Disconnection and Resistance: Anti-Terrorism and Citizenship in the UKi
Michael Lister and Lee Jarvis
This is the accepted version of a paper published under Lister, Michael and Jarvis, Lee (2013)
‘Disconnection and Resistance: Anti-terrorism and Citizenship in the UK’, In Citizenship
Studies, Vol 17/Issue 6-7 pp.756-769. Published version of the article available is at URL:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13621025.2013.834129?journalCode=ccst20#.
U6wiVPldXjT
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Abstract
The ways in which citizenship has been impacted by anti-terrorism measures has been the
subject of much attention and debate, with the negative effect of the latter on the former being
frequently emphasised. Based on qualitative research in the UK, we argue that when
speaking to citizens, the negative effects of anti-terrorism measures are frequently
emphasised, especially (although not exclusively) for ethnic minority participants. However,
we also encountered forms of resistance to anti-terrorism measures. These included explicit
opposition to such measures, a refusal to adopt an outsider, or victim subject position and a
refusal to withdraw from established forms of political engagement. Whilst such resistance
should not be overstated – negative effects on citizenship were far more commonly reported –
taken together they emphasise the need to consider not only the ways in which anti-terrorism
may (negatively) impact on citizenship, but also the ways in which the experience and
practice of citizenship itself also contributes to, and helps shape, the perception and
understanding of anti-terrorism policy.
Introduction
This article contributes to contemporary debate around the impact of anti-terrorism
powers on citizens and citizenship in the post-9/11 period. Drawing on original empirical data
from a series of UK-based focus groups,ii we argue that the diminishment of citizenship
frequently associated with developments in this policy arena is far from a totalising or
universal experience. Thus, whilst many participants in our research did view these
developments as a direct challenge to their citizenship - as both status and lived experience others responded to them by engaging in, or advocating, resistance. Three such engagements
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are explored in this article: explicit expressions of opposition to anti-terrorism measures;
denials of ‘victim’ or ‘outsider’ subject positions within the narrativisation of anti-terrorism
measures and their consequences; and, refusals to withdraw or abstain from established forms
of political activity.
By exploring examples of each of these practices encountered in our research, this
article seeks to make four points. First, although infrequently framed in any explicit language
of citizenship, each of these forms of resistance is intensely related to the claims and
conceptual terrain of citizenship (see, for example, Delanty 2000, Lister and Pia 2008). Most
obviously, each is both underscored and bulwarked by appeals to equality of treatment and
the importance of political participation. Second, for many of our participants advocating
continued political engagement, it is engagement in mainstream political practices that offers
the most effective means of resisting the negative consequences of anti-terrorism powers. As
demonstrated below, we encountered very few examples of novel or anomalous forms of
political resistance to contemporary anti-terrorism policies amongst the citizens with whom
we spoke. Third, whilst we believe the practices of resistance we encountered to be
significant, their prominence should not be overstated. Although not statistically significant
(because of our methodology and sample size) the majority of our participants viewed antiterrorism measures either as irrelevant to their everyday lives, or as contributory to the
erosion of citizenship and its guarantees (see Jarvis & Lister forthcoming; also Gillespie &
O’Loughlin 2009). Fourth, these varied responses, we argue, indicate the existence of
dialectical tendencies in the anti-terrorism/citizenship relationship. While anti-terrorism
powers impact (often negatively) on citizenship for some; for others it is the status and claims
of citizenship that determines how anti-terrorism policy is both understood and resisted.
Taken together, these four points imply that the relationship between citizenship and
anti-terrorism cannot simply be adduced by examining changes to legal frameworks alone.
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There is a genuine need, we suggest, to complement the conceptual focus of much debate in
this area by exploring how contemporary anti-terrorism architectures impact on citizenship as
lived experience. Or, more specifically, to explore the ways in which anti-terrorism
architectures interweave with citizens’ own views of citizenship and its associated practices.
As Isin (2008) points out, citizenship is something that is enacted performatively as much as
something conferred by formal status in law. It is a practice, put otherwise, determined in
large part by its habituations and exercise which cannot be read off from legal frameworks
alone, however dramatically these might be adjusted. This article seeks to do precisely this by
examining how citizens understand, negotiate and respond to changes within formal
citizenship rights, practices and entitlements. To do so it proceeds in three sections.
We begin with a brief review of the relevant existing scholarship on citizenship and
anti-terrorism policy. Despite the significance of this frequently critical literature, we point to
its limited engagement with citizens’ own experiences of developments in this arena. This
section concludes by outlining the methodology underpinning our own effort to address this
lacuna. The article’s second section begins our empirical discussion. Here we briefly explore
the ways in which participants in our research discussed reductions in citizen rights, public
participation, and sense of ‘belonging’ within the UK as examples of a diminishing
experience of citizenship related to contemporary anti-terrorism policies. The article’s third
section then contrasts the pessimistic picture of this analysis by exploring the three
techniques of resistance introduced above. The article concludes, finally, by arguing that
these practices of resistance point toward a more complex citizenship/anti-terrorism nexus
than that implicit within much academic literature.
