LA DISCIPLINA URBANÍSTICA

As scholars in the field point out, citizenship is as much about political activism as it is about the ‘ordinary’ – or in this case the everyday enactment of British-Muslim family law. Neveu argues ‘approaching citizenship processes “from the ordinary” is a fruitful perspective from which the political dimensions of usually unseen or unheard practices and sites can be grasped’ (Neveu 2015, p. 150). Neveu thus argues for ‘the inclusion in citizenship studies of sensitive dimensions, of vigilance and care’ and emphasises ‘the need to reflect more in depth on figures of continuity or ruptures between daily activities and political subjectification’ (Neveu 2014, p. 86). Also, Staeheli highlights the importance of ‘experience and subjectivity’ in how we

understand citizenship because ‘the practices of citizenship – the daily repetitions that are part and parcel of the relationships that construct and disrupt citizenship – are important to the lives of people and to the potential of citizens to act. It feels

unsatisfying to seem to overlook citizens in favour of citizenship’ (Staeheli 2011, p. 399). In a similar vein, Lewis refers to ‘practices of the everyday’ as the ‘links

between citizenship and ways of life – that is, the ordinary, taken-for-granted ways in which people organize their lives as individuals, members of households, work colleagues and members of communities of identity and/or interest’ (Lewis 2004, p. 21). She highlights the ordinary involved in these practices, especially in relation to constituting ‘belonging’ and the ‘associational and identificatory aspects of being a citizen’ (Lewis 2004, p. 21). Another area of research concerned with citizenship and the notion of the everyday focuses on how the idea – or the ‘keyword’ – of

‘citizenship’ is narrated, discussed, understood and endowed with meaning in everyday conversations or professional practice (Clarke et al. 2014). Studies in this area include for example Citizens Advice – ‘one of the most significant large

organisations to have the word “citizen” in its name in the UK’ (Kirwan, McDermont, and Clarke 2016, p. 765). Other approaches investigate how ‘citizenship is…imagined

and re-imagined by ordinary citizens in a variety of ways’ (Miller-Idriss 2006, p. 541). These are very useful studies, as they point to the importance of the everyday and ordinary practices and discourses in attaching meaning to the concept of

citizenship and in negotiating the scope and content of what citizenship practices and subjectivities become to be.

The everyday aspect of citizenship is important because the ordinary, routinised practices of lay people or the ‘practice’ of professionals negotiate the role and place of British Muslims in society, as I shall argue in chapters six to eight. Put differently, family law has become a significant site of citizenship where constructions of the British-Muslim subject take shape. Opting for Islamic legal services through a

solicitor or a Sharia council represents more than inconspicuous routine legal practice and becomes part of the debate around citizenship and Islam in the UK. Here the term ‘everyday’ serves to distinguish routinised, institutionalised family law practices from more rupture-like political practices such as demonstrations and protests,

conventionally associated with citizenship’s repertoire. However, those everyday, routinised, processual practices are equally political in that they challenge and potentially change established forms of family governance. Similarly, McCann finds that activist, or ‘cause lawyering’ brings about incremental change by contributing to ‘a redefinition of the discursive terrain’ over time (McCann 1994). Furthermore, Isin and Nyers point out that, ‘although it mediates between citizens and polities,

citizenship does not always take the form of demands on government’ (Isin and Nyers 2014, p. 3-4).

The idea of ‘demands’ being made also raises the question of intentionality in the concept of citizenship as political subjectivity in the everyday, specifically in the field of British-Muslim family law. Let’s take a closer look at the quote from Isin and Nyers. They point out that

when people mobilize for legalizing same-sex marriage, rally for social housing, protest against welfare cuts, debate employment insurance, advocate the decriminalization of marijuana, wear attire such as turbans or headscarves in public spaces, leak information about the surveillance activities of their own governments, seek affirmative action programmes, or demand better health- care access and services, they tend not to imagine themselves as struggling for the maintenance or expansion of social, cultural, or sexual citizenship rights.

Instead, people invest in whatever issues seem most related and closest to their social lives, and dedicate their time and energy accordingly, and governments respond or fail to respond to these demands (Isin and Nyers 2014, p. 3). It is interesting that the quote above gives examples of what can be considered citizenship practices seeking the fostering of particular social, cultural, or sexual citizenship rights but that are not necessarily understood as such by the people

involved in these practices. All the examples listed, except for one, make use of verbs linked to active rights claims or fulfilment of duties such as ‘mobilize’, ‘rally’,

‘protest’, ‘debate’, ‘advocate’, ‘leak’, ‘seek’, or ‘demand’. The one exception is the verb ‘wear’ in connection with the wearing of turbans or headscarves. Wearing attire would not necessarily be associated with active claims for citizenship rights in many cases. Think of a woman who starts wearing the hijab. Is it only an intentional move if the interviewer starts asking why? Is what one ‘wears’ not saying what one is until there is a reaction from others, a point of ‘reflection’? Is it intention the moment the woman puts on the hijab, or when a researcher asks or someone abuses the woman in the street? Things may not be explicitly intentional, or conscious, in the moment. Nevertheless, within the broader socio-political context they may represent – or more precisely may be interpreted as representing – a rights claim. This is true for opting for a nikah marriage only as it is for wearing the hijab. Just as the wearing of the Muslim veil entered the political arena, practices taking place in the British-Muslim legal field have become considered political even if they do not conform to longer established repertoires of political activity such as balloting or demonstrating (Tilly 2008). In this context, I argue, citizenship is enacted or realised through asserting the right to differentiated citizenship in a given space, even if this assertion is not explicitly articulated as an intentionally political claim.

