The Social Psychology of Citizenship: Engagement With Citizenship Studies and Future Research

Citizenship and Recognition

Traditionally, much social science research has explored how immigrants are received and treated as members of the community. Social psychology has contributed to the exploration of such issues through studying various proximal processes shaping people’s reception of immigrants. In particular, studies have explored how representations of immigrants as community-threatening aliens are actively constructed (Verkuyten, 2013) and can be consequential (van Rijswijk, Hopkins, & Johnston, 2009). Moreover, social psychological research has investigated how these constructions and consequences are bound up with the representation of the immigration process (Verkuyten, 2005) and with political nostalgia for the national community (Smeekes, Verkuyten, & Martinovic, 2015).

Inevitably, the experience of migration has forced the rethinking of many traditional assumptions about citizenship (Castles & Davidson, 2000). As noted above, conceptualisations of citizenship (and the rights associated with citizenship status) have undergone significant historical change. Initial conceptions of citizenship that foregrounded civil rights (e.g., the right to hold property) were followed by conceptions that emphasised political rights (e.g., the right to vote), and then (with the rise of Keynesian approaches to wealth redistribution) by still other conceptions, which included reference to the various social rights (e.g., access to education, welfare, etc.) that were judged necessary for individuals to realise their formal political rights (Marshall, 1950). Such developments have been accompanied by critical analyses of the social and political visibility of women and minorities (especially sexual, religious, and ethnic minorities) within the public sphere. Deliberations on which identities could and should feature in the public sphere are now prominent features of political debate and can crystalize around all manner of identity symbols (such as the Muslim headscarf; see Bowen, 2007). Yet, if immigration from previously colonized countries and more recent developments in mass travel have made these deliberations more familiar and pressing, it is important to remember that the relationship between group identities has always featured (often implicitly) in the conceptualisation of who ‘deserves’ the rights associated with citizenship. For example, de Tocqueville’s nineteenth century analysis of democracy in North America (de Tocqueville, 2000) excluded its aboriginal population because, as Turner (2001) explains, de Tocqueville believed Christian monotheism was “the necessary glue which pulled together the territorial basis of the nation-state as a unified but exclusionary community” (p. 13).

One of the most obvious points to note concerning such accounts of who belongs (and the rights that they may claim) is that they have become the stuff of struggle and contestation with minorities actively claiming their place in the public sphere. The bases for these challenges are diverse. They can entail reference to supra-national (indeed ‘post-national’ and ‘de-nationalised’) discourses of universal human rights that valorize the right to have one’s various identities (e.g., one’s sexual identity, one’s religious identity) respected and accorded social recognition (Edmunds, 2012). However, the nation continues to be a basis for rights-claiming with many minorities claiming their place in the national community through asserting the compatibility between their minority identity and the wider national community. For example, British Muslims (born and raised in Britain) have responded to exclusionary and Islamophobic characterisations of themselves as an alien and threatening presence (Runnymede Trust, 1997) through asserting both the distinctive value of their Muslim identities and their own Britishness. These developments illustrate well the way citizenship has undergone reconceptualisation. As Modood (2005) observes, we have moved from

Future research could usefully explore how these theories of recognition are themselves influential and shape public opinion about the degree to which various group identities (whether gender, sexual, religious, or whatever) ‘deserve’ public expression (and if so how and where).

As these developments put the issue of identity centre-stage, they invite social psychological analysis. Consider first the most basic question of all – the nature of identity. As several analysts note, it is all too easy to assume that identity can be conceptualised in reified and essentialised terms with individuals presumed to have a single coherent identity that they are motivated to express across diverse contexts (Sen, 2006). In this context, the social psychological insight that people have multiple group identities and that their contents, boundaries and social relevance are socially constructed and debated is significant (Finlay, 2014; Hopkins & Kahani-Hopkins, 2004; Hopkins, Reicher, & Kahani-Hopkins, 2003). That is, our discipline’s questioning of the reification of identity makes it clear that when we talk of the recognition of identity we must take into account the (multiple) self-categories that the individuals involved actually value and invest in. Moreover, it becomes important to consider how the combination of social identifications (e.g., as a Muslim and as member of the national community) combine to predict activism, claims-making, and demands for expressive rights (Martinovic & Verkuyten, 2014; Simon & Ruhs, 2008).