Citizenship, Anti-terrorism policy and their study
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Existing literature on the relationship between contemporary anti-terrorism policy and
citizenship almost wholly emphasises the former’s negative impact on the latter (see Jarvis &
Lister forthcoming). Although a small number of very recent contributions (Haqq Baker
2012; MacDonald 2012) have highlighted some positive effects of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives
such as STREET (Strategy to Reach Empower & Educate Teenagers), this literature
overwhelmingly posits a diminishment of citizenship rights and protections within post-9/11
efforts to combat terrorism (Haque 2002, Cole 2003, Sivanandan 2006, Huq and Muller
2008, Guild et al 2007, Gillespie and O’Loughlin 2009). An important strand of this work
points to the impacts of recent measures on specific communities, with Muslim and Asian
communities, in particular, dominating attention. (for example, Fekete 2004, 2006, Said
2004, Sivanandan 2006, Gillespie 2007, Spalek and Imtoual 2007, Spalek and Lambert 2008,
Pantazis and Pemberton 2009, Choudhury and Fenwick 2011). A related, broadly
Foucauldian scholarship, complements this by spotlighting the importance of identity politics
in this area (Puar and Rai 2002, Rygiel 2006). Other studies, finally, link anti-terrorism
initiatives to broader shifts in the practice of governance, employing lenses including
biopolitics (Amoore 2006) and risk management (Aradau and van Munster 2008) to analyse
policy construction and conduct here.
Approached collectively, the above scholarship is significant for two immediate
reasons. In the first instance, by situating anti-terrorism measures both historically and
politically, these literatures caution against presentism in analyses of contemporary security
architectures. Terrorism, as we know, did not begin on 11 September 2001, yet, neither, of
course, did excessive or discriminatory responses to this form of violence (Cole 2003).
Second, by revealing the deleterious implications of contemporary anti-terrorism measures,
this literature also offers an engaged political critique; one that opens space, perhaps, for
discussing alternative strategies through which to engage terrorism and terrorists.iii With few
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exceptions, however, largely absent to date is any sustained engagement with the experience
or interpretation of policies in this area by ‘ordinary’ citizens themselves (see Gillespie and
O’Loughlin 2009, p.109).
This omission is significant, we suggest, because anti-terrorism measures do not
simply ‘wash over’ citizens. These, and other, security assemblages are negotiated, accepted
and contested in the spaces and practices of everyday life (see O’Loughlin and Gillespie
2012, Huysmans and Guillaume forthcoming). Changes to citizenship cannot, therefore, be
assumed a priori or simply “read off” from adjustments to legislative or policy frameworks.
For, as Nyers (2010, p.96) argues, ‘to understand citizenship it is not sufficient to despair
over citizenship’s exclusions; equally important is to investigate the claims about rights,
membership and belonging made by excluded populations’.
Our own effort to explore such negotiations and claims in the context of anti-terrorism
policy employed a series of fourteen focus groups that were held throughout 2010. A range of
deliberately open-ended questions were used to structure these groups (see Morgan 1996,
p.137, also Kitzinger & Barbour, 1999), in which individuals were invited to discuss the
impact of contemporary powers at different levels of analysis: individual, family, community,
and nation.iv In addition, participants were asked to evaluate the legitimacy of particular
measures such as stop and search and pre-trial detention periods, to outline alternative
responses to combat terrorism they would institute if in government, and to explore the
concept of security as viewed by themselves and others. Eighty-one people in total
contributed to the project (48 women and 33 men; 31 Asian participants, 28 white and 22
black), selected via a purposive sampling strategy and recruited through a combination of
enumeration, snowballing and organisation sampling techniques (see Ritchie et al 2003). On
completion, the transcripts were subjected to descriptive content analysis to identify the key
themes emerging from this data (Ritchie & Spencer, 2002, pp. 313-314).
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At the project design level, our groups were organised around two primary variables:
geographical residence (metropolitan/non-metropolitan) and ethnicity (black/white/Asian).
They took place in London and Birmingham (as Metropolitan sites); and, Oldham, Swansea,
Llanelli and Oxfordshire (as non-Metropolitan sites).v This research design was selected to
enable an exploration of differences in perceptions and experiences amongst UK populations.
