition, I remain
reluctant to say what types of political outcomes should emerge from agonistic settings, and
remain focused on the attainment of a politicalprocess, while articulating the responsibilities and
privileges such a conception of the citizen would entail, and the institutions it would ultimately
require.
Turning now to the ways in which this research project adds to literature on citizenship
and migration, again I feel that there are a number of new and exciting contributions which my
study brings to bear. Above all, a notion of agonistic citizenship calls upon us to re-think both
the identity of the modern citizen and the types of spaces and activities which comprise the
political. Most existing conceptions of citizenship, as I will show in Chapter 2, tend to rest too
firmly on the grounds that citizenship is somehow a pre-political and pre-defined identity or
41See Goi (2005) for an exception to this tendency.
42Schaap, Agonism in Divided Societies, 257.
43Nor is this tendency limited to agonistic pluralism alone. Kymlicka and Norman note that when it comes to
discussing how to foster the types of civic qualities which can reinvigorate modern conceptions of the citizen, most
theorists of citizenship become quite timid. The authors note, there may be good reasons for this timidity, but it
sits uneasily with the claim that we face a crisis of citizenship and that we desperately need a theory of citizenship
See Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman.. "Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory."
In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 301.
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status, while agonistic pluralism recognizes that the boundaries of this status are the very object
of contestation.44 Ernesto Laclau for instance has noted that the conception of citizenship as
identity obscures the fact that this identify emerges from a process of identification, which is the
very substance of the political.45
While liberal and community-oriented theories inattention to
questions of identity and difference is well-documented, the agonistic pluralist frame enables a
even more sweeping critique of existing citizenship theory. From an agonistic perspective, we
see this lack of attention to the identity-creation process and the process by which create
outsiders even within attempts to correct for modern tendencies towards exclusion or oppression
by multiculturalists and theorists of difference. Joppke notes that notions of differentiated
citizenship based on the presence of oppression or a dominant societal culture may be too
vauge and simplistic to account for asymmetries of power and resources in complex societies.46
Within the multiculturalist perspective, identities are what the political exists to cope with, rather
than create.
Nowhere is the identity-creation process more evident than in the practical politics of
immigration and citizenship, where the very goal of policy is to create a stable, enduring and
meaningful conception of the political community. Yet there has been a tendency in both modern
44Claire Rasmussen and Michael Brown. "Radical Democratic Citizenship: Amidst Political Theory and
Geography." In The Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. E. F. Isin and B. S. Turner. London: Russell Sage, 2002)
179.45
Ernesto Laclau, ed. 1994. The Making of Political Identities. London: Verso.46
Joppke, Christian. 2002. "Multicultural Citizenship." In The Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. E. F. Isin and B.
S. Turner. (London: Russell Sage, 2002): 257. Exemplars of oppression-based multiculturalist theories include Iris
Marion Young.Justice and the Politics of Difference. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990;"Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy." InDemocracy and Difference: Contesting the
Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996): 120-35; "Polity and
Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship." In The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, ed. G.
Shafir. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998): 263-90. Examples of dominant-culture based
theories include Will Kymlicka.Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995).
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societies and contemporary citizenship theory to treat this complex task as somehow outside the
range of contentious political engagement among an array of affected actors. Complicating this is
the fact that most existing theory cannot even conceptualize a political space in which those who
do not conform to the established identity of citizen, could somehow participate in debates
regarding its revision and reconsideration. Agonistic pluralism offers a variety of exciting
potentialities in this regard and enables us to rethink citizenship not in terms of identity or status,
but rather in terms of a process of identification, the creation of the constitutive outside. Thus
for agonists, the task of the political is to devise a form of commonality which can be subject to
subsequent democratic scrutiny and re-articulation.