The concept of recognition is arguably inherent in all psychological models of citizenship. Whether in organisational psychology, community psychology or discursive psychology, the effects of having one’s citizenship status and behaviour recognised by others has been fundamental to the understanding of dynamics of participation and engagement. Social psychological research also helps explain just why the recognition of one’s various social identities is so important. Some of the reasons relate to the subjective experience of identity. Social scientific theory (e.g., Barth, 1969; Goffman, 1969) argues that there is more to identity than subjective self-definition and that if we are to speak of a person as ‘having an identity’ it is important that others treat that person as having that identity (Jenkins, 1996). Social psychological analysis contributes to such insights through emphasising the importance of being able to enact one’s identity. Research shows that there is enormous pleasure to be had in being able to express and enact one’s social identifications Hopkins, Reicher, Khan, et al., 2015). So too research suggests that such enactments are dependent on having others that are willing and able to support such enactments (Chen, Chen, & Shaw, 2004; Swann, 1987). Indeed, this is one reason why participation in collective events with one’s fellows is so meaningful and consequential (Khan et al., in press). Future research could more directly address this element of the process of recognition. That is, research could address people’s understandings of recognition, what it requires from others and how the giving or withholding of recognition is consequential. The interplay between the individual’s psychological ‘needs’ for recognition and wider social and political processes have been addressed by numerous political theorists (Honneth, 1995; Taylor, 1994) and resulted in the ongoing theorisation of ‘multiculturalism’ (Modood, 1998). Social psychological research has complemented these developments in normative theory with investigations addressing the implications of recognition for social relations. For example, one new line of research inspired by social psychological approaches to recognition shows that respect received from an outgroup source encourages a process of re-categorization of the original ingroup and outgroup as members of a common superordinate group membership (Simon, Mommert, & Renger, 2015). That is, the respect for one’s group membership does not simply validate that identity but can help forge perceptions of higher-order commonalities that are typically regarded as important for citizenship to become a practical reality.

Research could also usefully address the ways in which identities are performed to signal one’s identifications and how such performances are choreographed in light of individuals’ beliefs about how they are regarded. We know that minorities judged as ‘alien’ may seek to perform (and thus affirm) their membership of the national community (Cheryan & Monin, 2005; Hopkins & Greenwood, 2013). Indeed, with these thoughts in mind it follows that there may be much to gain through conceptualizing social identity in terms of an identity claims-making process in which people actively lay claim to group membership and invite others to recognize such claims (Hopkins, Reicher, & van Rijswijk, 2015). However, social psychology’s sensitivity to the multiplicity of any one individual’s identities means that we need to consider how the performance of any one identity (e.g., one’s Muslim identity) may be shaped by the performance of other valued identities (e.g., one’s Britishness: Hopkins & Greenwood, 2013) and how the misrecognition of any one identity can have implications for these other identities. For example, Hopkins (2011) found that for some British Muslims, others’ denial of their Britishness in everyday encounters was not only hurtful because it questioned their national belonging but was doubly hurtful because it questioned their understanding of the religious identity as being able to accommodate itself to national particularities (such that one could be Muslim in a British way). Future research could explore such implications across a range of identities and audiences. For example, in some contexts the recognition of a particular identity may be of key importance and psychologically consequential for one’s experience of the degree to which one feels valued, and this may be significant for the experience of a range of one’s other identities. Moreover, the identity of the audience may be consequential in a variety of ways. If recognition from outgroup members can promote perceptions of a higher-order commonality (Simon et al., 2015), misrecognition, particularly when it comes from authority figures (such as the police) who are often regarded as prototypical representatives of the wider community, may have particular significance for minority group members in signalling who belongs and on what terms (Blackwood, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2013a, 2013b).

In addition to addressing the psychological significance of the recognition of one’s identities, social psychological research highlights the practical consequences of misrecognition for individuals’ everyday abilities to participate and exercise the rights associated with citizenship. Although one may identify with a community and wish to participate in that community’s deliberations as to how it could and should be improved, such identity claims may receive only lukewarm acceptance or be rejected with clear implications for the degree to which one can be heard as a group member (Hopkins, Reicher, & van Rijswijk, 2015; Wakefield et al., 2011) or retreat from the interactions that constitute ‘active’ citizenship in the public sphere (Blackwood, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2015, this section). Yet, research needs to consider a fuller range of practical outcomes commensurate with the wide variety of behaviours associated with citizenship (e.g., those associated with organisational citizenship behaviours; Stevenson, Dixon, et al., 2015).