In particular we were interested in assessing the existence and relevance of differential
perceptions of potential vulnerability to terrorist attacks (Metropolitan or Non-Metropolitan),
and the significance of ethnic identity in perceptions of exposure to (coercive dimensions of)
anti-terrorism measures. Despite its obvious simplifications, our employment of ethnicity as a
variable (with Asian referring to individuals from a South Asian background) was introduced
to add context to relevant recent research on religious identity and anti-terrorism policy,
much of which has focused on Muslim communities (see Said 2004, Choudhury & Fenwick,
2011).
Disconnected Citizenship?
Before turning to this article’s primary focus on resistance toward recent antiterrorism policies, this section introduces some of the major ways in which such policies
corroded or diminished the experience of citizenship, as viewed by our research participants.
As argued elsewhere (Jarvis & Lister forthcoming), these concerns focused not only on the
erosion of citizenship rights – the emphasis of much relevant academic research – but, in
addition, on related aspects of citizenship including one’s connection to British identity, and
ability to participate in the public sphere.
In the first instance, we encountered genuine and repeated concerns that anti-terrorism
measures were eroding rights, freedoms and liberties. In the words of one participant, for
instance, ‘some of these [anti-terrorism measures] go against the whole point of living in a
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democracy... [they] remove that freedom of individuals, and it restricts the democracy we live
in’ (Oxford, White, Female). Such concerns were typically far less pronounced amongst
white communities, and, where articulated, were formulated in a primarily abstract sense. In
our focus groups with ethnic minority participants, on the other hand, we encountered
frequent anxieties, indeed anger, that their own citizenship rights were being eroded directly.
Here, there emerged a strong sense that ethnic minorities had been singled out by antiterrorism measures; the erosion of rights, therefore, a particular, not universal experience. As
one participant put it, ‘All of these [anti-terrorism measures] are designed to control
Muslims’ (Birmingham, Asian, Male). This view, crucially, was articulated also by a number
of black participants. Here, previous experiences of racism presented a common filter through
which anti-terrorism measures were viewed. In the words of one individual:
...the fact people are still stopped and searched, it increases the racism. It increases the fact that... I may
not be Muslim, but people, sort of, like, think that...somehow I've got something to do with it
[terrorism]. So it makes our lives, as individuals, even more difficult (Swansea, Black, Female).
Here, a very clear connection is drawn between anti-terrorism measures and increases in
racism and unequal treatment; hence a decline in the quality of citizenship.
The above differentiation between ethnic communities became more pronounced in
relation to a second aspect of citizenship: participation. For many white participants, antiterrorism measures posed very limited impact upon their engagement in public life. For most,
these were something distanced from themselves and their everyday lives: ‘All this is
happening on a level that does not touch us’ (Oldham, White, Male). This contrasted sharply
with experiences of ethnic minorities, and the regular claim we encountered that antiterrorism measures had dampened or reduced socio-political participation:
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I would love to change things, which is probably why I have a passion for politics. But right now
currently I would rather keep my mouth shut and not say anything that can be seen… like I tell my
friends as well, don’t say anything that can…go against you. Because a lot of your phone calls, without
you knowing is monitored by the MI5 anyway […] especially when you start saying things out of anger
and emotion that can be about the system that we use to govern our ways of living, is turned against.
So, if you say anything bad about it, it is literally monitored. (London, Asian, Female).
Third, in terms of identity, we encountered, again, comparatively few concerns
amongst white participants in relation to anti-terrorism powers. Within ethnic minority
groups, however, we encountered near unanimity that anti-terrorism measures were
complicating community cohesion. Whilst a complex and contested term (see Worley 2005),
a strong sense here was evident that community relations had been rendered more difficult
because of post-9/11 developments in this policy area:
I think people do feel alienated, and I think these kind of laws do, sort of, make people feel really
suffocated and really alienated, and that’s why there’s problems with community cohesion, and that’s
why people are likely to resist the dominant culture, rather than integrate. (Birmingham, Asian,
Female).
Other participants went further still, arguing recent measures had reversed long-standing
efforts at social integration thus reducing their ability, perhaps also their desire, to identify as
British. As one participant (a second generation migrant from Pakistan) put it:
It doesn't make me feel part of Britain as much as I did. The last ten years... I used to feel like that I’m
half and half, okay, because of my colour, my religion and my background. I am not white, English,
okay, I know where I come from, I know my roots, but I’m here now. My father worked here, lived
here, everything that I own, everything that’s important to me is here now, so I should be allowed to be
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accepted in this country. But after that last ten years of things like that happening, the way I’m looked
at, I don't feel as part of the British society, as accepted (Oldham, Asian, Female).
The picture of citizenship which emerges from these findings is troubling for two reasons.
