Citizenship on the Margins

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

   PDF

2. Security, State Power and Citizenship: The Latin America and Caribbean Context

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 1-27

3. Security and Citizenship

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 29-53

4. The Jamaican Context

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 55-69

5. Suspension of Rights, Security Operations and Dons: Opting Out of State Citizenship?

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 71-85

6. Middle-Class Security: Market Heights

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 87-98

7. Precarious Experiences of Security and Citizenship in Turl Head

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 99-116

8. Policy Responses and Security Discourses Among State Actors and Civil Society Groups

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 117-128

9. Conclusion

   • Yonique Campbell

   Pages 129-136

10. Back Matter

    Pages 137-169

    PDF

This book critically explores the impact of national security, violence and state power on citizenship rights and experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean. Drawing on cross-country analyses and fieldwork conducted in two “garrisons,” a middle-class community and among policy elites in Jamaica—where high levels of violence, in(security) and transnational organized crime are transforming state power —the author argues that dominant responses to security have wider implications for citizenship. The security practices of the state often result in criminalization, police abuse, violation of the rights of the urban poor and increased securitization of garrison spaces. As the tension between national security and citizenship increases, there is a centrality of the local as a site where citizenship is (re)defined, mediated, interpreted, performed and given meaning. While there is a dominant security discourse which focuses on state security, individuals at the local level articulate their own narratives which reflect lived-experiences and the particularities of socio-political milieu.

• citizenship rights
• Latin America
• Caribbean
• Jamaica
• security
• state power
• latin american politics
• citizenship

“Yonique Campbell uses her three communities—an urban garrison (Tivoli Gardens), a small-town garrison (May Pen) and a middle-class Kingston suburb to investigate the links between class, security and citizenship in Jamaica. By interviewing representatives of the policy elite and non-governmental institutions, she is able to interrogate policy and institutional approaches to security at the national level, and to evaluate whose citizenship rights are important and non-negotiable (middle- and lower-class Kingstonians) and whose are not (inhabitants of the Kingston garrisons). The book carries a universal message: governments in Latin America and the Caribbean—and elsewhere—must embark on policies of incorporation wherever communities are suffering from the systematic denial of the protection of the law.” (Colin Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Oxford, UK)

“Dr. Campbell is a part of a new generation of Caribbean scholars who are deepening our understandings of the specific problems that bedevil development in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this book, Dr. Campbell tackles the central problem of many countries in LAC, that of the effects of security policies and practices on the lives of the marginalized. The neighborhood-level case studies are particularly revealing. There is a critical engagement with the security approaches of the state and a stout defense of the democratic rights of the marginalized as citizens.” (Anthony Harriott, Professor of Political Sociology, Director of the Institute of Criminal Justice and Security, University of the West Indies, Jamaica)

“This important and incisive work focuses on the realm of security to understand how class, space and race mediate citizenship. Connecting the perspectives of differently positioned Jamaican citizens to those of institutional actors, Yonique Campbell deftly analyzes the contemporary transformation and negotiation of state power and political belonging.” (Rivke Jaffe, Professor of Urban Geography, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

• Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica

  Yonique Campbell

Yonique Campbell is Lecturer of Public Policy and Management in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Her research focuses on security, violence, state legitimacy and substantive citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Policies and ethics