Needless to say, minorities do not only seek to win recognition for their various identities in everyday interpersonal encounters, they also seek to win a collective space in the public sphere through forms of collective action. This may take the form of mobilising one’s fellow minority group members to participate in the public sphere as national citizens through exercising the rights of citizenship (e.g. through voting). However, citizenship rights can also be claimed through other means. Thus, whereas some activists have encouraged the British Muslim community to assert their Muslim and British identities through voting, others have encouraged a boycott of voting arguing that this could illustrate the power of the community and enable the community to negotiate the public recognition of the Muslim community from a position of power (Hopkins & Kahani-Hopkins, 2004). It therefore follows that one cannot simply assume that not voting signals a lack of interest in citizenship and politics. On the contrary, the act of not voting may be understood as representing another strategy to social inclusion and future research addressing minority group activism should be attuned to these community members’ own understandings of their behaviour and what it is designed to achieve. Moreover, future research could usefully look at majority group members’ interpretation of minority group activism. Often this is misunderstood – most obviously, Muslim activism is often depicted as problematic (Dobbernack, Meer, & Modood, 2015), and regardless of its meaning for the activists (e.g., as confirming one’s membership of the national community) it can be mis-construed as evidence of Muslims’ ostensible ‘alien’ nature. How such reactions may impact upon those seeking engagement is unclear. However, such reactions are likely to feed arguments within the Muslim community that question political engagement (Finlay, 2014) and establish oppositional identifications.

The Place and Performance of Citizenship

Following on from the everyday nature of the performance and recognition of citizenship, the study of the locatedness of citizenship is a second broad area with potential to contribute to citizenship studies. Elsewhere in social psychology, the ‘spatial turn’ has emphasised the locatedness of social psychological processes (Hopkins & Dixon, 2006) and in particular the close relationship between place and identity in the assertion of group rights as well as the negotiation of coexistence within divided communities (Abell, Condor, & Stevenson, 2006; Dixon, Levine, & McAuley, 2006; Durrheim & Dixon, 2005; Gray & Manning, 2014; Hopkins, Reicher, & Harrison, 2006). By grounding citizenship within the experiences and practices of everyday life, the papers in the present thematic section build upon this work to both implicitly and explicitly invoke a spatial dimension to citizenship. From this perspective, social psychology aligns with the broader movement within citizenship studies to consider citizenship as the informal embodied and material performances of everyday civic life (Isin, 2002; Isin & Nielsen, 2008). Indeed, social psychology is conceptually and methodologically well-placed to understand the nature of these performances from the perspective of the participants and their audiences.

The physicality of citizenship as engrained in the practices of everyday life is highlighted in this thematic section by both Di Masso (2015, this section) and Blackwood and colleagues (2015, this section) in their elucidation of how participants understand their rights as located and enacted within public space. For Di Masso’s participants, access and control of space is inherently political and bound up with contested understandings of who can claim to belong to the area. For residents in particular, the identity of the community is politically expressed through control of their locale. As Di Masso points out, this reflects the mutually constitutive nature of the relationship between citizenship and public space, especially within urban environments (see also Gray & Manning, 2014). In a very different context, Blackwood et al. (2015, this section) illustrate that the scrutiny of identity in a public space becomes a site of struggle for the right to display citizenship status and have this status recognised and accepted. The secure, state-controlled space of the airport is both a place for the enforcement of citizenship legislation and the location of the symbolic display and recognition of identity. For Muslims though, it becomes a place of heightened self-consciousness and anxiety as their identity is routinely and publically queried.

Taken together, these two papers reveal a tension lying at the very heart of the concept of ‘public space’ (cf. Dixon et al., 2006). On the one hand, it is a space not only of but also for enactment of everyday citizenship, as expressed both through small acts of political resistance and identity performance as well as through the larger scale events of collective protest. On the other hand, it is a space of social control and exclusion, where some political ideals, values and identities are given prominence at the expense of others. As Mitchell (1995) notes, public space involves: “. . . competing ideas about what constitutes that space - social control or free, and perhaps dangerous, interaction—and about who constitutes ‘the public’” (p. 115).

Other papers in this thematic section invoke space in a less direct, but no less significant way. Gibson (2015, this section) points to the grounding of lay theories of citizenship in territorial units other than the nation: the young people in his sample use a sense of belonging to their local area to rhetorically deny rights and entitlements to outsiders. This shows constructions of space and place may provide the ‘grounds of identity’ (Dixon & Durrheim, 2000), discursively locating and warranting a particular set of person-place relations. Likewise, Antonini, Hogg, Mannetti, Barbieri, and Wagoner (2015, this section) point to the geographical contexts of citizenship, drawing on data from two different regions of the United States and Italy to argue that citizens’ identities in these areas are demonstrably territorially bound. More implicitly, those papers that report studies located within schools (Gibson, 2015, this section; Roebroeck & Guimond, 2015, this section) investigate a particular physical context and one that is instrumental in the dissemination, rehearsal and enactment of official and unofficial understandings of citizenship. Though understandings of how institutions, and specifically the institutions of the state, shape psychological processes have been slow to filter into social psychology, this focus on the school (as with the airport above) is a useful starting point in considering the different sites in which individuals and groups encounter the state and how these encounters serve to shape experiences and understandings of citizenship.