The first is that citizens of various ethnic and geographical demographics perceive a
diminishment of citizenship that stems from anti-terrorism measures. Amongst many of our
black and Asian participants, there was a belief that their rights and participation, as well
their sense of national identity, had been eroded by anti-terrorism policies; a sense they are
becoming, as one individual argued, ‘second class citizens’ (Birmingham, Asian, Female). A
second troubling aspect is their highlighting a condition of ‘disconnected citizenship’ (Jarvis
& Lister, forthcoming) characterised by contrasting experiences of citizenship amongst white
individuals and those of other ethnic groups. Anti-terrorism powers, in this sense at least,
may therefore be creating - or contributing to - a differential experience of citizenship, with
varying perceptions of, and attachments to, this category’s core dimensions.
Resisting Anti-Terrorism
The disturbing picture of the citizenship/anti-terrorism nexus evident in the above
anxieties was not the only perspective we encountered in our research. In the remainder of
this article we therefore focuses on a series of rarer, but perhaps less predictable, dynamics of
resistance discussed by participants in our project. These resistances, we argue, reverse the
directionality implicit above, and within much relevant literature, where citizenship is
positioned as something upon which recent anti-terrorism initiatives act. For, as we argue
below, the experience and practice of citizenship itself also contributes to, and helps shape,
the perception and understanding of anti-terrorism policy.
A recent study by O’Loughlin and Gillespie (2012) explores a diversity of ways in
which young Muslims have responded to contemporary security discourses. Whilst arguing
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that the ‘dominant discursive framework[s]’ (O’Loughlin and Gillespie 2012, p.116)
connected Muslims to terrorism so rigidly that, ‘for some there appeared no possibility of
escape, resulting in a sense of alienation’, the authors note that, ‘Others, however, invested
hope in the improvement of normal politics through small, cumulative acts that modify ‘the
mainstream’ and its discourses from within’ (O’Loughlin and Gillespie 2012, p.116).
Employing Maira’s (2009) notion of ‘dissenting citizenship’ to foreground such acts,
O’Loughlin and Gillespie (2012, p.117) argue that some young Muslims:
sought and found ways to hold on to their sense of entitlement to British (if not multicultural)
citizenship by undertaking small, strategic everyday acts, seeking to educate their peers or co-workers,
outside engagement with formal political institutions. In other words, dissenting citizenship may be
rebellious, critical, angry and disappointed but the youth in our study believe in and invest in
citizenship as an entitlement.vi
Our own research into anti-terrorism policy uncovered a number of instances of lowlevel dissent, or resistance, of this sort amongst Asian, black and white individuals alike. In
the following, we chart three examples of this, relating to: expressions of opposition to antiterrorism measures; a denial of ‘victim’ or ‘outsider’ subject positions; and a continued belief
in, and refusal to withdraw from, engagement in political life. Each of these examples, we
argue, constitutes resistance in the form of an oppositional action (see Hollander and
Einwohner 2004, p.534, Rose 2002) intended either to contest anti-terrorism powers, or the
more subtle forms of subjectification they may encourage or foster.
Because our focus in this discussion is inductively derived from our empirical
findings we take no a priori position on whether resistance in this context is exhausted by the
intended, overt, actions discussed by our participants. Methodologically, dialogical research
methods such as focus groups (or interviews) may indeed privilege findings of “intentional”,
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overt action, overlooking, in the process, more ‘covert’ or ‘unwitting’ strategies of resistance
discernible through participant observation, immersed ethnographies and the like (Hollander
and Einwohner, 2004). It may be, in other words, that it is partly our methodology that leads
to uncovering forms of resistance which emphasise mainstream engagement over, say, more
radical forms of political engagement.
Yet there are reasons to think that this emphasis is not simply a methodological
artefact. Firstly, our findings resonate with those of related studies (Moss and O'Loughlin
2008), which also encountered public patience with formal channels of participation and
engagement. And, second, as we shall see, some of our participants stressed the importance
of such traditional avenues of engagement precisely as a way of avoiding marginalisation or
the dangers inherent to more oppositional forms of resistance. In so doing, they also
demonstrate a commitment to concrete, piecemeal struggles and solutions and to engage in
formal democratic channels more consistently and broadly. They perhaps also emphasise the
potential dangers of engaging in more marginal, or oppositional, forms of contestation and
resistance. As Žižek (2007) puts it:
The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in
power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents
no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what
kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to
make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with
strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.
