Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

1.1 Introduction

Let us begin with a debate, an argument, waged in popular media, in bars, on street

corners, and the halls of American government. The subject is immigration, the influx of new

entrants into a unitary political community with seemingly shared ideals, norms, and a common

identity. One perspective on this issue holds that these new waves of entrants into the political

community are unlike previous migrants—more culturally distinct, more tenaciously clinging to

their own traditions, culture, and identities. This poses threats to our nation, our institutions of

democratic government, our prosperity, the security of our community. A commentator from this

camp argues that while we “…have shown wonderful power of assimilation in the past”, these

new migrants constitute a “heavier burden than [our nation] can wisely or safely carry”.

Admittedly, he states “…the grandchildren of these people might make thrifty, intelligent

citizens”, but the intervening period may nevertheless be a costly and unsafe experiment which

imperils our society.1

Yet skeptics of this argument see threatening elements within this drive to restrict

immigration on the basis of inassimilability. They see fear as the driving force behind

interpretations of the new and distinct identities held by entrants. One writes,

Surely, we cannot be certain of our spiritual democracy when, claiming to melt the
nations within us to a comprehension of our free and democratic institutions, we fly
into panic at the first sign of their own will and tendency…What we emphatically
do not want is that these distinctive qualities should be washed out into a tasteless,
colorless fluid of uniformity.2

This latter position supports greater openness with regard to new entrants, and an approach to

1
Edward Bemis, quoted in Aristide Zolberg. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006): 211. Henceforth cited as Nation by Design.
2
Bourne, Randolph. "Transnational America." In The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918, ed. O. Hansen.
(Berkeley, CA University of California Press, 1977 [1916]): 249, 253-54.

1
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

national identity which seeks merger, rather than fusion—a retention of national boundaries

which imbues our conception of those boundaries with a more cosmopolitan ethic of openness

and universalism.

This debate is not ripped from the headlines of yesterday’s New York Times or cunningly

excerpted from last night’s installment of Lou Dobbs Tonight, yet perhaps if the language used

were a tad more inelegant and immediate, this could be the case. The restrictionist voice is that

of Edward Webster Bemis, a University of Chicago economist arguing for measures to

drastically limit turn-of-the-century European immigration to the United States. The rebuttal

comes from progressive intellectual Randolph Bourne, writing in 1916, amidst wartime fears that

“hyphenated identities” constituted a threat to the unity and security of the United States. There

is a point to be drawn from this deceptive presentation, initially devoid of historical context and

attribution. It is that debates regarding the desirability of immigration and its larger effects on

political membership and citizenship are the enduring part and parcel of the political

community.

In this study, the larger issue addressed is the deficiency of existing modes of democratic

participation to engage this debate and to arrive at outcomes which meet the test of democratic

legitimacy. If inclusion, pluralism, and popular sovereignty are held to be political virtues of the

highest order, the means by which we have democratically negotiated entrance into the political

community falls glaringly short. A democratically legitimate answer to this foundational political

question presupposes a more inclusive process, driven less by the hope of consensus and more by

the prospect of contentious, agonistic engagement. If the reader will permit one more seemingly

dusty and antiquarian excursion, the meaning and significance of this intellectual will come into

greater relief.

2
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

Figure 1: “The Immigrant: Is he an Acquisition or a Detriment?”, Judge, 1903.

The political cartoon above is taken from a conservative American publication called

Judge, published in 1903. In the center, stands an immigrant entrant to the United States, cast in

stereotypical Eastern or Southern European stock, as were many migrants at the time. While the

bemused immigrant stands in the center of our view, a caucophany of democratic voices

surround him. Yet, as this is an image, their voices are represented by placards giving a short

distillation of their views with regard to what this figure represents. Uncle Sam, the most

prominent figure other than the immigrant himself, declares that “he is brawn and muscle for my

country”. A portly politician on the far right of the image, jovially proclaims “he makes votes for

me”. An industrialist to the left of the immigrant, with hat in hand, states “he gives me cheap

labor”.

3
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

Yet not all the voices are positive. A manual laborer angrily tugs upon the pantleg of the

immigrant, arguing that “he cheapens my labor.” A uniformed immigration officer with a large,

gold syringe claims that the immigrant brings with him disease. A well-dressed, mustachioed

man to the far left of the image declares without any explanation that the immigrant is simply a

“menace”. Lastly, a wide-eyed statesmen is the only character within the image to express

ambivalence and uncertainty, stating simply, “he is a puzzle to me”. Mindful of the broad

national interest he is charged with representing, the statesman is candid in his uncertainty as to

whether or not immigration is a force to be resisted or a positive development to be embraced.

