Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exclusion and the Social Construction of Citizenship

研究表明，作为一个负责任、守法和完全参与的公民意味着什么，而不仅仅是法律地位。人们还必须感到自己是被接受的归属感。宗教和其他少数群体可能在经济上取得成功，但却发现自己被排除在充分的社会参与之外。此外，随着世界变得更加相互联系，外部压力集团可能会影响给予少数群体的有效公民身份，或者，少数群体可能与其内部联系一样，具有对他们来说同样重要的外部联系。无论是对研究国家和公民的社会理论家，还是为他们服务的政府来说，这些发展都是对国家和公民观念的挑战。在这个研究项目中，西北大学博士生Sadaf Hasnain在Robert Launay博士的指导下，将通过青年社会化的镜头来研究这一现象。当年轻人面临模糊的公民身份时，他们如何理解自己属于一个民族国家？这项研究将在巴基斯坦进行，重点是19号Ahmadiyya信仰的年轻追随者的公民身份。伊斯兰教的世纪分支。经济上成功的艾哈迈迪认为自己是穆斯林，但在巴基斯坦法律中却不是这样。他们模棱两可的状态使他们成为这项研究的理想之选。调查员将进行参与者观察、小组和个人采访、相关新闻媒体的内容分析和档案研究。这些数据将被用来评估艾哈迈迪青年的公民意识和归属感、对他们宗教认同和实践的反对以及他们的社会阶层和跨国宗教联系之间的关系。这项研究的结果将对立法、排斥、社会经济地位和跨国联系与国家和公民身份的建设之间的关系提供洞察力。这项研究将有助于NSF文化人类学项目的研究，重点是关键的人类过程的社会文化驱动因素和后果，包括那些产生和改变社会经济分化的过程。

Research has shown that what it means to be a responsible, law-abiding, and fully engaged citizen is more than legal status alone. People also have to feel that they are accepted as belonging. Religious and other minority populations may be economically successful and yet find themselves excluded from full social participation. Furthermore, as the world becomes more interconnected, external pressure groups can affect the effective citizenship status accorded minorities or, alternatively, minorities may have external ties as important to them as their internal ones. Such developments challenge the very ideas of nation and citizen, both for social theoreticians who study them and for governments that serve them. In this research project, Northwestern University doctoral student Sadaf Hasnain, with the guidance of Dr. Robert Launay, will investigate this phenomenon through the lens of youth socialization. How do young people understand their belonging to a nation-state when they face ambiguous citizenship status? The research will be conducted in Pakistan and will focus on the citizenship of young adherents of the Ahmadiyya faith, a 19th. century off-shoot of Islam. The economically successful Ahmadi regard themselves as Muslims but are not so regarded in Pakistani law. Their ambiguous status makes them ideal for this research. The investigator will carry out participant observation, group and individual interviews, content analysis of relevant news media, and archival research. These data will be used to assess the relationship between Ahmadi youth's sense of citizenship and belonging, the opposition to their religious identity and practice, and their social class and transnational religious ties. Findings from this research will provide insight into the relationship between legislation, exclusion, socio-economic status, and transnational links on the one hand and the construction of nation and citizenship on the other. This research will contribute to the NSF Cultural Anthropology Program's research focus on socio-cultural drivers and consequences of critical anthropogenic processes, including those that produce and transform socioeconomic differentiation.