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Two passports – One Nation? Parliamentary Debates on Multiple Citizenship in Poland
Agnieszka Weinar
Sažetak
The article presents the descriptive and analytical approach to the discursive events concerning the issue of dual/multiple citizenship. In order to reconstruct the processes leading to redefinition of Polishness among the symbolic elites, it focuses at argumentative strategies used by the disputants in the Polish parliamentary debates. The process of redefinition of political identity on this level is particularly visible in the policy discourse constructed around the legislative proposals. The rhetoric structure of this discourse reflects the dividing lines shaping the belief systems among the symbolic elites. It also shows the directions of the present and future developments of the concept of Polishness. The end of the communist regime in Poland brought not only systemic changes, but also the need to redefine the legal basis of Polish political community. As it occurred, the problem of citizenship is very much interwoven with the idea of the nationhood, what can be quite contrary to the recent globalization of the concept. The debates on dual/multiple citizenship in Poland provoked the much deeper debate on the limits of Polishness, the spacial and ideational creation of political communities and the issue of getting to terms with the painful past. Therefore, the analysis of the Polish policy discourse on multiple citizenship inevitably uncovered the underlying struggle on a new definition of Polish political community. The clear distinction, present in the debates, between the multiple citizenship of Polish and non-Polish origin must evoke certain worries concerning the scale of ethnocentrism governing the concept of citizen in the new Poland.
Ključne riječi
multiple citizenship; Polish identity; political debates; minorities; discourse
Hrčak ID:
7857
URI
Datum izdavanja:
26.9.2003.
Posjeta: 2.076 *