The non-citizen as an agent of change: the case of Afghan otherness in the Islamic Republic of Iran
Keywords:
afghan communities in Iran, spaces of possibility, otherness, acts of citizenship, IranCopyright (c) 2022 Moisés Garduño García
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This paper addresses citizenship not a just a legal expression, but also as a socio-political practice that produces new possibilities to transform the official establishment. The text is supported by the category of acts of citizenship, by Engin Isin, that points out citizenship as an action implemented by “the others” to make the institutional order a more inclusive place in terms of responsibilities and rights. Citizenship acts are politically effective actions in which it is possible to organize social demands or just to visualize the vulnerabilities of both citizens and non-citizens. In addition, as an analytical category, it is a potentially critical, dynamic, multicultural, and one auxiliary concept for the establishment of socio-historical ruptures where the protagonists use to be the social movements. In this sense, the text exposes two examples of acts of citizenship by the Afghan communities in Iran, despite the fact of discrimination and racism against them in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it traces how these practices are useful to remodel not only the occupation of public space, but also the very same framework of rights and responsibilities.
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