Resisting anti-terrorism policy
The first example of resistance encountered in our research concerned the explicit
voicing of opposition - and the explicit expression of the need to voice opposition - to recent
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anti-terrorism initiatives. This resistance, frequently, had numerous sources. In the following,
we focus on discussions of the stop and search powers contained within Section 44 of the
2000 Terrorism Act as paradigmatic of this.
When asked about stop and search as an anti-terrorism strategy, our participants’
opposition focused on this measure’s implementation as much as its existence. One
individual, for example, suggested stop and search was aimed at ‘Asian faces’ (Birmingham,
Asian, Female), another positing a ‘huge increase in stop and search for particular races’
(London, Asian, Male). An anger that these powers were reflecting, even ‘creating racism’
(Swansea, Black, Female) was pronounced in several of our groups; in the words of one
participant, stop and search is, ‘not stopping everyone’ (Swansea, Black, Female).
Underneath this criticism was sometimes a call for greater equality. In the words of one
participant:
I think I'd be more comfortable if I saw in a month five white people stopped on the road and they were
being checked. So when I get stopped I'll go, oh, they're just doing their job. But if every time I see
you're checking someone it's a black young boy, or it's someone from the BME community, then I feel
like you're just pointing fingers, you're trying to look for something. But if I drove past and I say, they
stopped the white guy, okay. So when I get stopped, all right, go, you're doing your job. I think that's
the thing for me (Swansea, Black, Male).
Beyond concerns around racial profiling, Section 44 powers were also widely contested as
‘undemocratic’ and potentially comprising of an individual’s ability to ‘express themselves
freely’ (Swansea, Black, Male). Opposition of this sort was articulated, at times, in an explicit
language of citizenship rights: ‘if we do walk around in London or drive a car in London, we
can be stopped without reason…I think is too much of an infringement on our civil
liberties…I don’t think stop and search without suspicion helps’ (London, Asian, Male). At
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other times, participants focused instead on this power’s efficacy, expressing suspicion of its
utility for enhanced public security:
I mean the whole point here is, without suspicion, so does that mean they’re just randomly stopping
and searching people and hoping to find amongst the millions of people moving around that they’re
going to catch someone? That doesn’t seem that likely (London, White, Male).
As might be expected, ethnicity fails as a reliable predictor of support for, or opposition to,
anti-terrorism measures. Neither black nor Asian participants were wholly hostile to recent
initiatives; one Asian male, for instance, expressed his qualified support for stop and search
thus: ‘I don’t have an issue with it. But then there are issues of racial profiling that come into
this… So, I mean it is something necessary, probably something that not many people can
argue against’ (London, Asian, Male). White participants, similarly, expressed hostility and
scepticism as well as support for measures such as stop and search. Better indicators, at least
in our research, were two alternative factors. The first was an individual’s underlying faith in
the police and criminal justice system. Thus, some participants opposed stop and search,
because such powers made possible abuse by individual police officers: ‘That’s [Section 44]
disgraceful. It means that any member of the security forces who has a grudge or a grievance,
or a dislike or a prejudice can take it out, I mean, if there is no reasonable grounds’ (Swansea,
White, Male). Others, more supportive of recent measures, were so in part because of a belief
that suitable checks and balances remained in place for broad systemic legitimacy: ‘when it
comes to the judiciary, the actual system of justice, generally speaking they are, for example,
people are released etc. So, for me, I do have faith in the justice system’ (London, Asian,
Male). As one individual put it, discussing pre-charge detention:
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if I was mistakenly identified, I think I would have enough access to legal counsel...and to be able to
make sure that my voice was heard and that my rights would be, you know, enforced. At the end of the
day, I still have to go through a trial…a completely fair and proper trial process (London, Asian,
Female).
A second indicator was an individual’s expectations around the use of such measures derived
from prior personal experience of contact with the state’s apparatuses. Here, several black
participants, in particular, articulated scepticism toward contemporary anti-terrorism
initiatives because of experiences such as the following:
Even walking on the road and seeing a policeman. I mean the policeman, you're not supposed to be
scared, you're supposed to feel safe, a policeman is here, fantastic, nothing wrong is going to go on.
But then when they start looking at you, and start whispering, and seem to follow you. I think that
happens many times when driving, you just get stopped for no reason, you know? (Swansea, Black,
Male).
The lack of a direct connection linking an individual’s ethnic identity to their attitudes toward
anti-terrorism policy adds weight, we argue, to this article’s opening discussion of the need to
speak directly with people to understand transformations in citizenship. Measures such as
stop and search are negotiated and understood variably, occasioning support and resistance
for multiple reasons: experiential as well as demographic. More important here, however, is
that the above expressions of dissent indicate a genuine desire to engage with issues of
contemporary public policy; a desire that signals, simultaneously, an attachment to
citizenship amongst our participants. The above comments do not express a resignation borne
of disillusionment; a sense that nothing can be done to arrest racial profiling and other
pernicious outcomes or drivers of security governance (whether real or perceived). Rather,
they constitute an undiminished willingness to engage and negotiate with security and
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governance practices. Indeed, some participants went even further still and appealed directly
to public officials in the course of their comments to the focus group:
Our challenge to government, if this thing is going to be released to them, I challenge them with all the
things that I’ve said, and I really hope that they look into all of the root causes of problems. …Creating
laws don’t solve problems…it needs a social agenda to solve the social problems. (London, Black,
Female)
Individuals, in short, both can and continue to dispute key government policies despite the
perceived existence of profound obstacles and risks of so doing. And, in the process of
disputation of this sort, we argue, they also re-affirm and re-negotiate their relationship to the
state and its institutions.
