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Palestinians and pragmatic citizenship: negotiating relationships between citizenship and national identity in diaspora

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journal contribution
posted on 2011-09-21, 12:11 authored by Elizabeth MavroudiElizabeth Mavroudi
This paper puts forward the notion of pragmatic citizenship and forms part of the ongoing re-appraisals of citizenship in relation to national identity in an attempt to make it more relevant and inclusive for those with complex identities, legal status and, in particular, the stateless. Using the case study of Palestinians in Athens to discuss relationships between citizenship, identity and statehood, this paper argues that the notion of pragmatic citizenship can be useful in such re-conceptualisations as it can take into account the potentially ambivalent and multiple feelings of belonging that migrants and those in diaspora may have. In the process it stresses that strong notions of belonging and attachment to a territorialised homeland do not have to be exclusive or problematic. The paper outlines the complexity of Palestinian legal status in Athens and the feelings of injustice statelessness can provoke; it then describes the process of Palestinian acquisition of pragmatic citizenship in Greece. However, the final section of the paper highlights that such a notion of citizenship can have positive repercussions in terms of inclusive visions of a future one-state solution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Citation

MAVROUDI, E., 2008. Palestinians and pragmatic citizenship: negotiating relationships between citizenship and national identity in diaspora. Geoforum, 39 (1), pp. 307-318

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2008

Notes

This article was published in the journal, Geoforum [© Elsevier]. The definitive version is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718507001029

ISSN

0016-7185

Language

  • en

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