These approaches have either analysed the spatial dimensions of talk about citizenship or quantitatively captured understandings of citizenship within significant spatial locations. The next step for this tradition is to venture beyond textual or survey analyses to capture the actual experiences and actions of citizens in their situated identity expressions and struggles. Talking about place or space is not the same as inhabiting space, traversing space or performing identity within space (see also Di Masso & Dixon, 2015). Moreover, processes of civic inclusion and exclusion are enacted not merely through talk and behaviour, but also through the material design and architecture of urban life. This idea is dramatically illustrated by the material geography of historically divided cities in societies such as South Africa (Christopher, 1994) and the US (Massey & Denton, 1993). It is illustrated less dramatically via host of urban design features that serve to marginalize certain groups (e.g.). Studying how such features are implemented, understand and resisted requires a further set of concepts, methods and analytic tools that are not widely employed by social psychologists.

One area in which this has been accomplished is in the study of crowd behaviour, where ethnographic approaches have captured how co-present crowd members embody, represent and transform the identity of the group (e.g., Drury & Reicher, 2005; Reicher, 1984, 1996). Extensive use and development of ethnographic methods, including the integration of multimedia data as well as long-term participant observation, provides a range of tools and conceptual approaches to enable the systematic analysis of situated collective action (Drury & Stott, 2001). However, in that literature the physical environment is considered either as providing the physical backdrop to crowd events or as a symbolic landscape within which the actors operate. On occasion, the ethnographic accounts of events involve a detailed account of the places where major elements of the events occur and comments about how the physical environment constrains or facilitates group behaviour. Alternatively, the geographical features involved in the events, such as the boundaries of the local community (Reicher, 1984), the parliament buildings at Westminster (Reicher, 1996), or the trees defended by ecological protestors (Drury & Reicher, 2005), are considered in terms of their symbolic significance for the group members themselves.

Absent from this literature on crowds is an examination of how the collective understanding of public spaces themselves becomes constitutive of collective thought and action. A fully spatialized analysis of political action in public space could take cognisance of the role of coordinated movement and situated performance in the display of identity; the changing spatial relations between groups in conflict (and in solidarity) in public space; and how the physical and psychological boundaries demarcating public space operate to regulate or facilitate different forms of behaviour. To be sure, these approaches and topics are familiar within other social scientific approaches to urban life, but the social psychology of citizenship can bring to bear both the understanding of the identity processes underpinning public acts of citizenship and the transformative potential of collective behaviour upon broader societal relations.

Conversely, crowd psychology is also well placed to consider how place and space shape the affirmation and reproduction of social relations though the routinization and ritualization of crowd behaviour. Arguably commemorative, celebratory and triumphalist crowd behaviour can play a conservative role in the reproduction of social structure, but only if it is performed ‘in place’ and ‘in time’ (Connerton, 1989; Jarman, 1997; Morrison, 2008). In contrast, political protest, carnival and new forms of collective action such as flashmobs lend themselves towards ‘acts of citizenship’ (Isin & Nielsen, 2008; Saunders, 2008), but only if they are contesting space and disrupting routines. The understanding of the significance of specific forms of crowd within particular civic spaces can shed light on how group inequality is sustained as well as transformed through public collective expression.

Furthermore, an additional challenge is to investigate how space can be reconstructed as shared and inclusive so as to facilitate political expression as well as positive and constructive co-existence between the different groups that make up an urban environment city (Durrheim & Dixon, 2013; Graham & Nash, 2006). While research elsewhere in the social sciences has investigated the negative impact of the overt territorialisation of residential areas as well as the effects of attempts to neutralise public space, less attention has been paid to the active design and development of shared space as accommodating, facilitating and encouraging inclusion (but see Easterbrook & Vignoles, 2015). Changing public space requires changing subjective perceptions of the ownership and rights of access to space as well as what behaviour is normatively appropriate there. Accordingly, a social psychology of citizenship is well positioned to examine processes of consensualisation as well as conflict over public space.

