Doctoral Dissertation Research: Exclusion and the Social Construction of Citizenship

研究表明，做一个负责任、遵纪守法、全身心投入的公民不仅仅意味着法律地位。人们还必须感到他们作为归属感被接受。宗教和其他少数群体可能在经济上取得成功，但发现自己被排除在充分参与社会之外。此外，随着世界变得更加相互联系，外部压力集团可以影响给予少数民族的有效公民地位，或者，少数民族可能拥有与内部关系同样重要的外部关系。这种发展对研究国家和公民的社会理论家和为他们服务的政府来说，都是一种挑战。在这个研究项目中，西北大学博士生Sadaf Hasnain将在Robert Launay博士的指导下，通过青年社会化的视角来研究这一现象。当年轻人面临模棱两可的公民身份时，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，重点关注19世纪的艾哈迈迪亚教派（ahmadyya）的年轻信徒的公民身份。伊斯兰教的一个世纪分支。在经济上取得成功的艾哈迈迪人认为自己是穆斯林，但在巴基斯坦的法律中却不这样认为。它们模棱两可的地位使它们成为这项研究的理想选择。研究者将进行参与者观察、小组和个人访谈、相关新闻媒体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，反对他们的宗教身份和实践，以及他们的社会阶级和跨国宗教联系之间的关系。本研究的结果将有助于深入了解立法、排斥、社会经济地位和跨国联系与国家和公民身份建设之间的关系。这项研究将有助于国家科学基金会文化人类学项目对关键人为过程的社会文化驱动因素和后果的研究，包括那些产生和转化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.