Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand (Studies in Transnationalism) - Hardcover

Mann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1433151081 ISBN 13: 9781433151088

Publisher: Peter Lang, 2019

Synopsis

Adopting a political and legal perspective, Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand undertakes a transnational study that examines the demise of Britishness as a defining feature of the conceptualisation of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand and the impact that this historic shift has had on Indigenous and other ethnic groups in these states. During the 1950s and 1970s an ethnically based citizenship was transformed into a civic-based one (one based on rights and responsibilities). The major context in which this took place was the demise of British race patriotism in Australia, English-speaking Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Although the timing of this shift varied, Aboriginal groups and non-British ethnic groups were now incorporated, or appeared to be incorporated, into ideas of citizenship in all three nations. The development of citizenship in this period has traditionally been associated with immigration in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. However, the historical origins of citizenship practices in all three countries have yet to be fully analysed. This is what Redefining Citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand does. The overarching question addressed by the book is: Why and how did the end of the British World lead to the redefinition of citizenship in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand between the 1950s and 1970s in regard to other ethnic and Indigenous groups? This book will be useful for history and politics courses, as well as specialised courses on citizenship and Indigenous studies.

About this title

About the Author:

Jatinder Mann is Assistant Professor of History at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is the editor of Citizenship in Transnational Perspective: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and author of The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s–1970s.

Review:

“The diverse array of citizens of settler colonizer nations need to know their full story. This clearly written and courageously comparative history demonstrates how at the end of the British world, three nation-states redefined citizenship from a concept based upon race, status, and links to Britain to one based upon civic rights and responsibilities. This meticulously researched book will be a must-read for scholars interested in national identity, political and legal history, and the history of indigenous resistance.”
―Ann McGrath (AM, FASSA, FAHA), Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow and W.K. Hancock Professor of History, School of History, Australian National University

“At a time when a disunited Kingdom is engaged in an almost byzantine debate about Brexit in which some protagonists are seeking to rekindle the flames of empire, Jatinder Mann’s impressive book offers a rigorous analysis of how the relations between Britain and its closest dominions became severely weakened if not entirely severed.
Carefully examining the way citizenship was redefined in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand between the 1950s and 1970s, Mann demonstrates how changing global geopolitical relations, the strengthening of demands for indigenous people’s rights, and increasingly diverse non-British immigration patterns moved the basis of majority settler forms of national identity towards varying multicultural and bicultural frames of belonging.
This book is essential reading for students of the political history of British settler states, within and across these area studies, and will be invaluable for citizenship specialists, especially with expertise in ethnic and indigenous studies, still debating whether the British World is being revived or is irretrievably lost.”
―David Pearson, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

“This book is a groundbreaking comparative study of Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand and the shift from ethnic forms of British-based national identity to civic and potentially more inclusive varieties during the 1960s and 1970s. This crucial shift in identity has been inadequately studied until now. Jatinder Mann’s insightful and impeccably researched book, based on a wealth of primary sources, casts new light into the connections between national identity and citizenship in settler states. It correlates major changes in conceptions of national self and other with the rise and decline of the British imperial system. An impressive addition to the literature on citizenship studies, Indigenous peoples, and racialized peoples.”
―David B. MacDonald, Professor and Research Leadership Chair for the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1433151081
• ISBN 13: 9781433151088
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204