Theories of Citizenship and Coexistence in Everyday Life

If one challenge for the study of citizenship in everyday life is to examine the locatedness and spatiality of identity performance and contest, then another is to examine how difference and diversity are accommodated within the public sphere. At the broadest level, the merits of different normative theories of multiculturalism have been debated extensively across the social sciences (Kymlicka, 1995; Kymlicka & Norman, 1994; see also Joppke, 2002). Moreover, as Favell (1998) points out, each society has been found to have an established and institutionalised ‘philosophy of integration’ through which official understandings of citizenship act to shape the boundaries of the citizenry and their interactions with incomers and sub-national minority groups. For example, the recently introduced British Citizenship Test implies and conveys particular visions of citizenship “as a collectively defined identity, as a superordinate and nationally located identity, and as both a cognitive and a practical accomplishment” (Gray & Griffin, 2014, p. 310). These formal philosophies are also accompanied by lay theories of citizenship among the population, whereby new or potential citizens are evaluated in terms of their cultural similarity, civility or willingness to abide by local law and custom (Andreouli & Howarth, 2013; Gibson & Hamilton, 2011). In other words, at the point of entry into the citizenry, acceptance and integration of incomers are informed by multiple theories of citizenship and coexistence.

The examination of formal and lay theories of citizenship, as well as the tension between them, has much potential application beyond issues of immigration. In terms of coexistence of ethnic groups, Verkuyten (2005) has illustrated that arguments supporting multiculturalism have specific patterns of content, with support for pluralism being focused on the benefits for both majority and minority groups, including an enhancement of their citizenship through self-improvement, equality and increased tolerance and understanding. In contrast, arguments against multiculturalism focus on the threats posed to society by minorities: instability, insecurity and disunity as well as the explicit depiction of minorities as lacking necessary citizenship attributes for integration, such as tolerance. In terms of economic differences, McNamara and colleagues (McNamara, Muldoon, Stevenson, & Slattery, 2011; Stevenson, McNamara, & Muldoon, 2014) illustrated that residents of deprived communities were rated as poorer citizens in terms of their levels of ‘responsibility’ and ‘caring for others’ and experienced discrimination on this basis. Similarly, political and lay constructions of citizenship that are based upon ‘effort’ and ‘deservingness’ can serve to marginalise and exclude welfare recipients and the unemployed from local communities and services (Gibson, 2009; McNamara, Stevenson, & Muldoon, 2013; Stevenson et al., 2014). Likewise, Barnes and colleagues showed how lay constructions of citizenship based on belonging and place identity were used to petition local council authorities to formally exclude new travellers as well as to deny them their social rights (Barnes, Auburn, & Lea, 2004). However less attention has been paid to the ways in which lay theories of citizenship affect actual intergroup encounters (Durrheim & Dixon, 2013) and how they could potentially be used to accommodate difference and foster positive co-existence.

A first potential approach to examining theories of citizenship shape coexistence in everyday life is to consider how the understandings of one’s right to express an identity can lead either to harmonious coexistence or to conflict in real world contexts. In essence, those whose self-definitions of citizenship involve strong forms of identity maintenance and display will not live comfortably beside those who believe that coexistence is best facilitated by the display of political neutrality or a single common identity. Taking the example of St Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Joyce and colleagues (Joyce, Stevenson, & Muldoon, 2013) showed that Irish Travellers were keen to assert their rights as members of the national category through overt and explicit public displays of their Irishness. However such enactments of Irishness were considered to be inauthentic by a comparable sample of Irish students, who characterised excessive displays of Irishness as indicating outgroup membership. Similarly, Pehrson and colleagues (Pehrson, Stevenson, Muldoon, & Reicher, 2014) interviewed people taking part in the St Patrick’s Day parade in the same location, showing that how identity was displayed during the parade affected the experience of groups in different ways. For white Irish participants and the parade organisers, the event entailed the display and enactment of a relatively homogenous Irish identity. However, ethnic minority group members taking part felt that the event should display the diversity of identities within Irish society and were disappointed and disheartened when it did not. As these studies show, lay theories of citizenship can vary across contexts as well as groups and that this divergence of theories can contribute to experiences of marginalisation and exclusion among minorities. Future research in this vein could explore how greater understanding of the diversity of identity displays as well as event-management policy can encourage greater inclusivity in similar public events.

