Bridget Byrne
In an increasingly mobile and transnational world, where states endeavor to make borders more ’secure’, passports and rights matter more than ever. Making Citizens explores how countries make public rituals out of endowing new citizens with citizenship. It asks what citizenship ceremonies can tell us about how state membership is understood and experienced and about a country’s sense of itself and of migrants. The book argues for the need to understand contemporary concepts of citizenship as a product of colonial history. As the first in-depth comparative study of citizenship ceremonies, Making Citizens explores how the these events can shed light on how the boundaries of citizenship are being drawn by the state, and how this is experienced by individuals. Drawing on empirical research in the UK, the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Ireland, this book provides a unique intervention into sociological understandings of citizenship and the narration of nation.