For our purposes, a number of important insights jump out of this image. First, we see

again that many of the concerns and fears that characterized the public discourse around

immigration in 1903 remain enduring features our present political reality.3 Generalized notions

of “menace”, “insecurity”, and fears of the economic costs to citizens imposed by migrants are

set against the interests served by their comparatively cheap labor, and the political power

wielded by ethnic lobbies and those who support greater migration. Of the positions not

represented here, perhaps the most glaring omission are those rooted in an evolving and

emergent discourse of human rights and a humanitarian “responsibility to protect.” Yet even this

may be due to the ideological leanings of the publication Judge, rather than its complete absence

from the political discourse of the time. In addition, note the significance of the immigrant’s

silence. Though identities and characteristics are thrust upon him, many of them quite negative

3
This is of course with the possible exception of the idea that immigrants bring with them disease, though even this
is debatable. There was of course Lou Dobbs’s infamous 2005 report on the incidence of leprosy increasing with
larger numbers of undocumented immigrants. Though this was later dismissed by numerous credible experts, the
fact that such a statement could be made on a major news media network in the United States suggests it resonates
with broader themes in American popular consciousness. See David Leonhardt. "Truth, Fiction, and Lou Dobbs."
The New York Times May 30, 2007. However, notwithstanding the widespread criticism in this instance many
credible political and public health authorities cite the increased risk of a global pandemic, such as that caused by
the Avian Flu or the H1N1 “Swine” Flue, due to high rates of loosely restricted global migration and movement.

4
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

and disparaging, he lacks a formal means by which to simply state what he means to the

community or conversely, what this strange new assortment of hostile and self-serving voices

means to him. Again, though it would be an inaccuracy to say that present-day immigrants are

without political voice in any capacity, a number of factors conspire to dampen their democratic

energies: the precarious nature of their continued stay within the polity, their lack of inclusion in

formal political settings, societal distrust towards the extension of political voice towards

“outsiders”, racist and ethnic discrimination, linguistic and cultural barriers, among other factors.

Figure 2: “The Unrestricted Dumping-Ground”, Judge, 1903.

In this next image, again from Judge in 1903, the attitude is expressed is quite different—

with strong overtones of fear, alarmism, and racialized animosity. Gone is the open reflection by

5
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

society of what these new outsiders may mean to them. Gone is the array of different

perspectives by which we could conceive of the new tide of migration. In essence, gone is the

democratic discourse which, incomplete as it may have been, characterized the previous picture.

The immigrants are universally depicted as armed rodents, of swarthy European complexion,

“infesting” the United States, cast as “an unrestricted dumping ground”. Uncle Sam, the central

figure in this picture, wears a forlorn expression, looking pensively into the distance, so as not to

see the teeming mass of hideous creatures at his feet. Again, we see labels attached to the

migrant-rodents, but this time with themes and identities universally threatening and frightful to

American popular consciousness—“anarchist”, “socialist”, “mafia”, “assassin.” President

William McKinley, assassinated in August 1901 by an anarchist of Polish descent, looms within

the smoke of Uncle Sam’s cigar as this ugly scene unfolds before him.

There remains the question of how to interpret these two images in conjunction with one

another. I suggest that we should think of these images as speaking to one another. The negative

identities and identifications thrust upon non-citizens are by no means stable nor universal as the

first image, and our contemporary debates, show us. Yet the danger is that, "in the absence of

resistance to them, they could be stabilized.”4 To the extent that venues for contesting such

negative characterizations of migrants remain under-developed or nonexistent, we cannot expect

the identities which emerge in this debate to be consistent with pluralistic or democratic values.

Characterizations of immigration, to the extent that the migrant or refugee cannot respond to the

identities and themes attached to migration, risks crystallizing into an intensely negative and

misleading caricature. The rights, opportunities, and sense of dignity afforded to migrants and

refugees within a new political community hang in the balance. Theoretically constructing these

4
Bonnie Honig Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993): 15.
Henceforth cited as Displacement.

6
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

alternative, more inclusive sites of contentious democratic engagement as a basis for

contemporary praxis is the foremost concern of this study.

1.2 Migration, Citizenship and Democracy

To be clear, let us not deny that citizenship in a democratic polity necessarily implies

boundaries, limitations, and exclusion. Terminology such as “political community” or “national

identity” would be vacuous and empty if this were not the case. Conceptually, citizenship

attempts to reside in a space between the unrestricted inclusion of the universal, which can be a

vacuous status lacking in salience and meaning, and the irreducibly local, which may have great

salience and meaning, but only through its rigid particularism and exclusion. As Ronald Beiner

notes, “it should be clear that the more that citizens become fixated on cultural differences, the

more difficult it becomes to sustain an experience of common citizenship.”5 Yet though these

notions of commonality are essential to sustaining citizenship’s meaning, they risk papering over

the always fragmentary, imperfect, and re-arrangeable status of membership and identity in

contemporary societies. In this sense, adhering to democratic notions of popular sovereignty and

inclusive pluralism calls upon us to continually interrogate and examine these borders,

boundaries, and potential rigidities so as to ensure a vibrant political space which promotes

meaningful contestation. The central research question addressed in this dissertation then is this:

How can we move towards a theoretical model of democratic citizenship which

recognizes the fact that exclusion occurs yet allows space for “outsiders” to
contest the naturalization and permanence of their exclusion?