Resisting subject positions: the victim and the outsider
A second example of resistance we encountered emerged in discussions of prejudice
and stigmatisation such as those touched on above. In the context of these conversations,
several ethnic minority participants refuted the frequently widespread accusation that antiterrorism policies (and the British state and society) were inherently prejudiced, even racist.
To do so, they combined empirical critiques of the seeming pervasiveness of discriminatory
practices (frequently invoking their own experience of life in the UK), with a political
critique of the societal impacts of ‘failed multiculturalism’ narratives. In the words of one
individual, for instance:
I’ve led a bit of a sheltered life…by virtue of where I work and all the rest of it, what I do, I don’t tend
to come across it [racism], or maybe I don’t notice it. I try to attune myself out of it, because I think to
be burdened by it is an affliction, and then you can make it bigger in your head than it actually is, and
then it holds you back (Birmingham, Asian, Male).
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Clarifying the roots of this wariness, this individual subsequently stated: ‘the minute you start
feeling subjugated, then that affects you’ (Birmingham, Asian, Male).
In the context of a focus group dominated by discussion of the persistence of UKbased racism this was a difficult, and potentially challenging, position to inhabit. The danger,
of course, was its capacity to downplay or deny the experiences of those around him;
experiences of discrimination reflected and exacerbated, for others in the group, by
contemporary anti-terrorism measures. Pointing to the disempowering, and depoliticising,
implications of a victim subject position, however, this individual maintained the need for,
and his own experience of, an agency unencumbered by social constraints such as racism.
And, as the conversation continued, this stance was supplemented with an additional
normative demand to enter into encounters with others unprejudiced by prior assumptions of
their intentions. The following discussion, which begins with a contribution from the above
participant, is worth reproducing at length:
A: That’s very negative. I think the general population, the English indigenous population here are far
more reasonable and civilised than, you know, we give them credit for.
B: They are, but they’re the ones that don’t…they’re not the ones that cause the trouble. It’s the, you
know, sort of…
A: But, they can only cause you trouble if they say something to you. You’re talking about someone
injuring you by thinking something about you. They can’t.
B: You don’t know what their thoughts are, that’s the thing.
A: Parliament’s trying to do us for thought crime. We can’t be guilty of the same thing… You must
give people the benefit of the doubt (Birmingham, Asian, Male, Female).
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As this participant subsequently argued: ‘we can’t judge everybody the same, call everybody
a racist, just as other people can’t judge us all the same and call us terrorists. We’re guilty of
exactly the same thing. You must be reasonable’ (Birmingham, Asian, Male).
This individual’s stance - albeit a rare one in our focus groups - offers a different form
of contestation to those considered in the above section. Anti-terrorism policy, and its
application, are not his primary focus here. Rather, it is the narrativisation of such measures,
and UK society more broadly, as targeted at Muslim or Asian communities that is being
resisted. Our participant’s refusal to recognise this narrative is grounded, ultimately, in a
claim to equality and inclusion: a rejection, in other words, of social cartographies organised
around simplistic binary logics of insider/outsider. As another Asian male, speaking in
London, put it:
I don’t feel like there is a them and us…I take part in Islamic society, I do SU [student union] politics, I
take part in youth work in the government or whatever, working for local government as well, doing
various other things, so I’m participating in politics and there isn’t a them and us. If I go to a meeting
and there are no other Muslims there I don’t think there I’m a Muslim, there are no Muslims there; you
are working together. At the weekend we did a...Fellowship, and there were Muslims and non Muslims.
They are training us to be leaders; it wasn’t a them and us that runs against the Muslims. It wasn’t like
that. And I think it is a psychological thing. And if you start thinking like that then that will
happen…the self fulfilling prophecy, and if you label yourself as someone who is an outsider then that
will end up happening to you (London, Asian, Male).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the standpoint shared by these two individuals did not go
unchallenged within our focus groups. One participant, sceptical of this stance, returned
attention to the climate of suspicion that periodically befalls Muslims after terrorist attacks. In
her words:
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For example, look at September 11th, when that happened there was a high number of women who
were wearing the headscarf being treated with discrimination, headscarves were being pulled off,
calling names, being called terrorist, Ninja, whatever, very negative name calling. Why? Because
somebody says that’s them, we are us, and we are British, and they are weird. We are British and they
are weird, and they are them and we are us (London, Asian, Female).
