The Social Psychology of Citizenship: Critical Advances and Interdisciplinary Insights

by Eleni Andreouli (Editor), Lia Figgou (Editor), Irini Kadianaki (Editor)

Overview

This book develops a social psychology of citizenship, pushing the boundaries of the discipline to articulate a theoretically rich social psychological framework for the study of citizenship.

Featuring contributions from established and up-and-coming global researchers, the book draws attention to the micro-politics of everyday life. The volume is divided into four parts considering different sites where citizenship is performed: governing, bordering, locating and re-imaging citizenship. Each part considers a particular dynamic of citizenship, and the volume features trans-disciplinary commentaries from expert scholars in other social sciences and humanities. The book also revisits core social psychological topics such as prejudice, intergroup relations and identities in new productive ways that foreground the power dynamics and ‘battles of ideas’ playing out in often implicit ways. It provides a systematic, state-of-the-art presentation of key theoretical and empirical work in the social psychology of citizenship and extends citizenship studies to include under-explored topics in the field - such as the environment and precarity - using a critical and decolonial lens.

Bringing together an innovative framework that advances a framework for future study in the field, the book will be highly relevant reading for postgraduate students and researchers in social psychology, political psychology, community psychology, sociology and migration studies. It will also be of interest to advanced undergraduate students, activists and policy makers interested in citizenship and societal challenges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032847566
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/27/2026
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eleni Andreouli is Professor of Social Psychology at the Open University, United Kingdom. She is the author of numerous publications exploring the links between politics and everyday life.

Lia Figgou is Professor of Social Psychology, at the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her research interests lie in the field of immigration, citizenship and intergroup relations. Influenced by the “turn to language” in social psychology, she employs rhetorical and discursive analysis to explore these topics in depth.

Irini Kadianaki is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Cyprus. Her research explores the interplay between social representations and identity among stigmatized groups—such as migrants, LGBT+ individuals, and people with mental illness.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Mapping the social psychology of citizenship: State of the art and ways forward Lia Figgou, Irini Kadianaki, and Eleni Andreouli Part 1: GOVERNING CITIZENSHIP Chapter 2. Mediocrity as method and resistance: Sexual citizenship and the limits of deservingness and respectability Francesca Romana Ammaturo Chapter 3. The datafied citizen: Debating the issue of privacy and participation Emma Brice Chapter 4. ‘Accidental parenting’ and ‘responsible citizenship’: Exploring advice around baby sleep from a Critical Health Psychology perspective Abigail Locke Part 1 Commentary Chapter 5. The global colonial politics of liberal democratic citizenship Shona Hunter Part 2: BORDERING CITIZENSHIP Chapter 6. Citizenship and immigration in social psychology: The discursive construction of cultural hierarchy Nikos Bozatzis, Maria Xenitidou, and Antonis Sapountzis Chapter 7. Conditional citizenship: How neoliberalism fuels the restriction of civil, social, and political rights of subordinate groups Emanuele Politi, Lola Girerd, and Christian Staerklé Chapter 8. Precarious migration and cultural nuance in re-articulations of active citizenship Sarah Kapeli, Shiloh Groot, Eun-Hye Shin, Lisiua Havili, and Darrin Hodgetts Part 2 Commentary Chapter 9. Citizenship processes and migration phenomena in Europe Francesco Della Puppa Part 3: LOCATING CITIZENSHIP: REFLECTIONS ON PLACE AND YOUTH Chapter 10. Citizens in the making: Exploring social psychological perspectives on youth citizenship Debra Gray and Rachel Manning Chapter 11. Citizenship, spatial (in)justice, and the social psychology of place dispossession Cristina Pradillo Caimari, and Andrés Di Masso Chapter 12. The ‘problem’ of strengthening youth citizenship in Latin American countries in times of regression: The case of education in Brazil Marina Valentim Brasil and Angelo Brandelli Costa Part 3 Commentary Chapter 13. Interdisciplinary approaches to the role of place and resistance in citizenship research Bronwyn Wood Part 4: RE-IMAGINING CITIZENSHIP Chapter 14. Energy citizenship as socio-ecological practice: Towards a recognition of the socio-political and psychological relevance of energy Susana Batel Chapter 15. Cultural citizenship through radio making: Counter-storytelling and creating alternative narratives of identity and belonging within Brimbank LIVE Roshani Janya Jayawardana and Christopher Sonn Part 4 COMMENTARY Chapter 16. Citizenship reimagined: Claiming the right to a future in a changing world Eeva Puumala Chapter 17. Rethinking citizenship: Theoretical tenets and emerging directions in social psychology Irini Kadianaki, Lia Figgou, and Eleni Andreouli

Editorial Reviews

This groundbreaking volume explores how citizenship is enacted and contested in the routines of everyday life. From parenting and migration to digital activism and urban space, it reveals how citizens resist, rework, and reimagine belonging and political agency in the face of neoliberalism, precarity, and rising authoritarianism.

John Dixon, Professor of Social Psychology, The Open University, UK

Studying the lived experiences of people in struggles over citizenship rights is crucial. This groundbreaking and highly anticipated contribution to social psychology of citizenship examines how people are struggling for citizenship as a right to a socially and ecologically just society and reveals acts of citizenship as affective politics of the everyday. 

Engin Isin, Professor Emeritus in International Politics, Queen Mary University of London

 

What constitutes citizenship has become a pressing issue all over the world as nation states increasingly tighten restrictions on who should belong. Unlike abstract theories of citizenship, this book examines this contested concept from the ground-up: from everyday understandings, experiences, and practices of citizens themselves. The Social Psychology of Citizenship provides a refreshing human dimension to the field of citizenship studies.

Professor Emerita Martha Augoustinos, University of Adelaide, Australia

 

The Social Psychology of Citizenship convincingly establishes social psychology’s potential to illuminate the subtle relational processes through which citizenship is experienced and enacted in the course of everyday life.  Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, the contributors to this edited collection address a wide range of contemporary issues, documenting the various ways in which citizens strategically handle competing demands of neoliberal ideology in the course of their mundane social activities. In so doing, the authors shed new light on the political agency and subversive potential inherent in routine social interactions. This exciting and thought-provoking book will be essential reading for all social and political scientists concerned with the processes through which the lived experiences of citizenship are being shaped and transformed in the first quarter of the twenty first century.

 Susan Condor, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Loughborough University, UK

From the Publisher