Response

I feel honored by WSQ’s choice of Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives as a feminist classic, and I am very grateful to Alexandra Dobrowolsky, Umut Erel, Paul Kershaw, and Lucía M. Suárez for their generous commentaries. The book has a special significance for me, as it is the first “real” book I wrote following my passage from activist to academic (the import of which is brought out both by Dobrowolsky and Suárez). It is also a very different book from the one I originally envisaged at the start of what proved to be a very long gestation period.

The book’s original conception lay in an invitation to give the 1989 Eleanor Rathbone Memorial Lecture. Rathbone was an important figure in early twentieth-century British feminism, most notably for the role she played in the introduction of family allowances and their payment to mothers. Reading Rathbone’s classic text, The Disinherited Family, I was struck by the contrast between the gendered understanding of the notion of citizenship demonstrated by Rathbone and some of her contemporaries and the gender-ignorant, and therefore gender-biased, discourse of citizenship which was increasingly influential in the political arena of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

Having given the lecture, I realized that I had found the topic for the book I was being pressed to write by the late Jo Campling (a feminist author and editor who is sorely missed). The book was originally envisaged as essentially a British policy text rooted in empirical evidence about women’s continued disadvantaged position as citizens. As I started to read more widely, I came to appreciate the need for a stronger theoretical underpinning. This led me to teach myself political theory in order to complement my own background in sociology and social policy. I also realized that my original foray into the topic had been something of a case of “Where fools rush in angels fear to tread.” Suárez draws attention to this in the kindest possible way and turns an initial weakness into a strength. When I finally got down to writing the book, some years after my original contract had expired, it was a much more difficult but also more exciting task than I had originally envisaged. It is therefore very gratifying to read the appreciation, particularly by Dobrowolsky and Kershaw, of the book’s attempt to fuse theory, policy, and praxis. (However, I fear that Dobrowolsky credits this volume with greater policy impact than it actually had!)

The book also drew on a wider range of literature than is usual in terms both of topic and of discipline. As Dobrowolsky rightly observes, this meant that in places “breadth came at the expense of depth.” One such area is migration. She, Erel, and Suárez each introduce the issue in their commentaries. Suárez refers to her own work on diaspora literature and the insights that it provides for feminist citizenship and the role that the arts play “in the forging of solidarity among women from different immigrant backgrounds.” This offers a new disciplinary perspective for me, the value of which I have also come to appreciate through the work of my colleague Maggie O’Neill with the Making Connections: Arts, Migration and Diaspora Regional Network ( http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/global_refugees/ ).

I am more familiar with the valuable contributions made by Dobrowolsky (Tastsoglou and Dobrowolsky 2006) and Erel (2009). Both throw light on questions of identity and belonging, the importance of which is increasingly stressed in the citizenship literature, and both emphasize the agency of migrant women. Dobrowolsky, in her commentary and elsewhere (2007), underlines the significance of the “post–9/11 and 7/7 climate of securitization” for migrants. This is one example of what I have described as “the disjuncture between the inclusionary philosophy underpinning critical citizenship theory and the increasingly exclusionary stance adopted by many nation-states towards ‘outsiders’” (Lister 2007b, 55) referred to by Erel in her commentary. These are all themes that I think a third edition of Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (though none is planned) could usefully explore in greater depth.

Erel makes particular reference to migrant domestic...