Another participant pointed to similar, long-term experiences:
I would really like to belong somewhere, you know, like my house or my town or my country and be
accepted and that sort of thing. I don’t feel [this, even though…] I’ve been here for forty years…I don’t
have the security of belonging…I’m a Paki middle-aged woman. That’s how they see me, Paki.
(Oldham, Asian, Female)
This scepticism notwithstanding, it is clear that a number of our research participants individuals opposed, importantly, to many recent anti-terrorism initiatives - maintain a belief
in citizenship’s protections, and a desire to identify with, and contribute to, British identity.
Thus, although unsympathetic to many recent policy mechanisms in this area, these denials of
outsider status present a claim for recognition upon the body politic itself. A claim to the
effect that, ‘I am a citizen, and demand to be treated as such’. And, as argued now below,
they resonate powerfully with related claims that communities must continue to participate in
social and political practices despite feelings and narratives of alienation.
Resisting withdrawal
The final assertion of, and engagement with, citizenship explored here concerned the
argument of several individuals that participation in public life remained both possible and
fruitful, despite the challenges posed by contemporary anti-terrorism policies. For some
Asian participants, as implied above, this demand for continuing engagement was
19
accompanied by a perceived need to rethink the modalities through which it took place. For
one individual, in London, for example:
They [the Muslim community] need to go a different way. For example there is a difference between
shouting, banging it up in east London and saying…spreading all these leaflets; that is wrong. But there
is a difference... [L]et’s go into politics, let’s do my degree in politics, or let’s do my conversion in
politics, let me get into there. A friend of mine is a Muslim girl in a headscarf, she’s actually gone into
politics now…she’s working for the Conservative party…she’s getting her voice recognised that way.
And that is the way we need to do it now. I think it’s not about sending leaflets and having these big
Islamic talks and in...some ways…enhancing the negative perception, sowing the seeds of Islamism;
it’s about being smart (London, Asian, Female).
Other participants echoed these comments, arguing that mainstream political channels offered
the most effective opportunity for contributing to political debate and influencing social
outcomes. The possibility of social and political evolution, and the patience they required,
offered hope to many such individuals. In the words of another male, for example: ‘There
needs to be a shift in our psyche, a shift in our personalities to…recognise that change
happens slowly, and if we’re aggrieved, there are, through these shady democratic processes,
methods of redressing those, but it just takes time’ (Birmingham, Asian, Male).
The validity of these views of the British political process is beyond this article’s
scope. More important, here, is that these individuals rejected other participants’ wariness
toward political engagement because of contemporary anti-terrorism powers. These
dissenters, importantly, retained a sense that one can, and should, continue to make demands
on, and work within, the established political order (see also Moss and O’Loughlin 2008,
O’Loughlin and Gillespie 2012). Thus, whilst many (and we do not seek to underplay the
extent of this) felt anti-terrorism has diminished their connection to public and political life,
others have responded to governance in this area by persisting in practices of societal
20
engagement, albeit in adapted form. This response, it seems, was made possible by an
undiminished belief in one’s capacity to exact preferences from the established political
system and, to echo Žižek (2007) again, to put concrete, finite and realistic demands to those
in power.
A related challenge to temptations toward political withdrawal came from a white
participant in Oxford. For this individual, the perniciousness of contemporary anti-terrorism
mechanisms, and their surrounding (in)security discourses, centred precisely on the forms of
social disengagement they encouraged or demanded. Challenging the idea that physical
security trumps other political values or ends, she argued for an acceptance of risk, rather
than a sacrifice of fundamental liberties, in this context:
I think part of being a liberal is that you accept that there are certain consequences to freedom, and
there are certain negative consequences of having freedom, in that there will be nutters out there that
will cause terror. And you can choose to be affected by this, and you can choose to have draconian
measures that restrict everybody’s freedom and lives; or you can accept that that’s part of life and not
let them terrorise you and get on with life…you cannot let their behaviour affect yours…[T]here’s
putting appropriate controls and measures in, but not ones that fundamentally affect your freedom
within a democracy, because I think as soon as you start to erode those freedoms, it starts to stop
looking like a democracy to me (Oxford, White, Female).
It is worth noting that this person also expressed a direct acquaintance with someone killed in
the 7/7 attacks. Thus, her defence of citizenship rights, even in the face of a concomitant
increased risk of terrorism, is not borne of a personalised distance from such concerns.