I rely upon the insights of “agonistic pluralism” within radical democratic theory to

conceptualize such a political space, to draw out the ways in which this model would differ from

prevailing theoretical conceptions of democratic citizenship. In addition, I empirically study the

5
Ronald Beiner. "Why Citizenship Constituted a Theoretical Problem in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century."
In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 10.

7
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

politics of migration within the contemporary United States I order to suggest the feasibility of

fostering agonistic spaces out of the living realities in which we currently work and reside.

1.3 The Citizenship-Migration Nexus and the Problem of Democratic Legitimacy

Contemporary world events have forced a renewed emphasis on democratic citizenship.

Amidst widening global inequality, we are called upon to examine the man-made borders which

may entitle one citizen to a life of prosperity, well-being, and stability, while condemning

another to a life of crowded squalor, bleak economic prospects, and a harsh and unforgiving

struggle for subsistence. If one accepts, as Michael Walzer does, that membership in a political

community is the “primary social good”, from which the means to pursue all other social goods

flows (income, welfare benefits, life opportunities, political voice, and so on), the

consequentiality of the issues we currently face becomes clear.6 Scholars analyzing citizenship

are not only engaged in debate about the nature of inclusion per se. They are also confronting its

concomitant role in perpetuating global inequality. Furthermore, amidst continued ethnic

conflict, refugee crises, South-North economic migration, increasingly strained social welfare

systems in the West, and increasing concerns regarding the security threats posed by “outsiders”,

the debate itself becomes amplified, both in academic and policy-making settings.

Perhaps it is for this very reason that conceptualizations of citizenship have tended to

view membership as something fixed and enduring, a bulwark of stability against an uncertain

cauldron of danger which swirls beyond the gates. Citizenship in modern democratic polities

tends to imply a “hard outside…which is properly and necessarily bounded” and a “soft

inside…where some version of inclusionary, universalist commitments prevails.”7 Membership

6
Michael Walzer. Spheres of Justice : a Defense of Pluralism and Equality. (New York: Basic Books, 1983): 29.
7
Linda Bosniak. The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2006): 124-25.

8
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

within a political community ideally implies that one’s status is, among other qualities, “sacred”,

“unique”, and “consequential.”8 One must derive benefits from the state and value their inclusion

within it, while also being prepared to perform sacred sacrificial acts in its name, and only in its

name. There is a stability attributed to the “soft inside” of the political community which

contrasts with perceptions of threat attributed to new and diverse forces “outside” the

community. This conceptualization drives the idea that the state’s ability to regulate the flows of

persons into and out of its borders is a paramount function of the modern sovereign state.

However, that while migration policy and the regulation of access to citizenship are one of the

most stark exercises of coercive power the modern state can possibly employ, we do not

typically see such acts in need of democratic justification and legitimation to those most

seriously affected.9

If we adopt an expansive conception of what democracy means, this silencing of non-

citizen political voices presents problems. Thinking critically and expansively about the exercise

of popular sovereignty, an indelible feature of democratic participation, means questioning the

unmitigated ability of the state to regulate entry and exit as well as access to citizenship.

Furthermore, broadening the scope of those included within our discussion of membership and

boundaries may mean providing settings in which those most deeply affected can respond to this

exertion of state power. This is not to say that every exercise of state power against an outsider

would ultimately have to emerge from inclusive transnational political sphere where, in a

Habermasian sense, “norms could meet with the consent of all affected”10

8
Rogers Brubaker. "Immigration, Citizenship, and the Nation-State in France and Germany." In The Citizenship
Debates: A Reader, ed. G. Shafir. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998): 131-64.
9
Arash Abizadeh. "Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders."
Political Theory 36 (2008): 38.
10
Jurgen Habermas. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy.
Translated by W. Rehg. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996): 197.

9
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

Conceptualizing the use of coercive state power in this way would establish inclusive

democratic settings that seem almost farcical in nature. Democratic legitimacy of a state’s

foreign policy would hinge upon those affected by the coercive power of such actions being

brought into the public discussion in ways which strain even the most overactive political

imagination. This would mean, for example, that an American attempt to craft energy policy

could be seen as democratically legitimate only insofar as Nigerian or Kuwaiti voices were

brought into the discussion to articulate the ways in which such an energy policy would affect

them. Examples such as this stretch the limits of both practicability and desirability, crashing

headlong into the realities of the modern international system.

However, the politics of citizenship and migration are distinct from the example cited

above. These policies have effects on individuals who already reside within our borders, in

varying degrees of proximity to full membership within the polity. A state’s approach towards

citizenship has profound effects for individuals already imbricated in the fabric of that society,

and already embedded in its political system. Non-citizens often live and work alongside full

citizens, paying into national systems of social entitlement and partaking in our health and

education systems. Alongside our fear of non-citizens as somehow representative of the unruly

world beyond our borders, there are a myriad of ways in which we embrace what immigrants

bring to us. Bonnie Honig writes that “the foreigner” within a society brings, “…diversity,

energy, talents, innovative cuisines, new recipes, [and] a renewed appreciation of our own

regimes whose virtues are so great that they draw immigrants to join us.”11 Non-citizen migrants

perform an invaluable role in reaffirming the “choice-worthiness” of our democratic polities. The

11
Bonnie Honig. Democracy and the Foreigner. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001): 46. Henceforth
cited as Democracy and the Foreigner.

