Professor Jo Shaw, Salvasen Chair of European Institutions, School of Law, University of Edinburgh, was hosted by the UNESCO Chair for Comparative Research in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, Professor Fethi Mansouri at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation in Deakin University, Burwood on 21 August 2018. Her public lecture wrestled with many dimensions to citizenship, of which at least seven were identified in her research: the interstate dimension; the relational dimension; the bio-political and bio-territorial dimensions; the protective dimension; the securitising dimension; the distributive dimension; the active/activist dimension. Her work at present is concerned with mapping and theorising these dimensions, drawing on examples from citizenship regimes across the globe, and making use of a socio-legal approach to understanding citizenship as a relational and constructed concept, rather than as a fixed endpoint. Her paper explored how ‘crisis’ affects citizenship, focusing on the examples of Brexit in the UK, the breakup of Yugoslavia (resulting in the creation of 7 successor states), and – further to that breakup – the partial ‘reintegration’ of those states into the EU. The focus is on how the forces of integration and disintegration impact upon the various dimensions of citizenship articulated within her research.
Through research, collaboration and capacity building, the Chair aims to build inclusive, just and peaceful societies by promoting respectful intercultural dialogue and combatting discrimination and structural inequality.