States of Emergency: Citizenship in Times of Crisis in Sierra Leone

拟议的研究项目通过探索对埃博拉爆发采取的高度军事化应对措施如何影响塞拉利昂社会经济边缘青年的公民身份体验，开展有关安全和发展优先事项关联的工作。从医学人类学到安全研究和政治社会学，本研究将探讨“危机”时期国家-社会关系的本质。在此过程中，它将分析通过紧急政策干预创造的公民身份的规范定义，以及生活在持续紧急状态中的边缘城市青年对公民身份的日常谈判和争论。自2014年以来，埃博拉疫情席卷了西非，而就在10年前，塞拉利昂结束了毁灭性的内战。危机的周期性与结构性脆弱性有关，包括体制薄弱，无法赢得大量生活在贫困中的人口的信任。这使塞拉利昂成为国际发展政策日益增长的趋势的象征，这种趋势把减少贫穷作为旨在减轻对国家和国际稳定的威胁的安全优先事项。生活在城市贫民窟地区的年轻人尤其受到越来越多地将贫困描述为安全风险的影响。首先，他们被认为是叛军的潜在新兵，其次，在以城市传染病为特征的埃博拉疫情爆发期间，他们被视为疾病的载体。因此，年轻人最近经历的军事化埃博拉应对行动，为研究危机如何在发展中国家塑造公民提供了一个迷人的切入点。虽然关于安全和发展优先事项交织在一起的进程已经写了很多文章，但对这些动态如何影响目标人群的了解却少得多。因此，本研究将探讨贫困证券化如何影响塞拉利昂公民身份的定义、谈判和经验。这意味着首先要理解紧急状态的宣布如何影响公民身份的规范性定义。其次，这意味着探索在紧急情况下的生活如何影响公民与主权当局的关系，以及他们如何在脆弱的政治共同体中谈判自己的地位。在方法上，该研究将首先涉及收集和分析来自塞拉利昂参与埃博拉应对的众多机构的灰色文献，以梳理疫情期间有关公民身份的政策叙述。第二，这将需要在弗里敦杂志码头贫民窟地区的年轻居民中进行为期三个月的人种学实地调查，该地区受这一流行病的影响特别严重。通过访谈、生活史和参与者观察，该研究将探索年轻人与国家机构的日常互动，以及他们对公民身份的定义、谈判和期望。这项研究建立在我之前在塞拉利昂开展的广泛工作的基础上，首先是关于年轻人的战后政治动员，后来是关于埃博拉疫苗试验的社区经验，作为一名参与观察员，与边缘城市青年一起工作。因此，这项工作进一步发展了我对高层政策话语和发展干预如何实际影响发展中国家边缘化人口日常生活的兴趣。

The proposed research project develops work on the association of security and development priorities, by exploring how a heavily militarised response to the outbreak of Ebola has influenced experiences of citizenship amongst socio-economically marginal youth in Sierra Leone. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, from medical anthropology to security studies and political sociology, this study will probe into the nature of state-society relation in times of 'crisis'. In so doing it will analyse both normative definitions of citizenship created through emergency policy interventions and the everyday negotiations and contestations of citizenship by marginal urban youth living in a constant state of emergency. The Ebola outbreak that has overwhelmed West Africa since 2014 came only a decade after the end of a devastating civil war in Sierra Leone. The cyclical nature of crisis has been linked to structural fragilities, including weak institutions unable to gain the trust of large populations living in poverty. This has made Sierra Leone emblematic of the increasing trend in international development policy that treats poverty reduction as a security priority aimed at mitigating threats to national and international stability. Young people living in urban slum areas have been especially affected by the increasing depiction of poverty as a security risk. First, as they were identified as potential recruits in rebel armies, and secondly as they were seen as vessels of disease during an Ebola outbreak characterised by urban contagion. Young people's recent experiences of a militarised Ebola response thus offer a fascinating entry-point into the study of how crisis creates citizens in a developing country. While much has been written on the processes whereby security and development priorities have become intertwined, much less is known about how these dynamics impact target populations. This study will thus explore how the securitisation of poverty influences definitions, negotiations and experiences of citizenship in Sierra Leone. This means firstly understanding how the proclamation of states of emergency influences normative definitions of citizenship. Secondly, it means exploring how living under emergency shapes how citizens relate to their sovereign authority and how they negotiate their position in a fragile political community. Methodologically, the study will firstly involve collecting and analysing grey literature from a multitude of agencies involved in the Ebola response in Sierra Leone to tease out policy narratives around citizenship during the outbreak. Secondly, it will entail three months of ethnographic fieldwork amongst young residents of the Magazine Wharf slum area of Freetown, a neighbourhood particularly badly hit by the epidemic. Through interviews, life histories and participant observation, the study will explore young people's everyday interactions with state institutions and their resulting definitions, negotiations and expectations of citizenship. This research builds on my previous extensive work in Sierra Leone, firstly on young people's post-war political mobilisation and later on community experiences of an Ebola vaccine trial, working as a participant observer with marginal urban youth. This work thus further develops my interest in how high-level policy discourses and development interventions actually impact the everyday lives of marginalised populations in developing countries.