10
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

fact that immigrants live among us and contribute to the culture, politics, and economics of our

societies, suggests that the degree of democratic legitimation owed to them is substantial and

consequential. Non-citizen aliens cannot be democratically silenced in the same ways as those

that suffer the far-flung effects of coercive power indirectly, thousands of miles from its source.

Immigrants already reside within our societies, in spirit if not in democratic voice. The task of

incorporating their voices into our democratic politics thus remains an important, albeit

challenging and unprecedented, consideration. The goal of how begin to accomplish this task,

and the theoretical basis on which we would do so, is the task of this research project.

1.4 What Agonistic Pluralism Brings to our Discussion of Citizenship

Agonistic pluralism, or agonism, advances a conception of politics in which contestation

and conflictual engagement become the goal of our political encounters, rather than seeking

harmonious social cooperation. The many variants of agonism tend to avoid “celebrat[ing] a

world without points of stabilization”, as we might find in more avowedly postmodern

conceptions of politics, yet agonism does recognize the “perpetuity” and enduring nature of

contestation.12 The exercise of coercive power, exclusion, and hegemonic marginalization are

enduring features of modern politics from this perspective. Rather than seeking to eliminate these

features, agonism calls upon us to engage and re-engage these moments in the most inclusive and

contentious democratic settings possible, allowing a multiplicity of diverse voices to engage in

the struggle for hegemony.13

12
Honig, Displacement, 15.
13
Simona Goi. "Agonism, Deliberation and the Politics of Abortion." Polity 37 (2005): 60. Henceforth, cited as “the
Politics of Abortion.”

11
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

The question remains as to what adopting the agonistic approach would do to resolve the

tensions inherent in our notions of borders and democratic citizenship.14 Yet this would be to

mis-frame the question as agonistic conceptions would not advance a “resolution”, but rather a

continuous re-vision and reworking of previous resolutions. I will suggest that agonistic

democratic theory offers us three valuable critical insights with regard to contemporary

citizenship. First and foremost, an agonistic approach to citizenship engages the paradoxical and

contradictory foundations of citizenship as a constitutive and productive tension, rather than as a

“problem” to be transcended or avoided. Second, such an approach would open a space whereby

we actively consider the question of extending political voice to non-citizens. Third and lastly,

an agonistic framework recognizes that exclusion is an unavoidable element in the constitution

of any political community; the political community could not exist absent a “constitutive

outside”. Yet agonism productively engages this need for closure and provides us with a

framework of radical pluralism by which to legitimate and continuously renegotiate the terms of

that exclusion.

In a departure from many prevailing understandings of liberal democratic politics, an

agonistic approach “refus[es] to equate concern for human dignity with a quest for rational

consensus” or overarching agreement on the principles driving our political engagement.15

Rather, the goal becomes exposure of those moments which are characterized as consensus or

the widespread will of the demos as the opposite: instances of “originary exclusion” and

moments of “hegemony disguised as the reconciliation of two conflicting logics.”16 However, the

14
Though there are fundamental theoretical variations and divides in recent agonistic democratic theory, I do not
engage them here at the outset, focusing rather on points of shared agreement and what such theories bring to a
discussion of American citizenship. See Chapter 3 of this work for an extended discussion of existing typologies and
my own alternative conceptualization of the diversity of agonistic pluralism.
15
William E. Connolly. Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2002): x. Henceforth cited as Identity/Difference.
16
Chantal Mouffe. The Democratic Paradox. (London: Verso, 2000). Henceforth, cited as Paradox.

12
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

problem for agonists is not exclusion in and of itself, contrary to what some critics have

charged.17 William Connolly notes that boundaries are “indispensable”, providing the

“preconditions of identity, individual agency, and collective action.”18 Yet boundaries always

accomplish this at the expense of other possibilities, other modes of order. Thus, while agonists

recognize that universal inclusion within the political community is an illusory goal, they critique

the treatment of exclusion as apolitical or natural, devoid of a decisionistic moment in which a

“we-they” distinction is politically created. To act as if these normative tensions can be

transcended is to misconceive of the democratic project. By such accounts, Honig writes,

the problem of democratic theory is how to find the right match between a people
and its law, a state and its institutions. Obstacles are met and overcome, eventually
the right match is made and the newlywed couple is sent on its way to try and live
happily ever after.19

The reality, according to an agonistic framework, is that such tensions are never truly

“overcome”, or to appropriate Honig’s metaphor, the newlyweds are never completely in a state

of marital bliss with one another.

