Michael J. Prince
Presentation at York University
Vanier College
March 18, 2010

My locations

Absent citizens and related concepts

What is citizenship

Making citizenship accessible

Continuing thoughts
2

Outsider in the inside of the movement

Insider on the outside of the academy

Outsider/Insider connections

Who and what prompted me to write this
book
3
Absence of persons with disabilities in at
least four ways:
1. Lacking formal rights and membership
status in political communities
2. Gaps in, and obstacles to actual practices in
various aspects of life
3. Overlooked in social science studies and
theory
4. Excluded from most definitions and
discussions of citizenship

4



Absent citizens are the effects of the exercise
of power in specific places, certain groups,
numerous areas of life and time periods
Absent citizens are not totally outside the
community, but are socially produced and
politically positioned in marginalizing ways
Think always of “absent/present citizens”
together
5
Concept
Focus
Authors
Second-class citizens
Economic class and
social status
Eisenberg 1982; Roche
1992; Heater 2004
Citizens
minus/Citizens plus
Place of First Nations
and other indigenous
peoples in Canada
Hawthorn-Tremblay
reports 1966-67;
Cairns 2000; Pothier
and Devlin 2006
Underclass
Economic class and
race in America
Mouffe 1991
Silenced citizens
Children’s rights and
lack of voice
Andreychuk & Fraser
2007
Marginal matrix of
citizenship
Social, political and
economic oppression
Yuval-Davis, 1997
Un-, sub-, quasi-,
marginal citizens, and
super-citizens
Hierarchy of human
rights and status
groups in European
community
Nash 2009
6






Universalistic income security at adequate and
reliable levels through the life course
Inclusive education
Gainful employment with appropriate supports in
inclusive workplaces
Affordable and available supply of personal
supports, housing, and community services
Universal design for physical environments,
electoral systems, and systems of
communication, transportation and information
Mechanisms to tackle systemic discrimination
and to promote human rights for all
7



A fluid mix of ideas and frames, relations,
resources
“A sense of belonging in one’s country and
gives each individual the right to participate
in society and in its economic and political
systems” Scott Task Force Report, 1996
In Absent Citizens, I explore five elements:
discourse, legal and equality, democratic and
political, fiscal and social, and economic
8

By grounding it in actual lived experiences,
embodied needs and capacities

By raising critical awareness and public
understanding of status quo

By removing community barriers and social
wrongs

By respecting and promoting human rights &
human dignities
9




Widespread and thorough inclusion is a
reality for a relative minority
The project of making citizenship accessible
has both theoretical and practical elements
(the academy and the movement ;
insider/outsider dynamics)
Citizenship is a bundle of legal statuses and
lived practices of embodied subjects in
complex societies with ambivalent values
What kinds of politics will support the
development of rights, access and inclusion?
10
11

Access Centre – Able York

Graduate Program in Critical Disability Studies

Students for Barrier-free Access, University of
Toronto
12