The Social Psychology of Citizenship

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, this book draws attention to the micro- politics of everyday life. This 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. This 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 can advance future study in the field, this book will be highly relevant reading for postgraduate students and researchers in social, political and 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.

Eleni Andreouli is Professor of Social Psychology at the Open University, UK, and 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 Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Cyprus. Her research explores the interplay between social representations and identity among stigmatised groups – such as migrants, LGBT+ individuals, and people with mental illness.