The example of the wearing of hijab illustrates how differentiated citizenship constitutes itself also along gendered lines as. Brown highlights how gendered difference informs the idea of bared skin in public being representative of women’s equality, freedom and agency. She argues that ‘sexual difference is already written into this assumption, of course, since the equation of freedom with near nakedness in public is itself a gendered rather than generic sign of freedom: rarely is it suggested that men in loincloths are free whereas those in three-piece suits lack autonomy and equality’ (Brown 2012, no page number). Questions of gender equality, choice and

agency in Muslim practices in the secular ‘West’ surface in relation to issues such as dress, for instance, which at first sight may be considered ordinary or everyday matters. Also in its everyday practices therefore ‘the seemingly gender-neutral concept of citizenship was and is profoundly gendered’ (Lister 1997a, p. 71; see also Volpp 2017, p. 154). Young eloquently summarises what a feminist perspective brings to the notion of everyday citizenship when she says that ‘what was originally

experienced as a private, personal problem in fact has political dimensions, as exhibiting an aspect of power relations between men and women’ (and differently structured power relations, one could add) (Young 1990, p. 153). A focus upon the everyday of family law brings into the frame feminist scholarship that has contributed to challenging this notion of a divide between the spheres of ‘the public’ and ‘the private’, which is crucial for investigating British-Muslim family law as a site of citizenship (Pateman 1989, Lister 1997a, 1997b). A feminist approach to citizenship also emphasises the operation of power relations within families and the role of the family in shaping social life, including citizenship, which was for so long, a male subjectivity (as discussed above in relation to modern citizenship). Importantly, to take up the perspective of citizenship in the everyday is to challenge the reproduction of the patriarchal divide between ‘the public’ and ‘the private’, where the politics of subordinate groups such as women is thought of as belonging to the informal or domestic spheres. This is because – similar to legal pluralism scholarship’s impetus to challenge legal positivist and centralist conceptions of law – a focus on citizenship in the everyday requests a redefinition of the ‘political’ itself as not limited to the formal, public sphere (Lister 1997b). Moving beyond the dichotomy between public and private, which has been criticised as androcentric and Eurocentric (Hill Collins 1991), the perspective of the everyday avoids the problem of reproducing the this divide (even if approached critically) because everyday life includes both public and private aspects.

At this point it is necessary to discuss how I use the term ‘everyday’ and how it does not necessarily fit easily as an empirical category. To clarify, although life events such as marriage, divorce or dealing with death may be major milestones for an individual, these events nonetheless constitute highly routinised practices but not necessarily in the frequency of literally ‘every day’. However, the focal point of the everyday is important for how legal subjectivity relates to citizenship. This is because the key defining moments are routinised, traditionalised practices that are to some extent

socially and legally pre-scripted. All of them form part of many people’s life cycles, however, they are not necessarily perceived as something ordinary. For solicitors and other legal professionals who work with cases of Muslim marriage, divorce or

inheritance on a frequent basis, this notion of everyday legal practice may be more appropriate and meaningful for describing their work in their own terms. Indeed, the idea of the everyday applies equally to legal professionals and non-professionals (McCann 2012, p. 475). Still, interviews with solicitors in particular showed that due to the incipient nature of the British-Muslim legal field, many solicitors continue to see cases involving questions of Muslim law in Britain as non-standard cases of work. As Mousa put it, ‘people don’t yet expect to get Islamic legal services from solicitors. This is why it is only gradually increasing. But I think the younger generation, [when] they go through the same problems, the first thing they will do is go to the Internet. Because they are professionals themselves in their lives, they want their matters to be handled professionally’ (Mousa). This quote exemplifies how, on the one hand, practices of marriage, divorce and inheritance are recurring over generations and, on the other hand, how established traditions of dealing with family matters need to be creatively adapted to the changing social context of the British-Muslim legal field. This thesis thus contributes to a broader, less literal, notion of ‘the everyday’ and its relevance for our understanding and study of citizenship. I argue for conceptualising the everyday to include routinised practices that are so only when looked at from a viewpoint of large-scale social or generational trends. These practices, repeatedly performed, imbue citizenship with collective meaning of belonging and association.

3.3. Conclusion and outlook: Challenging orientalised spaces and the