17
Monique Deveaux for instance notes that agonism has “little to say about those who refuse to cooperate with
other citizens, or about citizens who have an entrenched interests in having a conflict continue unresolved” or those
who adopt passive citizenship and do not see any value in ongoing conflict as the underlying principle driving a
robust democracy (See Monique Deveaux. 1999. "Agonism and Pluralism." Philosophy and Social Criticism 25
(1999): 4-5; see also Deborah Tannen,. 2002. "Agonism in Academic Discourse." Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1651-
69. Deveaux ignores the numerous instances in which self-described agonists state outright that forms of exclusion
will occur in these cases (see William E. Connolly. "Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence." Theory, Culture &
Society 11 (1994): 31-38. Henceforth cited as “Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence.”; Connolly,
Identity/Difference, xxix; Chantal Mouffe."Democracy, Power, and the "Political"." In Democracy and Difference:
Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996): 253;
Mouffe, Paradox, 99-100, 134; James Tully. 1999. "The Agonic Freedom of Citizens." Economy and Society 28 (2):
170. Henceforth cited as “Agonic Freedom.”; Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, 121). The reasons why they
seemingly “say so little” stem from the fact that they entrust a radically pluralistic demos to politically articulate the
terms of the exclusion rather than simply explicitly stating themselves the ways such compulsion and exclusion
might occur. As Connolly says, agonistic pluralism does entail the “necessity of setting limits…[i]t simply insists
that we often do not know with assurance exactly what those limits must be” (Connolly, Identity/Difference, xxix).
18
Connolly, "Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence”, 19.
19
Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, 109.

13
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

To the extent that one can attribute a “foundation” to a theoretical framework which is so

avowedly anti-foundationalist, it rests again with the idea that those subject to the coercive

power of the state ought to exercise political voice in the formulation and deployment of that

coercion. Schaap writes that all agonists share ”a principled desire to leave more up to politics in

the sense that citizens should be free to contest the terms of public life and the conditions of their

political association.”20 No outcome of this engagement can ever be considered “closed”; “…it

will always be open to question, to an element of non-consensus, and so to reciprocal question

and answer, demand and response, and negotiation.”21

One means by which this extension of voice and destabilization of outcomes can be

achieved is through cultivating what Connolly calls an “ethos of critical responsiveness.”22 The

ethos of critical responsiveness consists of three basic attitudes. First, political actors should

possess an anticipatory attitude towards new efforts at “pluralization” even when such efforts

represent only nascent, embryonic forces pushing for change at the margins of the political

community. Second, those receiving political claims should be critical so as to foster meaningful

contestation within the political realm. This also guards against the emergence of fundamentalist

movements which seek not merely a voice within the contest but rather to “impose [their]

identity as the universal standard and to punish everyone who deviates from it.”23 Lastly, those

pressing their claims must remain self-revisionary, meaning that they recognize the contestability

of their own claims and maintain a willingness to modify their identity and the content of their

views.24

20
Andrew Schaap. 2006. "Agonism in Divided Societies." Philosophy and Social Criticism 32 (2006): 257.
Henceforth, “Agonism in Divided Societies.”
21
Tully, “Agonic Freedom”, 167-68; See also Goi, “The Politics of Abortion”, 61-62.
22
William E. Connolly. The Ethos of Pluralization. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
Henceforth cited as Ethos of Pluralization.
23
Connolly, Ethos of Pluralization, 184.
24
Connolly, Ethos of Pluralization, 184-85.

14
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

Of course, agonistic democrats advance an inherently “risky” strategy of revitalizing our

shared political spaces. Any conception of the political which displaces agreement or even

stability as an overarching goal introduces the threat of violence, dissolution, and unbounded

conflict. In the language of citizenship and political community, the instability and uncertainty

associated with the “outside” seems to be invited into the “inside” of our shared political spaces,

by an agonist account. Yet for most agonistic democrats, this is simply the nature of a radically

inclusive agonistic political space. To the extent we are no longer uneasy with or threatened by

the precarious nature of the political, this is a warning that our democratic spaces have become

vacuous, devoid of the competing ideological forces which provide them with substance.25 The

cornerstone which unites the diverse existing accounts of agonistic democracy is the focus on the

constitutive role of strife within the political realm.26 Thus, within agonistic democratic theory

there exists a general “suspicion of attempts to determine in advance what is to count as

legitimate political action because this too often becomes a way of co-opting radical challenges

to the dominant interests within a society.”27

With this said, agonists are not blind to the dangers, threats, and vicissitudes that such a

conception of the political may introduce. Accordingly, all of these theorists do place some basic

conditions on the type of engagement which can occur within agonistic democratic spaces. For

one group of theorists, this takes the form of “agonistic respect.”28 Connolly defines agonistic

respect as the process by which, “each party comes to appreciate the extent to which its self-

definition is bound up with the Other and the degree to which the comparative projections of

25
Chantal Mouffe. "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" Social Research 66 (1999): 751.
26
Wenman, Mark Anthony. "Agonistic Pluralism and Three Archetypal Forms of Politics." Contemporary Political
Theory 2 (2003): 169. Henceforth, “Three Archetypal Forms.”
27
Schaap, “Agonism in Divided Societies”, 257.
28
Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization; Identity/Difference; "Response: Realizing Agonistic Respect." The Journal
of American Academy of Religion 72 (2004): 507-13; Tully, “Agonic Freedom”.

