Browsing by Subject "citizenship"
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(2013)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.
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(2019)This thesis examines children’s citizenship in recent empirical research in the field of child-hood studies. The thesis will examine the questions, themes and theoretical approaches that have framed the studies of children’s citizenship. Childhood studies is a multidisciplinary field and the research concerning children’s citizenship is embedded within multifaceted social and political contexts. Children’s relationship with the citizenship is unsettled. Children are being given many rights, responsibilities and possibilities to participate but at the same time they are excluded from citizenship. Children’s place as becoming citizens has been persistent in societies where especially political citizenship remains a field fully open only for adults. This under-standing frames the recent research of children’s citizenship. The study data consists of 17 research articles that are examining children’s citizenship through empirical data. These articles were reviewed and analysed applying narrative analysis. The study data shows that children’s citizenship is constructed in social, political and historical contexts. Political and legislative structures are the basis of children’s social participation. In in-stitutionalised settings, children’s participation is enabled in participatory activities. These par-ticipatory settings facilitate children’s agency and advocacy but also demonstrate some re-strictions. The approaches of lived citizenship have opened new interpretations of the ways that children enact citizenship. The studied articles show that citizenship is a concept that illumi-nates the aspects of the relationship between children and adults and may generate some under-standing of ethical encounters. Examining the marginal positions of citizenship is helpful in discussing children’s place in society. Citizenship as a concept unfolds the different aspects of inclusion and exclusion in society.
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