The question of accommodations that institutions and citizens must make to ensure social cohesion in pluralist societies is of concern to the Council of Europe. How will we live and interact together in diversity? It is becoming increasingly important to provide responses and devise innovative frameworks (in the legal sphere, in national education and training in competences and in institutional practice) which can help build a shared vision while at the same time respecting each individual. By comparing European and Canadian responses, among others, the articles featured in this volume explore this complex issue. They contribute to a major social debate and outline a vision of the future that allows us to set aside mutual suspicion and develop institutional arrangements and forms of social interaction capable of making diversity a factor for progress, well-being and social justice. They also remind us that poverty combined with stigmatisation based on identity leads to stasis, social malaise and an increase in security measures, which ultimately prevent societies from evolving through risk taking, shared responsibility, dialogue and consultation.

The question of accommodations that institutions and citizens must make to ensure social cohesion in pluralist societies is of concern to the Council of Europe. How will we live and interact together in diversity? It is becoming increasingly important to provide responses and devise innovative frameworks (in the legal sphere, in national education and training in competences and in institutional practice) which can help build a shared vision while at the same time respecting each individual.By comparing European and Canadian responses, among others, the articles featured in this volume explore this complex issue. They contribute to a major social debate and outline a vision of the future that allows us to set aside mutual suspicion and develop institutional arrangements and forms of social interaction capable of making diversity a factor for progress, well-being and social justice. They also remind us that poverty combined with stigmatisation based on identity leads to stasis, social malaise and an increase in security measures, which ultimately prevent societies from evolving through risk taking, shared responsibility, dialogue and consultation.

Migrants squats are an essential part of the ‘corridors of solidarity’ that are being created throughout Europe, where grassroots social movements engaged in anti-racist, anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics coalesce with migrants in devising non-institutional responses to the violence of border regimes. This book focuses on migrants’ self-organised housing strategies in Europe and the collective squatting of buildings and land. In these spaces contentious politics and everyday social reproduction uproot racist and xenophobic regimes. The struggles emerging in these spaces disrupt host-guest relations, which often perpetuate state-imposed hierarchies and humanitarian disciplining technologies. The solidarities and collaborations between undocumented and documented activists in these radical spaces enable possibilities for inhabitance beyond, against and within citizenship. These do not only reverse forms of exclusion and repression, but produce ungovernable resources, alliances and subjectivities that prefigure more livable spaces for all. The contributions to this book address these struggles as forms of commoning, as they constitute autonomous socio-political infrastructures and networks of solidarity beyond and against the state and humanitarian provision. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

Of the many challenges facing liberal democracy, none is as powerful and pervasive today as those posed by religion. These are the challenges taken up in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith, an exploration of the place of religion in contemporary public life. The essays in this volume suggest that two important shifts have altered the balance between the competing obligations of citizenship and faith: the growth of religious pluralism and the escalating calls of religious groups for some measure of autonomy or recognition from democratic majorities. The authors--political theorists, philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists--collectively argue that more room should be made for religion in today's democratic societies. Though they advocate different ways of carving out and justifying the proper bounds of "church and state" in pluralist democracies, they all write from within democratic theory and share the aim of democratic accommodation of religion. Alert to national differences in political circumstances and the particularities of constitutional and legal systems, these contributors consider the question of religious accommodation from the standpoint of institutional practices and law as well as that of normative theory. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach and comparative focus, this volume makes a timely and much-needed intervention in current debates about religion and politics. The contributors are Nancy L. Rosenblum, Alan Wolfe, Ronald Thiemann, Michael McConnell, Graham Walker, Amy Gutmann, Kent Greenawalt, Aviam Soifer, Harry Hirsch, Gary Jacobsohn, Yael Tamir, Martha Nussbaum, and Carol Weisbrod.

Citizenship is both one of the most taken-for-granted and most contested ideas in British social policy. This textbook brings a new dimension to the citizenship literature by using citizenship as a lens through which to explore the relation between personal lives and social policy.

This book challenges previous assumptions about institutions, social capital, and the nature of the African state by investigating the history of political and economic change in villages on either side of the Ghana-Cote d'Ivoire border. Prior to European colonial rule, these Akan villages had very similar political and cultural institutions. By the late 1990s, however, Lauren M. MacLean found puzzling differences in the informal institutions of reciprocity and indigenous notions of citizenship. MacLean argues that divergent histories of state formation not only shape how villagers help each other but also influence how local groups and communities define citizenship and then choose to engage with the state on an everyday basis. She examines the historical construction of the state role in mediating risk at the local level across three policy areas: political administration, social service delivery, and agriculture.

Migrants squats are an essential part of the ‘corridors of solidarity’ that are being created throughout Europe, where grassroots social movements engaged in anti-racist, anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics coalesce with migrants in devising non-institutional responses to the violence of border regimes. This book focuses on migrants’ self-organised housing strategies in Europe and the collective squatting of buildings and land. In these spaces contentious politics and everyday social reproduction uproot racist and xenophobic regimes. The struggles emerging in these spaces disrupt host-guest relations, which often perpetuate state-imposed hierarchies and humanitarian disciplining technologies. The solidarities and collaborations between undocumented and documented activists in these radical spaces enable possibilities for inhabitance beyond, against and within citizenship. These do not only reverse forms of exclusion and repression, but produce ungovernable resources, alliances and subjectivities that prefigure more livable spaces for all. The contributions to this book address these struggles as forms of commoning, as they constitute autonomous socio-political infrastructures and networks of solidarity beyond and against the state and humanitarian provision. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.