15
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

both are contestable.”29 Tully states more straightforwardly that agonistic respect is rooted in the

principle of “always listen to the other side.”30 (1999, 174). While Connolly notes that we should

avoid at all costs the suppression of tensions and ambiguities in the name of “tranquility”,

“harmony”, or “agency”, he admits that an agonistic democratic space cannot endure dogmatic

fundamentalisms which abandon any notions of contestability and set about imposing their

monistic vision on other segments of the order.31

Similarly, Mouffe draws upon an unlikely ally, Michael Oakeshott, and his conception of

societas, to advance a vision of the political in which we dispense with notions of the common

good, but retain a “common bond” or “public concern.”32 This thin conception of commonality

produces a politics in which those with divergent perspectives face each other as adversaries who

share a “common symbolic space” rather than by “enemies” who seek to eliminate one another

violently.33 The task and challenge of democratic politics is how to deal with the ever-present

and implacable threat of a disruptive and violent antagonism, while seeking to inspire a

productive and contentious politics of agonism.34 In such an agonistic conception, the notion of

the “enemy” does not entirely disappear however. Instead, “it is displaced and remains pertinent

with respect to those who do not accept the democratic ‘rules of the game’ and who thereby

exclude themselves from the political community.”35

29
William E Connolly. "Beyond Good and Evil: The Ethical Sensibility of Michel Foucault." Political Theory 21
(1993): 382. Henceforth, “Beyond Good and Evil”.
30
Tully, “Agonic Freedom”, 174.
31
Connolly, “Beyond Good and Evil”, 384; Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence, 38.
32
Chantal Mouffe. The Return of the Political. (London: Verso, 1993): 82. Henceforth, cited as The Return.
For Oakeshott’s theoretical distinction between the state as “corporation”, universitas, and the state as “civil
condition”, societas, see Michael Oakeshott. "On the Character of a Modern European State." In On Human
Conduct. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1975): 185-326.
33
Mouffe, Paradox, 13.
34
Mouffe, Paradox, 5.
35
Mouffe. The Return, 4.

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Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

In this way, agonistic democracy does not force us to devise methods of inclusion for

those committed to the incitement of hatred, abuse, exploitation and violence (to suggest some

possible grounds for exclusion). Critics such as Wenman charge that there are fundamental

variations in the inclusivity advocated by agonistic democrats such as Tully and Connolly as

opposed to a thinker like Mouffe.36 Yet it seems clear that all agonists share an underlying

commitment to the necessity of some, albeit minimal, criteria for exclusion from agonistic

political spaces, which means that the idea of “agonistic citizenship” is ultimately not a

contradiction in terms. Agonistic pluralism can provide us with a means, albeit a non-enduring

one, by which we determine membership in the political entity. It remains non-enduring in that

the rules governing political exclusion and the nature of engagement could themselves be the

subject of agonistic contestation and reconsideration (Goi 2005, 77).37

From an agonistic democratic perspective, this tendency to silence non-citizen voices

presents a number of problems. Thinking critically and expansively about the exercise of popular

sovereignty means questioning the unchallenged ability of the state to regulate entry and exit, as

well as access to citizenship, without providing settings in which those affected can respond to

this exertion of state power. Our current understandings of citizenship do not require, or perhaps

even allow, any justification be made to those marginalized by state borders and citizenship

policies. From an agonistic perspective, this threatens the legitimacy of citizenship as a political

identity, and as such, the current framework of exclusion would need to be re-considered. As

36
Wenman, “Three Archetypal Forms.”
37
Goi, “The Politics of Abortion”, 77. A point which tends to be under-emphasized in much of the agonistic
literature thus far is the social and economic preconditions which would be needed to ensure that such a political
conception not become merely elite-led domination. Many of the scholars reviewed above note the need for
significant social and economic reforms in order to ensure the accessibility and equality of agonistic spaces. Yet
there remains a dearth of analysis on how such reforms could occur while meeting the demanding agonistic criteria
for democratic legitimacy. Mouffe, The Return, Ch. 6; Connolly, “Tocqueville, Territory, and Violence”, 39
(footnote omitted); Goi, “The Politics of Abortion”, 74-77 have provided some initial suggestions of how this
process of reform might occur. I take up this question in Chapter 5 of this work, addressing what I feel to be a
serious lacunae within the theoretical frame of agonistic pluralism.

17
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

Bonnie Honig writes, this would ultimately mean providing agonistic political spaces for those

“outside the circle of who ‘counts’ [and who] cannot make claims within the existing frames of

claim making.”38 While this would not rule out the exercise of power against political outsiders,

it would offer the polity an opportunity to engage those “whose contending identity gives

definition to contingencies in one’s own way of being”, the constitutive others of our own

political identities.39

1.5 The Novelty and Importance of the Proposed Research Project:

The research project proposed here fills a number of gaps both within agonistic

democratic theory and the literature on citizenship, rights, and migration. Turning first to the

contributions to agonism, this project presents the first sustained review of agonistic democratic

theory as a whole. In so doing, it maps out the distinctions between different scholars and their

thought in ways that tend to have been glossed over and simplified in previous treatments.

