Dreaming the Ordinary: Daily Life and the Complex Geographies of Citizenship

Staeheli, L.A.; Ehrkamp, P.; Leitner, H.; Nagel, C.R.

doi:10.1177/0309132511435001

Dreaming the Ordinary: Daily Life and the Complex Geographies of Citizenship

Staeheli, L.A.; Ehrkamp, P.; Leitner, H.; Nagel, C.R.

Authors

L.A. Staeheli

P. Ehrkamp

H. Leitner

C.R. Nagel

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of ‘ordinary’ to analyze citizenship’s complexities. Ordinary is often taken to mean standard or routine, but it also invokes order and authority. Conceptualizing citizenship as ordinary trains our attention on the ways in which the spatiality of laws and social norms are entwined with daily life. The idea of ordinariness fuses legal structures, normative orders and the experiences of individuals, social groups and communities, making citizenship both a general category and a contingent resource for political life. We explore this argument using immigrants as an example, but the conceptualization of citizenship extends more broadly.

Citation

Staeheli, L., Ehrkamp, P., Leitner, H., & Nagel, C. (2012). Dreaming the Ordinary: Daily Life and the Complex Geographies of Citizenship. Progress in Human Geography, 36(5), 628-644. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511435001

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	2012-10
Deposit Date	Feb 20, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Nov 21, 2012
Journal	Progress in Human Geography
Print ISSN	0309-1325
Electronic ISSN	1477-0288
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	36
Issue	5
Pages	628-644
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511435001
Keywords	Citizenship, Daily life, Law, Ordinary, Social norms.

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Copyright Statement
The final definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal Progress in human geography, 36/5, 2012 © The Author(s) 2012 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Progress in human geography page: http://phg.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/