Browsing by Subject "citizenship"

This thesis focuses on the case study of the Estonian diaspora in Abkhazia, the breakaway region of Georgia, and their claim to the Estonian citizenship by birth. This claim is based on the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty Article IV, that allowed people living on both sides of the signing parties (the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, and the newly independent Estonian Republic) to obtain the citizenship of either countries. Focusing on the way the Estonian citizenship policy has impacted the process of obtaining citizenship by birth for the descendants of the optants, the study is based on the role of securitization in the matter. The thesis makes use of televised interviews and written news reports on the case study by Estonian news reporters. Moreover, the sources are analysed with qualitative methods, particularly political and critical discourse analysis, and discourse-historical analysis. The information is gathered by using qualitative methods. Furthermore, securitization theory, societal security and constructivism are used as the base the study. The key findings of the thesis are that distrust towards the optants and worries for security are presented in the media by state officials. However, opposing arguments in support of the Abkhaz Estonians often brush over the matters of security altogether, highlighting the ‘absurdity’ of the situation and the valid claim of citizenship by these individuals. These findings could prove beneficial for those aiming to understand the phenomena better and serve as basis of further research, especially in media analysis.

My master's thesis is a study of citizenship and its ideals in disability policy from the perspective of critical ability studies. The main focus of ability studies is to analyze ableism and how it produces ideals of perfect humanness. Therefore, from the perspective of ableism these ideals produce disability and impairments as something intolerable as well as inherently and ontologically negative. My study focused on the disability policy paradigm as it is after the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities from the year 2006. The disability policy paradigm emphasizes both the rights of people with disabilities to full citizenship and their participation in society. The study data included 20 documents from European, national and municipal disability policies, released from 2006 onwards. In this study I explored how ableism defines the construction of full citizenship and how ableism affects individual's possibilities to participate as citizen according to the current disability policy. As my research method, I applied interpretative reading style based on the New Rhetoric. In the current disability policy paradigm the ideal of full citizenship is based on individualistic and neoliberalistic views, which emphasize self-mastery and independence. This ideal is impossible for people with disabilities because self-mastery and independence are defined as autonomy from other people and social services. Moreover, falling short from the ideal is located in ontologically negative space. Subsequently the bodies with impairments are always seen as imperfect and defective as well as economically burdening. Emphasizing the physical imperfectness of individuals defines their possibilities to participate in society because this participation is emulating the ideal. Also, the individuals with disabilities are forced to repeat their imperfectness in order to obtain social services, which enable participation. Ontological discrimination of people with disabilities is evident in the disability policy, even though it contradicts the aims of the policy.

This thesis studies the discussion over the Estonian citizenship issue in the United Nations (UN) and in Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 1993 to 1997. The citizenship question refers to a case, where Estonia, according to its state-continuum paradigm, restored its pre-Soviet citizenship legislation. As a consequence, all people residing in its territory, besides people eligible for citizenship according to the pre-Soviet law, became stateless. The case of Estonian citizenship is part of the bigger paradigm change in minority questions in post-Cold War world. The thesis’ primary sources are gathered from public online archives of the aforementioned organisations. The sources consist of correspondences and other relevant documents related to the topic. The sources are analysed by small-state realism and strategic culture theories, which help to analyse the internal factors, i.e., the long-term ambition of politically allying with the West and the trauma of Soviet occupation, that had an effect Estonia’s use of language in diplomatic arenas. This framework is then combined with speech-act theory and new rhetoric’s audience centricity, which reveal the external factors that determined the factors that had to be considered in manifesting the national-strategy. Comparing the speech-acts from two separate forums reveals how a big state affects the use of language of a small-state. In the UN, Estonia mainly defends its citizenship policy against Russia’s torrent of human rights accusations related to mainly Russian speaking non-citizens in Estonia – even though the UN found no signs of arbitrary deprivation of citizenship nor human rights infringements. In the OSCE the lack of contestation results in mutually cooperative relationship aiming to integrate non-citizens via the framework provided by Estonia. In the end, Estonia is able to defend its citizenship policy on both fronts.