Second, my project addresses the social and economic preconditions necessary for agonistic

settings to remain contentious and inclusive venues for participation, rather than new

institutional locations by which to marginalize democratic voice and impose upon those engaged

ill-fitting notions of consensus. This addresses a recurring critique of agonistic democratic theory

and fills a glaring lacuna with the literature.40 Third, in the section addressing the “scale” of the

agonistic intellectual project, I engage an important criticism which surfaces repeatedly in

discussions of agonistic pluralism: just how sweeping a process of social transformation does

this model of democratic engagement entail or demand. Fourth, many agonists have been

reluctant to specify what types of institutional settings would need to emerge in order for

38
Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner, 101.
39
Connolly, Identity/Difference, 179.
40
Antonio Y. Vazquez-Arroyo. "Agonized Liberalism: The Liberal Theory of William E. Connolly." Radical
Philosophy 127 (2004): 8-20.

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Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

agonistic democratic engagement to flourish.41 Agonists have good reasons for this reluctance.

Schaap notes that agonistic theorists tend to share a “suspicion of attempts to determine in

advance what is to count as legitimate political action because this too often becomes a way of

co-opting radical challenges to the dominant interests within a society.”42 Yet, while

sympathizing with their shared concern, I fear that this tendency makes agonistic pluralism

vulnerable to criticisms regarding practicability and feasibility.43 Thus, in chapters four and six, I

attempt in very concrete terms to establish what types of institutional settings and venues could

potentially foster processes of agonistic democratic engagement, with the larger goal of bringing

agonism out of the abstract, theoretical realm and attempting to firmly embed agonism within the

everyday spaces of the political. In keeping with the agonistic theoretical tradition, I remain

reluctant to say what types of political outcomes should emerge from agonistic settings, and

remain focused on the attainment of a political process, while articulating the responsibilities and

privileges such a conception of the citizen would entail, and the institutions it would ultimately

require.

Turning now to the ways in which this research project adds to literature on citizenship

and migration, again I feel that there are a number of new and exciting contributions which my

study brings to bear. Above all, a notion of agonistic citizenship calls upon us to re-think both

the identity of the modern “citizen” and the types of spaces and activities which comprise the

political. Most existing conceptions of citizenship, as I will show in Chapter 2, tend to rest too

firmly on the grounds that citizenship is somehow a pre-political and pre-defined identity or

41
See Goi (2005) for an exception to this tendency.
42
Schaap, “Agonism in Divided Societies”, 257.
43
Nor is this tendency limited to agonistic pluralism alone. Kymlicka and Norman note that when it comes to
discussing how to foster the types of civic qualities which can reinvigorate modern conceptions of the citizen, most
theorists of citizenship become quite timid. The authors note, “…there may be good reasons for this timidity, but it
sits uneasily with the claim that we face a crisis of citizenship and that we desperately need a theory of citizenship”
See Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman.. "Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory."
In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995): 301.

19
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

status, while agonistic pluralism recognizes that the boundaries of this status are the very object

of contestation.44 Ernesto Laclau for instance has noted that the conception of citizenship as

identity obscures the fact that this identify emerges from a process of identification, which is the

very substance of the political.45 While liberal and community-oriented theories’ inattention to

questions of identity and difference is well-documented, the agonistic pluralist frame enables a

even more sweeping critique of existing citizenship theory. From an agonistic perspective, we

see this lack of attention to the identity-creation process and the process by which create

outsiders even within attempts to correct for modern tendencies towards exclusion or oppression

by multiculturalists and theorists of difference. Joppke notes that notions of differentiated

citizenship based on the presence of “oppression” or a dominant societal culture may be “too

vauge and simplistic to account for asymmetries of power and resources in complex societies.”46

Within the multiculturalist perspective, identities are what the political exists to cope with, rather

than create.

Nowhere is the identity-creation process more evident than in the practical politics of

immigration and citizenship, where the very goal of policy is to create a stable, enduring and

meaningful conception of the political community. Yet there has been a tendency in both modern

44
Claire Rasmussen and Michael Brown. "Radical Democratic Citizenship: Amidst Political Theory and
Geography." In The Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. E. F. Isin and B. S. Turner. London: Russell Sage, 2002)
179.
45
Ernesto Laclau, ed. 1994. The Making of Political Identities. London: Verso.
46
Joppke, Christian. 2002. "Multicultural Citizenship." In The Handbook of Citizenship Studies, ed. E. F. Isin and B.
S. Turner. (London: Russell Sage, 2002): 257. Exemplars of “oppression-based multiculturalist theories include Iris
Marion Young. Justice and the Politics of Difference. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990;
"Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy." In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the
Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996): 120-35; "Polity and
Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship." In The Citizenship Debates: A Reader, ed. G.
Shafir. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998): 263-90. Examples of “dominant-culture” based
theories include Will Kymlicka. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995).