This first approach depends heavily on the self-reflection of citizens upon their own understandings of citizenship rather than an examination of their practices in everyday life. A second approach to the understanding of coexistence would be to study how theories of citizenship are also ingrained in the routines and encounters of daily life (see Durrheim & Dixon, 2005). Taking as a starting point the mundane realities of everyday existence, few people spend much time thinking about or trying to improve relations with other groups. Most have other responsibilities, duties, worries and cares as well as relationships and recreations that make up their daily routines. Where they live, who they work with, who their friends are, where their children go to school and where they shop and spend their leisure time will structure their lives and (often incidentally and unintentionally) will affect the amount of contact they have with others. These mundane realities, rather than ideological convictions, will determine the extent and nature of their interactions with outgroup members (Durrheim & Dixon, 2013). At the same time, their lives are constrained and shaped by the official policies of rights and obligations which shape how different groups are treated and perceived as well as how they interact.

One example of this is the routine experiences group members have of encounters with the range of government agencies in their locales. Such mundane encounters are typically overlooked by social psychologists, but on a daily basis in all societies, members of different groups interact with government agencies in ways which shape both their understandings of the government and of their own groups (Campbell & Jovchelovitch, 2000; Tyler & Blader, 2003). For those groups who occupy a dominant or privileged place within society, these encounters are often unnoticed as they simply involve an affirmation of their rights and entitlements. For those from deprived or stigmatised communities, these encounters often reflect the wide gap between their own group members and those in the outgroups of police, health or education workers who deliver their services. Additionally, the stigmatisation associated with poverty, unemployment or minority ethnic status can work to undermine these residents’ sense of citizenship (e.g., Renedo & Marston, 2011; Stevenson et al., 2014), especially where this stigma is reinforced by political rhetoric or by institutional practices. For vulnerable groups, service use encounters can therefore be experienced as sites of aversive intergroup encounters and the reproduction of marginalisation and alienation as well as disadvantage. Investigating the lived experience of routine encounters with government agencies is therefore fundamental to understanding and challenging exclusion at the intersection between official and lay theories of citizenship in everyday life.

A third approach is to examine how concerns and routines of everyday life can be actively harnessed and transformed in order to promote better coexistence. This is particularly relevant in divided societies with a history of intergroup conflict. Contact interventions in such societies that are based within local communities, and which tap into existing activities, prove more effective than those which take place outside of these communities (Trew, 1986). For example, one community relations initiative based on positive parenting allowed members of opposing communities to come together to share their common parenting experiences and acted to harness their parental investment in the future of the community for their children. This initiative worked because of the profound ways in which the rights and duties of parenting articulate with community citizenship (Stevenson, O’Dwyer, & McNeill, 2015). In other words, by understanding community-members’ lay theories of citizenship and investigating how these are embedded in the realities of their everyday existence, contact interventions can improve lives as well as fostering better community relations.

However such initiatives typically occur against a background of formal polices of coexistence which may support or undermine local efforts. An example of this is the occurrence of socially-engineered residential mixing in divided societies. Residential integration is typically conceived of as a ‘gateway’ form of intergroup mixing as it opens up many other opportunities for contact (Easterbrook & Vignoles, 2015). It is often viewed as an indicator of good intergroup relations by governments, even when its occurrence demonstrably obscures forms of micro-segregation at local level (e.g., Clack, Dixon, & Tredoux, 2005; Dixon, Tredoux, Durrheim, Finchilescu, & Clack, 2008; Durrheim & Dixon, 2005; McKeown, Cairns, Stringer, & Rae, 2012). However, while living in mixed areas generally predicts political moderation and more positive intergroup attitudes (e.g. Christ et al., 2014; Schmid, Hewstone, Hughes, Jenkins, & Cairns, 2009; Schmid, Tausch, Hewstone, Hughes, & Cairns, 2008; Schmid et al., 2010), poorly planned residential mixing can also result in resistance, negative contact, and intergroup conflict. Government policies promoting residential mixing therefore require an evidence base of research to understand where and under what conditions mixing leads to better relations. This necessitates an in-depth investigation of the lay theories of citizenship within local communities as well as the spatial and spatial organisation of daily social interaction so as to understand the impact of official policies of mixing on daily life.

Overall then, the study of theories of citizenship can be fruitfully extended from an examination of immigration and citizenship testing to examine the broader range of issues affecting co-existence in the public sphere. The local politics of identity display, mundane service-use encounters and the impact of social policies of integration upon local community life are all sites at which lay and formal theories of citizenship interact. By attending to citizens’ understandings of their social worlds and how this relates to their social interactions, the social psychology of citizenship is well-placed to understand and to improve the lived experience of co-existence in everyday life.