47
Agonistic pluralism, I contend has the
possibility to democratize the very process by which we create outsiders, which Ignatieff notes
is probably the most common form of tyranny in human history.48
Yet while agonistic pluralisms willingness to tolerate ambiguity, fluidity, and sustained
re-engagement of certainty with regard to our political spaces and identities offers a number of
exciting avenues by which to pursue a theory of citizenship, this has yet to be done in a sustained
way within the literature. Furthermore, questions of citizenship politics and immigration, to
which such a conception is particularly well-attuned remain virtually untouched within the
literature.49 Many agonist works have critiqued dominant liberal, discursive, deliberative, or
communitarian conceptions of the political generally. However, the emphasis on citizenshipits
privileges and responsibilities, what we owe to those within the constitutive outside of our
47Mouffe, Paradox, 55.
48Michael Ignatieff. "The Myth of Citizenship." In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1995): 56.49
Bonnie Honigs insightful commentaries on foreignness provide a partial exception here, yet her work on
immigration explicitly adopts a much greater emphasis on the role which immigrant outsiders perform for the
existing community, rather than examining the impact which overly cohesive notions of the national community
have on the outsider. See Bonnie Honig. 1998. "Immigrant America? How Foreignness "Solves" Democracy's
Problems." Social Text56: 1-27;Democracy and the Foreigner.
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political spaces, and so onremains a strikingly under-developed area of this theory and one in
which a sustained dialogue has yet to even truly begin. In this vein, I see my work as the
beginning of such a discussion, occurring at a time when the politics of citizenship and migration
constitute fundamental political controversies desperately in need of a novel theoretical
framework.
1.6 A Roadmap for the Discussion that Follows
The work that follows is a fairly ambitious project integrating various strains of
democratic theory, recent work on migration and the politics and citizenship, and extensive
original fieldwork which examines migration activism and advocacy in the contemporary United
States. The project aims to provide us not only with new ways to theoretically conceptualize
citizenship and democratic participation in the United States, but offer tangible suggestions as to
how we might approach current controversies stemming from citizenship and migration policy.
Having laid out, in very broad terms, the need for and importance of such a work in this
introduction, I move in Chapter Two to examine the deficiencies in prevalent theoretical
conceptions of democratic citizenship. This chapter critically examines notions of unity and the
drive toward democratic consensus emerging from a variety of contemporary strains of
democratic theory: political liberalism, communitarianism, participatory democracy, deliberative
democracy, cosmopolitan conceptions of democracy, as well as theorists dealing with
multiculturalism and identity. In Chapter Three, I examine the underlying assumptions of
existing agonistic pluralist theories, arguing that this strain of radical democratic theory is too
often falsely treated as a cohesive whole, while situating my own thought relative to these prior
articulations.
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In Chapter Four, I lay out in concrete detail what an agonistic understanding of
citizenship ought to mean in relation to democratic engagement, adressing how far pluralism
ought to extend as well as the institutions and spaces which would need to exist in society for
such a system to survive and flourish. Chapter Five deals with the societal, political, economic,
and cultural pre-conditions which must be encouraged for a more agonistic democratic politics to
be possible. In so doing, I engage a number of unanswered questions within agonstic pluralism
with regard to how such a risky form of political engagement can be instantiated without
submerging society in a cauldron of deep-seated cultural conflict. Chapters six and seven operate
in tandem. Chapter six offers a brief historical account of migration and entry into the political
community within the United States, and problematizes the widely-held notions of a traditionally
open attitude toward outsiders. This section of the dissertation also shows the ways in which
contemporary migrants and refugees are confronted with policies and popular discourse which
increasingly labels them as both a security threat and economic drain upon society. Building
upon this, Chapter 7 presents the democratic counter-narrative to this current manifestation of
anti-immigrant ideas by examining immigrant advocacy and activism in the United States.
Furthermore, it suggests ways in which such democratic energies could be shifted from an
episodic activist discourse with minimal formal ties to policy outcomes, to become part of the
institutional fabric of a re-imagined agonistic democracy. To conclude, Chapter Eight speaks of
the broader significance of this work, both in terms of fashioning new, more democratically
legitimate policies to deal with these enduring issues as well as fashioning a new understanding
of democratic citizenship. Throughout, the work retains a mild optimism regarding the ability of
democratic societies to strive towards new potentialities, while also retaining a humble
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pragmatism regarding the feasibility and dangers associated with large-scale fundamental
political change.
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