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Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

societies and contemporary citizenship theory to treat this complex task as somehow outside the

range of contentious political engagement among an array of affected actors. Complicating this is

the fact that most existing theory cannot even conceptualize a political space in which those who

do not conform to the established identity of citizen, could somehow participate in debates

regarding its revision and reconsideration. Agonistic pluralism offers a variety of exciting

potentialities in this regard and enables us to rethink citizenship not in terms of identity or status,

but rather in terms of a process of identification, the creation of the “constitutive outside”. Thus

for agonists, the task of the political is to devise a form of commonality which can be subject to

subsequent democratic scrutiny and re-articulation.47 Agonistic pluralism, I contend has the

possibility to democratize the very process by which we create “outsiders”, which Ignatieff notes

is “probably the most common form of tyranny in human history.”48

Yet while agonistic pluralism’s willingness to tolerate ambiguity, fluidity, and sustained

re-engagement of certainty with regard to our political spaces and identities offers a number of

exciting avenues by which to pursue a theory of citizenship, this has yet to be done in a sustained

way within the literature. Furthermore, questions of citizenship politics and immigration, to

which such a conception is particularly well-attuned remain virtually untouched within the

literature.49 Many agonist works have critiqued dominant liberal, discursive, deliberative, or

communitarian conceptions of the political generally. However, the emphasis on citizenship—its

privileges and responsibilities, what we owe to those within the “constitutive outside” of our

47
Mouffe, Paradox, 55.
48
Michael Ignatieff. "The Myth of Citizenship." In Theorizing Citizenship, ed. R. Beiner. (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1995): 56.
49
Bonnie Honig’s insightful commentaries on “foreignness” provide a partial exception here, yet her work on
immigration explicitly adopts a much greater emphasis on the role which immigrant “outsiders” perform for the
existing community, rather than examining the impact which overly cohesive notions of the national community
have on the “outsider”. See Bonnie Honig. 1998. "Immigrant America? How Foreignness "Solves" Democracy's
Problems." Social Text 56: 1-27; Democracy and the Foreigner.

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Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

political spaces, and so on—remains a strikingly under-developed area of this theory and one in

which a sustained dialogue has yet to even truly begin. In this vein, I see my work as the

beginning of such a discussion, occurring at a time when the politics of citizenship and migration

constitute fundamental political controversies desperately in need of a novel theoretical

framework.

1.6 A “Roadmap” for the Discussion that Follows

The work that follows is a fairly ambitious project integrating various strains of

democratic theory, recent work on migration and the politics and citizenship, and extensive

original fieldwork which examines migration activism and advocacy in the contemporary United

States. The project aims to provide us not only with new ways to theoretically conceptualize

citizenship and democratic participation in the United States, but offer tangible suggestions as to

how we might approach current controversies stemming from citizenship and migration policy.

Having laid out, in very broad terms, the need for and importance of such a work in this

introduction, I move in Chapter Two to examine the deficiencies in prevalent theoretical

conceptions of democratic citizenship. This chapter critically examines notions of unity and the

drive toward democratic consensus emerging from a variety of contemporary strains of

democratic theory: political liberalism, communitarianism, participatory democracy, deliberative

democracy, cosmopolitan conceptions of democracy, as well as theorists dealing with

multiculturalism and identity. In Chapter Three, I examine the underlying assumptions of

existing agonistic pluralist theories, arguing that this strain of radical democratic theory is too

often falsely treated as a cohesive whole, while situating my own thought relative to these prior

articulations.

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Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

In Chapter Four, I lay out in concrete detail what an agonistic understanding of

citizenship ought to mean in relation to democratic engagement, adressing how far pluralism

ought to extend as well as the institutions and spaces which would need to exist in society for

such a system to survive and flourish. Chapter Five deals with the societal, political, economic,

and cultural pre-conditions which must be encouraged for a more agonistic democratic politics to

be possible. In so doing, I engage a number of unanswered questions within agonstic pluralism

with regard to how such a “risky” form of political engagement can be instantiated without

submerging society in a cauldron of deep-seated cultural conflict. Chapters six and seven operate

in tandem. Chapter six offers a brief historical account of migration and entry into the political

community within the United States, and problematizes the widely-held notions of a traditionally

open attitude toward outsiders. This section of the dissertation also shows the ways in which

contemporary migrants and refugees are confronted with policies and popular discourse which

increasingly labels them as both a security threat and economic drain upon society. Building

upon this, Chapter 7 presents the “democratic counter-narrative” to this current manifestation of

anti-immigrant ideas by examining immigrant advocacy and activism in the United States.

Furthermore, it suggests ways in which such democratic energies could be shifted from an

episodic activist discourse with minimal formal ties to policy outcomes, to become part of the

institutional fabric of a re-imagined agonistic democracy. To conclude, Chapter Eight speaks of

the broader significance of this work, both in terms of fashioning new, more democratically

legitimate policies to deal with these enduring issues as well as fashioning a new understanding

of democratic citizenship. Throughout, the work retains a mild optimism regarding the ability of

democratic societies to strive towards new potentialities, while also retaining a humble

23
Chapter 1—Introduction: Why Citizenship? Why Agonism?

pragmatism regarding the feasibility and dangers associated with large-scale fundamental

political change.

24