Although elsewhere stating that anti-terrorism measures have very little effect on her life, she
is, effectively, disputing the rationale for any uprating of the anti-terrorism framework. Thus,
citizens’ contestation and disputations around anti-terrorism are neither limited to specific
21
policy issues (such as stop and search), nor to those at the “sharp end” of such measures, or
perceiving themselves thus.
Conclusion
This article has sought to contribute to debate on the ways in which contemporary antiterrorism measures impact upon citizenship by foregrounding the views and experiences of
citizens themselves on these questions. In its empirical discussion, we began by noting that
post-9/11 developments have, undoubtedly, had a deleterious effect on the experience of
citizenship for many individuals within the UK. Black and Asian citizens, in particular, have
experienced an erosion of rights, a dampening of political engagement, and a weakening
sense of attachment to British identity (also Jarvis & Lister forthcoming).
The article’s final and primary section, however, presented evidence to indicate that
the diminishment of citizenship identified by many of our participants, and much relevant
academic literature, is not as totalising as might be expected. Three strategies of resistance
were explored. First, the articulation of opposition to the anti-terrorism architecture and
specific measures such as stop and search therein. Second, a refusal of non-white individuals
to recognise the subject positions of victim or outsider available within much narrativisation
of anti-terrorism policy. And, third, a refusal to withdraw from formal and informal
participation in political and everyday life. In each of these strategies, individuals continued
to make claims and demands upon citizenship, reaffirming the value of this status in so doing.
It is important to note that many of these efforts at resistance were not dominant, or
even widespread, amongst the citizens with whom we spoke. For those who experience
systemic prejudice and racism in the existence or exercise of anti-terrorism powers - whether
accurately or otherwise - it is not easy to continue to believe in the promise of citizenship.
Similarly, for those for whom anti-terrorism exists as only a distanced consideration,
22
resistance appears a peripheral concern. Nonetheless, a number of individuals do continue to
make citizenship demands around anti-terrorism; demands that people be treated equally, that
rights be protected, and for inclusion within social and political life. This suggests, we argue,
that anti-terrorism measures and security practices do not work solely, or uniformly, toward
the undermining of citizenship. In the vertical relationship between citizens and the state,
individuals do dissent and challenge the ways in which security governance has been
practiced by demanding more inclusive and equitable treatment. Moreover, in the horizontal
relations between citizens themselves, there continues a refusal to participate in criticisms of
multiculturalism, and a refusal to self-identify as an outsider.
Taking these efforts at contest and resistance seriously, we suggest, adds nuance to
contemporary debate on the anti-terrorism/security nexus. Not only does anti-terrorism act
upon citizenship, in frequently negative ways. But, at the same time, understandings and
enactments of citizenship also impact upon perceptions of anti-terrorism powers. Whether
such powers are viewed as benign or deleterious, as distanced from or reflective of, the
structuration of the UK’s social fabric: all this, and more, appears imbricated with an
individual’s faith in the value and resilience of their status as citizen. From where this faith
derives is some way beyond the scope of this article, although our data points to the
importance of prior experiences of the state and its apparatuses as potentially significant
determinants. More important here, we argue, is that the complexity of this relationship
indicates a real need for further efforts at redressing what is, in the context of debate around
anti-terrorism powers, the, ‘one very obvious dimension lacking: the views of the public’
(Johnson and Gearty 2007, p.143).
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Notes
i
The authors acknowledge and thank the ESRC for funding the research on which this article draws (RES 00022-3765). We are also deeply grateful to all those who participated within, or contributed to the organisation of,
the focus groups for this project. Thanks also to those who attended the Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and
Security in the UK workshop at Swansea University (July 2010) and the European Politics & Society Research
Group at Oxford Brookes University (May 2011) for their feedback on earlier versions of this material. Finally,
we thank the Editors and anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions on improving this article.
ii
Further information on the project and its findings is available via the following website:
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-000-22-3765/read
iii
This need for alternative ways of thinking and conducting counter-terrorism is a consistent theme within
related recent efforts to forge a ‘critical terrorism studies’ research programme. See, for example, Jarvis (2009),
and Jackson et al (2009, 2011).
iv
Participants in each focus group were given an information sheet part way through the session summarising
major and controversial anti-terrorism measures enacted within the UK since 2000.
v
The full data set is available through the UK data archive at www.data-archive.ac.uk under the following study
number and title: SN 7045 Anti-Terrorism, Citizenship and Security in the United Kingdom, 2010.
vi
Much of the qualitative research into Muslim and other minorities’ responses to anti-terrorism cited here is
UK focussed. Yet there is research which examines similar themes in other contexts. For examples, see Maira
(2009), for the United States, and Aly and Green (2010), for Australia.
28